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Climate change, migration and adaptation in Funafuti, Tuvalu
Abstract
This paper shows the extent to which people in Funafuti – the main island of Tuvalu – are intending to migrate in response to climate change. It presents evidence collected from Funafuti to challenge the widely held assumption that climate change is, will, or should result in large-scale migration from Tuvalu. It shows that for most people climate change is not a reason for concern, let alone a reason to migrate, and that would-be migrants do not cite climate change as a reason to leave. People in Funafuti wish to remain living in Funafuti for reasons of lifestyle, culture and identity. Concerns about the impacts of climate change are not currently a significant driver of migration from Funafuti, and do not appear to be a significant influence on those who intend to migrate in the future.
... Individuals who live more in contact with nature are more susceptible to observing the changes, such as Native Americans who first noticed the changes caused by men decades ago (Duncan, 2018;Clayton 2020). Yet, people are still able to overlook the the problem if it is inconvenient; even people who inhabit cities that are being struck by catastrophic floods (Mortreux & Barnett, 2009). Even worst, people in industrialized societies, such as the US, do not care to see it because they tend to separate the self from the other, as if one should only care about oneself, while frame nature as other (i.e. ...
... The denial is also done to justify and preserve the status quo, which is more convenient and comfortable to the individual than a new unknown system (Feygina et al., 2010;Fletcher, 2018;Vorkinn & Riese, 2001;Gifford, 2011). After all, humans are driven by habit, so it is easier for them to continue with a certain behavior than to look for a better alternative way of life (Huckelba & Van Lange, 2020;Blue et al., 2016;Mortreux and Barnett, 2009). ...
... Like optimism, in most cases, the belief that a higher power is in one's side is a good trait, but it is troubling in the current situation. People in Funafuti, Tuvalu are facing catastrophic floods due to the rising of sea levels, yet when Mortreux and Barnett (2009) asked 28 people about their migration plans, only nine responded that they had plans of leaving the island, and from those nine, only one attribute it to climate change. This is not surprising. ...
Constructing a Persuasive Message to Fight Environmental Pollution This review seeks to create a message that persuades people to join the fight against environmental pollution (Also known as climate change, global worming, destruction of the biosphere, etc.) by taking into account the previous works in social and environmental sciences, mainly psychology. The review begins by summarizing different explanations as to why humans are failing so miserably in this commons dilemma. Afterwards, individual traits that affect an individual's perception of a message are discussed. Next, the review explores messages that do not work in the subject at hand and show how the interaction between the mentioned traits and the messages result in today's lack of cooperation. Finally, previous studies are juxtaposed to explain which types of messages do work. The review concludes with an example of an effective message, constructed using the basic structures and components of arguments that work, as discussed throughout the review.
... In Storiation, islands and island cultures are regularly employed to highlight how there is no 'away' and no 'past' in the Anthropocene (Morton, 2013;Ghosh, 2016;Cyphers, 2019). This is exemplified by how, when it comes to such vast, multidimensional forces as global warming, far from being isolated or cut off, islands hold the traces and legacies of processes which are often more difficult to detect from mainland positions and perspectives. ...
... In Storiation approaches, islands and islanders are understood as intensive sites, holding and registering the hauntings and traces of relations, that do not cut the past from the present. Islands and islanders, engaged as these worlds of legacies and effects, of the dynamism of embodied intra-active becoming, rather than inter-action, are seen to offer alternatives to Correlational approaches: Storiations of the differentiating powers of colonialism, of the emergence of tidalectic psychologies living on in the wake, of island dances, vodou and shamanistic practices, of species long extinct, of the consumerisms that haunt islands in strange ways -Storiations of how there is no 'away' and no past in the Anthropocene (Morton, 2013;Ghosh, 2016: 26). ...
... Anthropocene thinking is fundamentally marked by new approaches which seek to affirm the enabling powers of morethan-human relations. For such authors, the power of the Anthropocene (Danowski and Viveiros de Castro, 2016), 'Gaia' (Latour, 2017;Stengers, 2015), the lithosphere (Clark and Yusoff, 2017), or 'hyperobjects' (Morton, 2013), like global warming, while too great for the human intellect to grasp in modernist forms of 'command-and-control' , enable new forms of thinking and responsivity to emerge. Although 'anthropos' may have forged the road to the Anthropocene, the tables are turned; our transforming planet is setting the pace, revealing to us the overwhelming power and forces of more-than-human relations. ...
The island has become a key figure of the Anthropocene – an epoch in which human entanglements with nature come increasingly to the fore. For a long time, islands were romanticised or marginalised, seen as lacking modernity’s capacities for progress, vulnerable to the effects of catastrophic climate change and the afterlives of empire and coloniality. Today, however, the island is increasingly important for both policy-oriented and critical imaginaries that seek, more positively, to draw upon the island’s liminal and disruptive capacities, especially the relational entanglements and sensitivities its peoples and modes of life are said to exhibit. Anthropocene Islands: Entangled Worlds explores the significant and widespread shift to working with islands for the generation of new or alternative approaches to knowledge, critique and policy practices. It explains how contemporary Anthropocene thinking takes a particular interest in islands as ‘entangled worlds’, which break down the human/nature divide of modernity and enable the generation of new or alternative approaches to ways of being (ontology) and knowing (epistemology). The book draws out core analytics which have risen to prominence (Resilience, Patchworks, Correlation and Storiation) as contemporary policy makers, scholars, critical theorists, artists, poets and activists work with islands to move beyond the constraints of modern approaches. In doing so, it argues that engaging with islands has become increasingly important for the generation of some of the core frameworks of contemporary thinking and concludes with a new critical agenda for the Anthropocene.
... Such sensationalist stories sell, yet such a discourse represents islanders as helpless victims, takes away agency, and downplays communities' resilience (e.g. Baldacchino and Kelman 2014;Mortreux and Barnett 2009). Worse, it may directly undermine local adaptive capacity, if it reduces incentives for investors and donors to provide funding (including for adaptation projects), and for islanders themselves to manage their resources sustainably (Barnett and Campbell 2010: 170;Barnett and Adger 2003;Barnett and O'Neill 2012)a 'secondary disaster' (Farbotko and Lazrus 2012: 387). ...
... Islanders, in response to limited local resources, migratetemporarily or permanentlyto pursue education, employment, or healthcare elsewhere (e.g. Lazrus 2012; Mortreux and Barnett 2009). Remittances from the diaspora abroad or from seafarers are an important source of revenue for many island states, and indeed contribute to local resilience by diversifying income sources and paying for adaptation measures at home (Campbell 2014;Connell 2013;Mortreux and Barnett 2009). ...
... Lazrus 2012; Mortreux and Barnett 2009). Remittances from the diaspora abroad or from seafarers are an important source of revenue for many island states, and indeed contribute to local resilience by diversifying income sources and paying for adaptation measures at home (Campbell 2014;Connell 2013;Mortreux and Barnett 2009). ...
Small island developing states (SIDS) are among the first and worst affected by climate change. SIDS are thus also among the first to adapt, and as ‘early adaptors’ can provide key lessons for adaptation efforts elsewhere. This article reviews the growing literature on climate change, adaptation and small island states. It first discusses migration – which increasingly is seen as part of adaptation rather than a failure to adapt. Mobility has long been part of island life, and remittances can for example fund adaptation measures back home. Yet, adaptation in situ is not as forthcoming as would be necessary. The article identifies different barriers to effective adaptation, and discusses them under three distinct but interrelated categories: perceptions and awareness, institutions, and (lack of) resources. For effective, sustainable and successful adaptation, we need to overcome these barriers, and in particular provide information and resources to the local level. With appropriate information and resources, island communities can take and implement informed decisions and successfully adapt to a changing climate – as they have adjusted to social and environmental changes in the past.
... Evidence of human migration as a response to climate change is scarce for small islands. Although there is general agreement that migration is usually driven by multiple factors (Black et al., 2011), several authors highlight the lack of empirical studies of the effect of climate-related factors, such as SLR, on island migration (Mortreux and Barnett, 2009;Lilleør and Van den Broeck, 2011). Furthermore, there is no evidence of any government policy that allows for climate "refugees" from islands to be accepted into another country (Bedford and Bedford, 2010). ...
... Thus, for example, in two Fijian villages, approximately half of survey respondents identified divine will as the cause of climate change (Lata and Nunn, 2012). These findings reinforce earlier studies in Tuvalu (Mortreux and Barnett, 2009), and more widely across the Pacific (Barnett and Campbell, 2010). The importance of taking into account local interests and traditional knowledge in adaptation in small islands is emphasized by Kelman and West (2009) and McNamara and Westoby (2011), yet evidence does not yet exist that reveals the limits to such knowledge, such as in the context of rapid socio-ecological change, or the impact of belief systems on adaptive capacity. ...
... Notwithstanding the extensive and ever-growing body of literature on the subject, there is still a relatively low level of awareness and understanding at the community level on many islands about the nature of the threat posed by climate change (Nunn, 2009). Even where the threat has been identified, it is often not considered an urgent issue, or a local priority, as exemplified in Malta (Akerlof et al., 2010) and Funafuti, Tuvalu (Mortreux and Barnett, 2009). Lack of awareness, knowledge, and understanding can function as an effective barrier to the implementation and ultimate success of adaptation programs. ...
... Attachment to place refers broadly to the physical and social bonds people develop with places [47]. Studies of climate-related mobility indicate that people and populations with a strong attachment to place resist movement away from sites of risk [48,49] and even return to places of climatic and environmental risk [29,50]. Adams [33] identifies that place attachment can create reluctance to leave places of environmental vulnerability because people feel safe, have established livelihoods and social networks, and have deep obligations to care for family and friends. ...
... Other studies have found, however, that attachments and belonging to a place provide a reason to limit mobility away from sites of climatic and environmental risk [48]. For example, research with the Rolwaling Sherpa of Nepal demonstrated that attachment to place and the desire for cultural continuity are shaping responses to environmental change, including the risk of glacier lake outburst flooding; community members express a need to remain in place to preserve ancestral land, maintain religious duties, and protect their culture [49]. ...
Many low-lying communities around the world are increasingly experiencing coastal hazard risks. As such, climate-related relocation has received significant global attention as an adaptation response. However, emerging cases of populations resisting relocation in preference for remaining in place are emerging. This paper provides an account of residents of Togoru, a low-lying coastal settlement on Viti Levu Island, Fiji. Despite facing significant coastal impacts in the form of coastal erosion, tidal inundation, and saltwater intrusion, Togoru residents are opposing plans for relocation; instead opting for in-situ adaptation. We conceptualize place-belongingness to a land and people—through personal, historic and ancestral, relational, cultural, economic, and legal connections—as critical to adaptation and mobility decision-making. We argue that for adaptation strategies to be successful and sustainable, they must acknowledge the values, perspectives, and preferences of local people and account for the tangible and intangible connections to a place.
... Since publication of the first Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report in 1990, migration and climate change researchers (e.g. Bardsley & Hugo, 2010;Gray & Mueller, 2012;Hugo, 1996;Leckie, 2009;Massey, 1999;Mortreux & Barnett, 2009;Tacoli, 2009;Warner & Afifi, 2014) have asserted that environmental degradation is a prominent motivation for human migration from ancestral homes. Some researchers have also claimed that such mobility has a straightforward relationship with environmental stress, ignoring the fact that people may initiate short-term in situ adaptation to environmental change before they decide to migrate. ...
... The bonding and bridging networks represent horizontal relationships, while linking networks represent vertical relationships (Patulny & Svendsen, 2007). Additionally, resources of origin include alternative employment opportunities, risk-sharing abilities, and local community resiliency, all of which may impede human migration (Adger et al., 2013;Black et al., 2011;Ellis, 2000;Gray & Muller, 2012;Mortreux & Barnett, 2009). ...
Riverbank erosion is common as a disaster event in riverine Bangladesh. It not only affects people living in inland char areas and along the major braided rivers, but also the coastal areas. Charlands are characterized by both erosion and deposition. When the rate of deposition exceeds the rate of erosion, over time, some chars become attached to the mainland, particularly, in the coastal areas. While coping strategies of displaced people in inland areas have been widely studied, relatively little is known about such strategies for people displaced by riverbank erosion in coastal Bangladesh. This chapter addresses this gap via a questionnaire survey conducted among 413 households in 15 villages of Ramgati Upazila in the Lakshmipur District. The Survey was followed by Focus Group Meetings and Key Informant Interviews. All study villages are located along the eastern bank of the lower Meghna River, around the main outlet of the Ganges–Brahmaputra–Meghna drainage basin. The survey revealed that people of the study area mitigated impacts of riverbank erosion by adopting various coping strategies, some similar to those adopted by erosion affected people of inland areas and others different. Finally, a number of recommendations are made to assist those adversely affected by riverbank erosion in the lower Meghna River estuary in coastal Bangladesh.
... With growing concern over global climate change, along with extreme climate variability, the environment-migration nexus has received extensive attention from researchers working in the field of environmental degradation and global climate change [1][2][3][4]. Many of these researchers hold the view that climate change deprives people, particularly residents of coastal areas, of their livelihood and force them to migrate to places with better environmental attributes and better income opportunity [5][6][7][8][9][10][11]. Many of them also consider migration an adaptation strategy for climate change [8,[12][13][14]. ...
... Empirical studies (e.g., Mortreux [6,[70][71][72][73] conducted in other tropical countries found no effect of disasters on migration flows from the coast to inland areas. They explained this in terms of both short-and long-term in situ adaptations that reduce their exposure and vulnerability to the problems. ...
Coastal residents of Bangladesh are now confronted with the increased incidence, variability, and severity of weather-related hazards and disasters due to climate change-induced sea level rise (SLR). Many researchers hold the view that as a consequence residents of such area have either already migrated to inland locations or intend to so in the near future. We examine the migration of households following a flash flood event that took place in August 2020 and address intentions for future migration in the Lower Meghna Estuary of coastal Bangladesh. The data obtained for this study include 310 household surveys, field observations, and informal discussions with respondents and local people. Based on the analysis of the field data, this empirical research found one household migrated to other district within one year after the event. When the respondents were asked about their future migration intensions, only a tiny proportion, namely 21 (6.77%) households, likely will leave the study area to settle in other districts while the remaining 289 households likely will stay in the Lakshmipur district. This finding challenges the existing narratives about vulnerability to environmentally induced migration. Moreover, it provides evidence of non-migration, which is a new as well as thriving area of investigation in relation to coastal Bangladesh.
... Social scientists and educators have also been critiqued on the grounds of unilinearity and reductionism, for stating that faith and belief are obstacles in the pursuit of adaptation rather than a potential resource (Donner, 2007, p. 233;Fair, 2018, p. 2;Hulme, 2017;Kempf, 2017). Anthropologists have juxtaposed these macro-level narratives with ethnographies that draw attention to counter-narratives emerging at micro-scales in the encounter with this new "scientific prophecy" (Crook & Rudiak-Gould, 2018, p. 16;Mortreux & Barnett, 2009;Kempf, 2020). ...
... Focusing too narrowly on the dangers of climate change may bring new vulnerabilities and unsustainable development practices into being; impacts may be felt as much if not more through the idea than the material changes in ecosystems driven by climate processes (Barnett & Adger, 2003). In Tuvalu, sensationalist discourses have led to discussions about displacement rather than careful consideration of adaptation options that would meet peoples' values and needs (Farbotko, 2005;Mortreux & Barnett, 2009); in Kiribati, adaptation thinking now informs political decisionmaking at all scales, leading to profound socio-economic changes as national budgets and aid programs are reframed (Klepp & Chavez-Rodriguez, 2018, p. 3), also invoking emotions of worry over land that already constitute "a stress factor that must be dealt with" (Hermann, 2017, p. 52). The World Bank funded Kiribati Adaptation Project (KAP), has been held up as a prime example of major investments being wasted because the local population's needs were insufficiently taken into account (Klepp, 2014;Webber, 2013). ...
The past decade has seen increased anthropological attention to understandings of climate change not only as a biophysical phenomenon but also as a discourse that is traveling from international policy making platforms to the rest of the planet. The analysis of the uptake of climate change discourse falls under the emergent subfield of climate change reception studies. A few anthropological investigations identify themselves explicitly as reception studies; others only mention the term with little explanation. Our review discusses a fuller range of anthropological studies and ethnographies from related disciplines that treat climate change as a discursive reality, which is not independent from how it is intimated through close observations of the environment. The following themes emerged: language and expertise; place and vulnerability; modernity, morality, and temporality; alterity and refusal. The review suggests that the interaction of observation and reception is still not well understood, and that there is scope for more systematic methodological and theoretical synthesis, taking lessons into account from geographies of reading and empirical hermeneutics. By exploring the hermeneutical problem of upholding scientific integrity while being open to other ways of knowing, climate change reception studies' emancipatory potential lie in opening up knowledge spaces for multi‐directional and democratic approaches to living (with) climate change. In closing, we propose an interdisciplinary research agenda highlighting the potential generativity of translation as an idiom for theory and praxis relating to how people come to know climate (change)—through both perceptual engagement with the natural world and interpretations of discursive manifestations.
This article is categorized under: Social Status of Climate Change Knowledge > Sociology/Anthropology of Climate Knowledge
... These islands have shallow freshwater lenses, high population densities in urban centres but a dispersed geography over large areas, small and vulnerable economies, fragile island ecosystems and a heavy dependence on marine resources. All these factors are readily influenced by climate change (Mortreux and Barnett, 2009; Republic of the Marshall Islands, 2011). The World Bank (2021) believes that without appropriate adaptation and mitigation, the Marshall Islands will be one of the first nations to experience sea level rise as a genuine existential threat. ...
The displaced Bikini community on Kili and Ejit Islands are facing significant threats from sea level rise. This effect of climate change is just the latest devastation to face this community. In 1946, the Bikinians were coerced into leaving their homes on Bikini Atoll to allow the United States to conduct nuclear tests. Their forced relocation has led to the community suffering long term impacts associated with displacement as they are still unable to return home. The vulnerabilities faced by the Bikinians due to displacement are intensifying the Bikinians’ exposure and sensitivity to climate change. However, the Bikinians are not passive victims of displacement or climate change and have shown high levels of resilience to the disruptive impacts of these processes. The strategies first developed in response to their displacement must now consider climate change. Conversely, for their adaptation to climate change to be successful, these strategies must address the impacts of displacement as the underlying cause of Bikinian vulnerability.
The threats of climate change for the community on Kili and Ejit are considerable. Despite having developed strategies to respond to the vulnerabilities they face, climate change will continue to make life on Kili and Ejit Islands difficult because of the underlying social, cultural, economic and environmental characteristics. There may be limits to the Bikinians’ ability to adapt and remain resilient. The Bikinians, already forced from their homes, have been highly mobile with most of their population residing on other islands within the Marshall Islands or in the United States. Climate change may force yet more Bikinians to consider migration as a form of adaptation.
This study explores how the vulnerabilities the Bikinians endure because of their displacement contribute to vulnerabilities associated with climate change. This study analyses these issues and focuses on how Bikinians adapt and build resilience. In seeking to share the story of the Bikinians this study draws on bwebwenato (talk story) research methods with members of the Bikinian leadership, and an analysis of documents detailing their struggle for justice against their displacement, and their experience with climate change.
... In the Pacific, as we document earlier, climate adaptation is predominately based on scientific and technocratic worldviews, with most interventions designed to reduce environmental risks and enable sustainable adaptation failing to acknowledge the significant influences on decision-making of Indigenous and Christian belief systems. As Kuruppu (2009), Luetz and Nunn (2020) and others identify, the almost total Christianisation of Pacific SIDS populations during the last century means multiple ontologies and epistemologies (Christianity, Indigenous, Western) coexist in the region (Mortreux and Barnett, 2009). Yet, adaptation policies and initiatives generally overlook the significant role that Christianity plays in shaping Pacific peoples' perceptions of and responses to climate change (Luetz and Nunn, 2020); with many people drawing on both Christian and Indigenous values in their daily lives. ...
Scholars, practitioners, and decision-makers are increasingly recognising that Indigenous knowledge can play a significant role in facilitating adaptation to climate change. Yet, adaptation theorising and practises remain overwhelmingly situated within Euromodern ontologies, and there remains limited space, at present, for plural ontologies or alternative ways of being and knowing. In this paper, and using the Pacific as our case study, we present an argument for the inclusion of multiple ontologies within adaptation policymaking. Pacific adaptation policies and interventions frequently privilege Western scientific knowledge and focus on addressing individual climate risks through technical fixes directed by foreign experts and funding agencies. They are also rooted in a policy architecture that is an artefact of colonisation in the region. Despite these obstacles, Pacific Islander responses to climate change are dynamic, and inclusive of the multiple and competing ontologies they work within, offering insights into how Euromodern and Pacific islander world views could coalesce to builds adaptive capacity and consolidate community resilience into the future. Highlights • Indigenous Knowledge plays a critical role in enabling resilience and facilitating climate change adaptation in some parts of Vanuatu • Ni-Vanuatu people employ dynamic responses to climate risks incorporating multiple knowledge systems and practises • Co-existence of different knowledge systems provide insights into factors that enable adaptive capacity and consolidate community resilience • Diverse worldviews, knowledge systems and practises with Pacific Island cultures highlights the importance of thinking about ontological pluralism within adaptation • Climate adaptation is principally founded on Western ontologies, but there is a need consider non-Western ontologies and epistemologies.
... The question of whether Tuvaluan people access international labour mobility programmes because they are experiencing climate change impacts is not central to our study, as previous research points to an absence of singular causality between climate impacts and migration [30][31][32][33][34]. Instead, following Boas et al. [16,35], we focus our attention on co-producing knowledge of climate justice with migrant workers, as well as seeking insights into the complex ways in which mobility regimes incorporate climate change justice considerations or not [16]. ...
Research on climate change and human mobility has posited migration as a potentially adaptive response. In the Pacific Islands region, international labour migration specifically is an important component of emerging climate change mobility policy, at both regional and national scales. However, the existence of opportunities for people in climate-exposed locations to move for work does not, on its own, advance climate justice. To gain insights into the nexus of climate justice, labour migration and adaptation, this paper explores the social and emotional experiences of international labour migration program participants from climate-vulnerable Tuvalu as well as the emergent climate mobility regime in which this migration is taking place, drawing on qualitative research undertaken on the emergent policy context, and with workers from Tuvalu on short-term contracts under Australia’s Pacific Labour Scheme (PLS). Their experiences, their perceptions of climate change, and their role as livelihood earners for families are explored to consider issues of climate justice in understanding labour migration as adaptation in the current policy context. While the workers benefited economically, they experienced significant social and emotional issues including poor mental health and family breakdown during their time working abroad, in addition to long-term climate change concerns. Further, the labour mobility program in which they participated does not recognize migration-as-adaptation or climate justice, even though these are an emergent priority in the climate mobility regime. This highlights the need to consider how international labour migration programs can be strengthened to advance climate justice for climate vulnerable populations on the move.
... Interestingly, none of these top publications focused on a particular point of discussion but instead took a broad view of different aspects of the climate migration discourse. The most influential scholarship in the top list is jointly published by Mortreux and Barnett (2009) that discussed the impacts of climate change on peoples' migration decisions and has been cited 291 times. The second most cited (221) contribution by Farbotko and Lazrus (2012) has focused on the climate change and mobility discourse around Tuvaluans. ...
This study employed a bibliometric analysis approach to understand how climate migration studies in the Pacific (CMSP) have evolved and outline the future research scope needed to contribute to the academic discourse. The study reveals that CMSP has proliferated in recent decades. It explores the most prominent authors, highly cited articles with their sources, and institutions that have contributed most articles in CMSP. The analysis also demonstrates a shift in CMSP from traditional discussion to newly emerging dimensions. The knowledge produced in this study will help future contributors develop and implement new research and formulate policies around CMSP.
... There have been limited efforts to describe and analyze migration behavior empirically on small islands, despite the high profile of low-lying islands in the debate on impacts of climate change and sea-level rise and its potential effects on their inhabitants. Previous work has focused on migration as adaptation and institutional responses based on small-scale case studies (Farbotko et al., 2018;McNamara and Prasad, 2014;Mortreux and Barnett, 2009) and examining climate change's influence on people's decision to migrate (Arnall and Kothari, 2015;Kelman et al., 2019). ...
Low-lying atoll islands are especially threatened by anticipated sea-level rise, and migration is often mentioned as a potential response of these island societies. Further, small island states are developing population, economic and adaptation policies to plan the future. Policies, such as raising of islands or land reclamation, require a long-term vision on populations and migration. However, population and migration systems in small island settings are poorly understood. To address this deficiency requires an approach that considers changing environmental and socio-economic factors and individual migration decision-making. This article introduces the conceptual model of migration and explores migration within one small island nation, the Maldives, as an example. Agent-based simulations of internal migration from 1985–2014 are used as a basis to explore a range of potential demographic futures up to 2050. The simulations consider a set of consistent demographic, environmental, policy and international migration narratives, which describe a range of key uncertainties. The capital island Malé has experienced significant population growth over the last decades, growing from around 67,000 to 153,000 inhabitants from 2000 to 2014, and comprising about 38 percent of the national population in 2014. In all future narratives, which consider possible demographic, governance, environmental and globalization changes, the growth of Malé continues while many other islands are effectively abandoned. The analysis suggests that migration in the Maldives has a strong inertia, and radical change to the environmental and/or socio-economic drivers would be needed for existing trends to change. Findings from this study may have implications for national development and planning for climate change more widely in island nations.
... Yet, they were concerned about short-term risks triggered by extreme climatic events such as cyclones and associated tidal surges, as well as socioeconomic factors. An empirical study by Mortreux and Barnett (2009) reported that climate change was not a major concern for people in Funafuti, Tuvalu, and they therefore, were reluctant to relate migration with climate change impacts. As such, this study results indicate, a lower level of awareness and misconceptions about climate change also discourage the target communities from perceiving planned CBA interventions as adaptation initiatives. ...
Community-based adaptation (CBA) has gained traction in the management of climate risks within developing societies, due to its capacity to include local knowledge and build the adaptive capacities of vulnerable groups and communities. Yet little is known about what happens when such projects are implemented on the ground. This paper presents the results of a research project that sought to understand local perceptions and responses to planned CBA interventions in rural coastal communities in Bangladesh. Based on a qualitative approach, this paper presents the dominant narratives within local communities about the NGO-initiated CBA project. Findings highlight there is a deep disconnection between the objectives of CBA interventions and the perceptions of local communities about the project. Such a difference in perceptions meant that project participants prioritized personal gains over the creation of collective capacities to adapt to climate change. The paper concludes that in order to resolve such tensions, the gap between ‘community-based’ adaptation theory and practice needs to be addressed.
... The international community has noted climate change as major issue worthy addressing (Salehyan, 2008;Mortreux et al., 2009). Climate change results from the warming of the atmosphere due to re-emission of solar energy absorbed by accumulating atmospheric greenhouse gases (GHGs) (Burroughs, 2007). ...
... Adams (2016) explains that the rural population across the globe continue to stay even in difficulties because of the place attachment and satisfaction that they get from the place they are staying. In this context, the non-economic benefits of place and the attachment people give to them cannot be overestimated (Mortreux & Barnett, 2009;Shen & Gemenne, 2011). Environmental migration has been very dominant around places that are vulnerable to disasters (Hunter, 2005;IPCC, 2014), especially as environmental changes influence the hydrological cycle, water availability, agricultural productivity, the pattern and severity of storms, and ultimately the livelihood of people (Massey et al., 2010). ...
The impact of climate change and other environmental disasters have shown a strong link with human migration throughout history. While the decision to migrate in the face of such environmental disasters is clear, questions linked to the non-migration aspirations of people in environmental disaster-prone regions account only for a negligible number of studies. This applies also to the Himalayan region, characterized by a dearth of scientific information on the militating forces of (non)migration. To contribute to address this yawning research gap, this paper poses a fundamental question: what (does not) drive environmental non-migration in Nepal? Specifically, the paper seeks to: (i) discuss the trend of (non-) migration in the context of environmental disasters in Nepal, and (ii) explore the drivers of non-migration decisions in upland, landslide prone areas of Nepal. Besides document analysis, the study relies on qualitative data drawn from five focus group discussions with local community members, complemented by ten key informant interviews to further corroborate the information. Further, eight key experts from ministerial departments and academia were interviewed to generate further information to buttress the results. It explores respondents' knowledge of environmental hazards and what drives their decision to (not) migrate in the face of environmental disasters. Despite exposures to landslides and other linked environmental hazards, we found four key factors that are instrumental in guiding non-migration decisions. First, the intrinsic value placed by the community (linked to their ancestral attachment), including place attachment. Second, social capital (especially social groupings) which drives collective action to manage and overcome the effects of disasters, third, place confidence which guarantees their application of locally adapted survival strategies, and fourth the structural contexts (economical and agricultural values). While this study provides conceptual and empirical information on the much needed subject on environmental non-migration, it makes a succinct request for further quantitative investigations to model the non-migration process and determine clear patterns over the years.
... Migration may be short term (temporary/seasonal) or long term (permanent), short distance (internal) or long distance (international), and forced (reactive) or voluntary (adaptive). While a growing body of literature considers different drivers (McLeman and Smit 2006;Black et al. 2011a, b;McLeman 2011;Piguet et al. 2011;GOS 2011) and types of migration (Piguet et al. 2011;Paavola 2008), only a few of them examine the likely consequences of migration (Black et al. 2011b;GOS 2011;Paavola 2008;Mortreux and Barnett 2009; Barnett and O'Neill 2012). None of them have used evidence-based data to conclude the outcomes of migration, and many studies have asked for more empirical studies on this issue to support public policy (e.g. ...
Climate change is predicted to impact on fisheries and dependent communities. This study assesses the vulnerability and adaptation to the impacts of climate variability and change, in three small-scale coastal fishing communities in Bangladesh with a view to suggest policy and scaling up the findings. Overall, using a mixed method approach this study contributes empirical evidence to current debates in the literature on climate change by enhancing an understanding of the characteristics and determinants of livelihood vulnerability, migration as an adaptation strategy and limits and barriers to the adaptation of fishing communities to climate variability and change. This study finds that the coastal fishing communities have been impacted by several climatic shocks and stresses and they have traditionally coped with or adapted to the normal range of climate impacts but not always sufficiently well. This study suggests that reduction of impacts, vulnerability or risks, increase in adaptive capacity or resilience, and facilitating adaptation actions and processes to climate variability and change for the fishing communities would require multifaceted measures. However, caution should be maintained as some adaptation strategies may exacerbate existing problems or may be maladaptive to other systems. The findings of this study would particularly contribute to the Government of Bangladesh’s policy goal of “assess[ing] potential threats [of climate change] to the marine fish[eries] sector and develop[ing] adaptive measures”. The findings of this study may also partly be transferred and scaled up to other coastal fishing communities in the Bay of Bengal region with similar socio-economic and environmental characteristics.
... The phenomenon of climate change is projected to fundamentally alter or undermine the natural resource base upon which many forms of tourism are built and reliant (Gómez-Martín, 2005;Saarinen et al., 2012;Kilungu et al., 2019). Importantly, its interactions and implications differ across space and time as climate change increases previously identified risk patterns whilst also unleashing new types of risk that extend to regions previously not considered as at risk (Mortreux and Barnett, 2009). As the tourism industry makes use of physical space and environmental conditions climate change has the capacity to impact and in some instances to undermine the development or continued sustainability of the industry at certain locations (Gómez-Martín, 2005;Tervo-Kankare et al., 2018). ...
The challenge of climate change and tourism is an evolving international knowledge domain. South Africa is one of the most vulnerable countries with respect to projected climate change. For the national tourism economy climate change is a significant topic of concern. The objectives in this article are to present climate change projections and potential impacts for
South Africa‟s tourism economy and to critically analyse the policy landscape concerning national government‟s response to climate change as a whole and more specifically in relation to the tourism sector. It is shown key tourism assets of South Africa are at risk from the advance of climate change. The analysis discloses that the South African government has supported international efforts and obligations to address the challenge of climate change, commitments which have influenced policy development regarding tourism. Nevertheless, policy development towards climate change and tourism has not progressed greatly
over the past decade. Arguably, this is an outcome of the overwhelming concentration in recent government tourism policy in South Africa towards issues of inclusivity and transformation.
... They mentioned that around half of their interviewees believed that climate change was not an issue of concern because in the Bible, God promised Noah that there would be no further flooding. Moreover, some interviewees indicated that they would never leave the islands even if climate change escalated to a point where the community needed to leave [15]. ...
There are four atoll states in the world: The Republic of Kiribati, the Maldives, the Republic of the Marshall Islands (RMI), and Tuvalu. These countries are comprised entirely of low-lying land approximately 2 m above sea level. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has recognized that atoll countries are highly vulnerable to rising sea levels due to climate change. This study aimed to clarify the relative advantages and disadvantages of possible alternatives compared to the present livelihoods of the Marshallese in their home country. We also attempted to identify the best plausible option, using few sets of possible value judgements over the evaluation criteria. The following four alternatives were examined in this study: (i) migration to the developed world, (ii) migration to other island states, (iii) land reclamation and raising, and (iv) development of floating platforms. To evaluate the performance of the four alternatives, we selected 16 criteria representing the societal conditions that would result from each alternative. The performance of each alternative per criterion was rated from 1 to 5 by a literature survey, interviews with researchers who worked on the livelihood of Marshallese immigrants in the U.S. states of Arkansas, Hawaii, and Oregon, and interviews with people knowledgeable about the behavior of the Marshallese both in their home country and in the United States as immigrants. The “migration to the developed world” alternative proved the best choice, followed by “developing floating platforms,” “land reclamation and raising,” and “migration to other island states.” We also found that “migration to the developed world” offered the most change to immigrants, while the alternative of “land reclamation and raising” resulted in the smallest change. The magnitude of anticipated change should be considered. We employed the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) to experimentally evaluate four alternatives in an integrated manner and about three cases were “all the criteria are equally important,” “social environment is more important,” and “personal environment is more important.” With AHP, the “migration to the developed world” alternative yielded the highest point for all three cases examined. Notably, climate migrants do not suddenly emerge, because climate change is a slow-onset process. The Marshallese should make wise use of the available lead time to prepare for migration in the future.
... It should also be noted that, in spite of many push and pull factors forcing people to migrate, migrants need the money and also family networks at the destination to support their migration (Brown 2008). Some previous studies used the term "trapped population" for people who have needs or desires to migrate, but lack the ability to migrate, especially due to poverty (Carling 2002;Lubkemann 2008;Black and Collyer 2014) or religious beliefs (Mortreux and Barnett 2009;Charan, Manpreet, and Priyatma 2017) (see more details in Zickgraf [2019]). In this case staying is involuntary; however, some people voluntarily chose to stay in their home places. ...
Rural-urban migration is a challenging issue for communities, and is influenced by interactions between numerous push and pull factors. To better understand the interacting drivers of rural-urban migration, the study investigates the factors which influence migration from rural areas in Sistan to Mashhad city in Iran. The investigation was conducted using questionnaires and deep interviews. The results show that the main reason for migration from Sistan to Mashhad is environmental degradation including drought and water scarcity, followed by economic and government operational plans for supporting rural people. However, some people stay in Sistan in spite of the current unpleasant environmental and economic conditions. The results demonstrated cultural and social factors as the main motivations for people remaining in villages. Since the factors could be more challenging under future global warming, adaptive participatory governance is needed to link civil society, authorities, scientists, and the land to develop nature-based and rural-urban migration solutions.
... Furthermore, previous studies on post-disaster resettlement behavior mostly focused on developed countries (13)(14)(15), and on how urban families cope with hurricanes, floods, and other natural disasters (16)(17)(18)(19). There is little research on how rural families in developing countries and poor areas cope with geological disasters like earthquakes. ...
Earthquakes occur frequently in rural areas of Sichuan, China, causing huge damage and high mortality. The built environment plays a significant role in providing residents with safe and resilient settlements in such areas. There is yet little research on how rural families in developing countries cope with geological disasters like earthquakes, and how built environmental factors would influence their resettlement choices which would directly affect their quality of life afterward. Urban planning activities should be accompanied by these insights to design and create human-centric resettlements accordingly. In this study, the resettlement choices after three major earthquakes in Sichuan were studied for this reason. Random sampling and face-to-face questionnaire surveys were combined with factor analysis and binary logistic regression to understand the resettlement modes desired by the residents and the influencing factors. The results show that residents who have lived in their current places long and whose houses were not built recently are more likely to choose the in-situ resettlement. Accessibility to employment and public services has a significant impact on residents' choice of in-situ resettlement or reallocated resettlement, and so does the previous resettlement experience. The research results can provide useful suggestions for Chinese rural area post-earthquake resettlement planning following a human-centric approach with empirical data.
... The goal of sustaining habitability serves as a meta-objective of research and policy on atolls, providing an answer to the otherwise rarely answered question of 'adaptation for what purpose?' [61]. Habitability is also a legitimate objective of adaptation that is shared by atoll peoples and governments: atoll people have a human right to remain on their islands and want the option of remaining on their islands [62][63][64]. Habitability can also serve as a guiding focus for otherwise diverse strands of research on atolls and on nature-based solutions, which might profitably and usefully consider its implications for atoll habitability. ...
Atoll societies have adapted their environments and social systems for thousands of years, but the rapid pace of climate change may bring conditions that exceed their adaptive capacities. There is growing interest in the use of ‘nature-based solutions' to facilitate the continuation of dignified and meaningful lives on atolls through a changing climate. However, there remains insufficient evidence to conclude that these can make a significant contribution to adaptation on atolls, let alone to develop standards and guidelines for their implementation. A sustained programme of research to clarify the potential of nature-based solutions to support the habitability of atolls is therefore vital. In this paper, we provide a prospectus to guide this research programme: we explain the challenge climate change poses to atoll societies, discuss past and potential future applications of nature-based solutions and outline an agenda for transdisciplinary research to advance knowledge of the efficacy and feasibility of nature-based solutions to sustain the habitability of atolls.
This article is part of the theme issue ‘Nurturing resilient marine ecosystems’.
... One reason can be linked to the concept of place attachment. Several studies have linked (im)mobility to place attachment where people choose not to migrate because of connections to their land or habitation [44][45][46]. A second reason for immobility can be linked to economic reasons. ...
Coastal communities across the world face intense and frequent flooding due to the rise in extreme rainfall and storm surges associated by climate change. Adaptation is therefore crucial to manage the growing threat to coastal communities and cities. This case study focuses on Lagos, Nigeria, one of the world's largest urban centers where rapid urbanization, poor urban planning, degrading infrastructure, and inadequate preparedness compounds flood vulnerability. We situate flood risk perceptions within the context of climate-induced mobilities in Lagos, which no study has done, filling a necessary knowledge gap. Furthermore, we apply a unique approach to flood risk perception and its linkage to migration, by using three measures of risk – affect, probability, and consequence, as opposed to a singular measure. Results show that the affect measure of flood risk perception is significantly higher than probability and consequence measures. Furthermore, flood risk perception is shaped by prior experiences with flooding and proximity to hazard. The effect of proximity on risk perception differs across the three measures. We also found that flood risk perceptions and future migration intentions are positively correlated. These results demonstrate the usefulness of using multiple measures to assess flood risk perceptions, offering multiple pathways for targeted interventions and flood risk communication.
... (Cubie 2017;Adger et al. 2007). Populations in fragile areas, such as mountains (Afifi et al. 2014;Milan and Ho 2014;Milan et al. 2015) or islands (Barnett 2001; Mortreux and Barnett 2009;IPCC 2007IPCC , 2014, have been highly manipulated. Similarly, there are increased threats in the low-lying coastal regions with rising seas, as many major urban areas are situated near significant flooding bodies (Barroca et al. 2006). ...
A cross-sectional online survey was conducted using multiple online channels, where hundreds of responses were recorded from seven different countries, in order to provide a better understanding of the global public opinion about the awareness, perception and attitude about climate change. The results reflected that majority of people believe in the actual happening of Climate Change both by natural as well as anthropogenic causes. While most respondents believed in the anthropogenic causes of climate change, some people still displayed their confidence in the natural causation of climate change and thus affirmed their awareness of its natural causes. There was however, a difference of opinion regarding the mechanism behind the greenhouse effect. The respondents also provided their opinion on the impact of carbon aerosols on the atmospheric temperature. Further, the respondents were optimistic on the issue of climate change reversal and had also preferred some mitigation steps such as the use of geo-engineering over adjusting to the existing impacts of climate change. Although, people confirmed their belief in the human-induced nature of climate change, yet their agreement of having faced bizarre things about climate change like the lack of consensus among the scientists and climate change being a hoax shows their unawareness about the appropriate knowledge and the propaganda against this planetary emergency. Therefore, this study could prove helpful for policy makers and other stakeholders as it shows how much is done and how much more is pending.
... Climate gentrification isa process in which wealthier people fleeing climate-risky areas spur higher housing prices in safer areas, thereby increasing housing prices and driving poorer communities out of those locations (Keenan et al., 2018). Retreat can also lead to loss of culture, identity, and ancestral sites (Mortreux and Barnett, 2009;Arnall, 2019;Hermann and Kempf, 2017;Kita, 2017), including fractured family and kinship ties (Iuchi, 2014;Gebauer and Doevenspeck, 2015), and increased indebtedness and poverty through loss of land and assets (Hammond, 2008;Miller, 2020). Furthermore, the decision to retreat or not is rife with inequalities and distrust among power brokers and communities (Jessee, 2020;Huang, 2021). ...
As managed retreat programs expand across the globe, there is an urgent need to assess whether these programs are reducing exposure to climatic hazards, enhancing adaptive capacity, and improving the living conditions of communities in a just and equitable manner or are they exacerbating existing risks and vulnerabilities? Strictly speaking, are retreat programs successful? Using an expansive intersectional justice approach to examine 138 post-resettlement case studies published between 2000 and 2021 across the Global North and South, we identified five typologies of success – techno-managerial, eco-restorative, compensatory, reformative, and transformative – and their trade-offs and synergies. Our meta-analysis incorporated a variety of metrics: relocation types, funding, decision making, socio-economic class, land use change, livelihood options, and social impacts. We found 26% of cases failed, 43% were successful, and 30% are on-going and therefore success was undetermined. The techno-managerial cases, while successful in the limited terms of relocating residents, paid little attention to equity and justice. The eco-restorative and compensatory cases reduced hazard exposure but revealed the synergies and tensions associated with social, ecological, and intergenerational justice. The reformative and transformative cases improved community wellbeing, rootedness, and access to livelihoods while incorporating diverse justice concerns to different degrees. By intersecting these typologies with multiple dimensions of justice, this study advances a novel planning and analytical tool for assessing the potential success or failure of current and future retreat programs.
... Migration to Indian megacities is partially due to the transition from agriculture to industry. The rural supply of water should be a push factor for urbanisation in the next few decades in coastal northern African cities (McLeman and Smit, 2006;Reuveny, 2007;Mortreux and Barnett, 2009). ...
Greenhouse gases (GHGs) are major contributors to global warming and climate change. These gases modulate the atmospheric radiative forcing and play an important role in Earth's albedo. The emission level, global warming potential and the persistence of a GHG define its accumulation in the atmosphere and relative potential to change radiative forcing. The major anthropogenic GHGs include methane, nitric oxide, ozone, hydrochloroflourocarbons, chloroflourocarbons, sulfur hexaflouride and nitrogen triflouride. Besides these, some gases indirectly act as GHGs like carbon monoxide, non-methane hydrocarbons, and nitrogen oxides. Many scientists have already warned regarding elevated emission trends after the industrial revolution. From last decades the emission of GHGs has tremendously increased in the atmosphere and the natural sinks of GHGs have contracted over time. Generally, fossil fuel burning and change in land use are major sources of GHGs while major sinks include soil, ocean and atmosphere. Interestingly the emission trends of greenhouse gases from different sources as well as the contribution of various countries to global greenhouse gasses budget have changed. Thus previous footprints, trends and projections regarding GHGs are needed to be reevaluated. Specific precautions and strategies are compatible to reduce GHGs emissions while further may help to obtain global temperature to above pre-industrial ambient temperature level by reducing 2°C in current temperature.
... Climate change will exaggerate these environmental drivers into the future, requiring the relocation of the most exposed coastal settlements (even within city boundaries). It is also important to note that there are significant 'pull' factors at work in the Pacific as people head to the major urban centres in search of better access to schools, health facilities, and the cash economy (Mortreux & Barnett 2009;Keen & Barbara, 2015). ...
Urban centres in the Pacific region are fast growing, with cities presenting as complex sites of risk and vulnerability. Within these cities, urban informal settlement communities are often some of the most vulnerable to climate change and impacts and urban climate planning needs to explicitly consider the priority needs of these often-marginalized communities if strategies are to be equitable. Hence, inclusive urban community-based adaptation is now a critical component of overall adaptation. In support of this important urban agenda, this paper describes a community profiling method that was developed to elicit key contextual data in support of locally appropriate climate action planning for informal settlements in Honiara, the capital city of Solomon Islands. The paper details the methodology that was developed, and uses a sample dataset to demonstrate the breadth and richness of the constructed community profile and the insights it reveals about community vulnerabilities. The paper argues that the proposed community profiling method offers organizations and practitioners invested in local engagement a practical tool to inform locally driven, climate resilient urban planning and development and can be translated for use in other Global South contexts.
... Studies find that slow-onset changes in temperatures and precipitation are associated with emigration, particularly from more agricultural countries and rural areas (Backhaus et al. 2015;Bohra-Mishra et al. 2014;Cai et al. 2016;Nawrotzki et al. 2015). However, if climatic factors are evaluated alongside economic factors, the latter's effects are often stronger (Joseph and Wodon 2013), and some studies suggest that climate change does not directly influence migration intentions and behavior (Abu et al. 2014;Beine and Parsons 2015;Codjoe et al. 2017;Mortreux and Barnett 2009). Instead, the effect of climate change on migration is primarily through its impact on economic factors such as agricultural income, livelihood opportunities, food security (Martin et al. 2014;Khavarian-Garmsir et al. 2019), healthrelated risks (Marchiori et al. 2012), or conflict (Abel et al. 2019). ...
Environmentally induced migration and mobility receives high attention in politics, media, and academia, even though non-migration is of much greater scale and probably the less understood phenomenon. The decision to leave or to stay put in an environmentally stressful region is a decision taken in the context of personal needs and aspirations, and uncertain survival and livelihood opportunities elsewhere. Information and expectations about migratory options and challenges are always incomplete, and whether migration, or rather non-migration, turns out as the personally more beneficial option depends on circumstances that are ex ante unknown and ex post not fully under control of the potential out-migrant. We argue that—despite exposure to severe environmental stress in a region—voluntary non-migration can be a viable outcome of a conscious but sometimes biased cognitive process. By highlighting the role of some relevant search and decision heuristics, we discuss why people around the globe decide to stay put in an environmentally stressful home region—despite favorable migratory options and sufficient resources for realizing opportunities elsewhere.
... While this paper draws on the framework of Lebel et al. (2015), it also draws insights from Kuruppu (2009), Mortreux and Barnett (2009), Karlsson and Hovelsrud (2015), Graham et al. (2018), andNeef et al. (2018). Figure 1 presented above showcases how gender differentiated roles can influence the risk perception and management of climatic risks directly, or can be addressed through multiple factors including attributes, emotions or vulnerability. ...
The focus of this paper is mainly to investigate climate change adaptation practices and the applicability of a cultural sustainability approach in understanding gender dimension of the residents of the southwest coast of Bangladesh. It is one of the most vulnerable regions in South Asia due to the significant impacts of climate change. The long-term effects of climate change in this region are the increasing salinity in farmlands, heatwaves, and sea-level rise. The southwest coast of Bangladesh is a classic example of “good practice” as well as the center for learning, implementing, and communicating climate change adaptation actions in practice. The reason for this the collective action carried out to initiate and improve adaptation activities by the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change of the Government of Bangladesh, as well as several national and international development and non-government organizations (NGOs). Using a systematic review of literature, and field-based case studies, we examined how gender and cultural issues (such as the adaptive capacity of men and women, and the transformation of gendered power relations) have been addressed to successfully implement climate change adaptation initiatives in the context of the nominated study area. Our study results revealed that both male and female participants were strategic and capable of dealing with climate change impacts, although the adaptive capacity of the former group was comparatively sturdier than the later. The extent of cultural sustainability was found to be weaker in the study region compared to many other coastal communities in the country. The efforts made by NGOs in collaboration with the governmental bodies of Bangladesh were found contributory in providing knowledge of climate change along with the techniques to adapt to its consequences for the people of the study region. Similarly, the activities of NGOs were found influential in helping the government to support people in adapting to climate change in terms of the gendered and cultural sustainability perspectives. Our findings contribute to the field of climate change impacts in understanding the complexities of rural development.
... Our emphasis is therefore less on examining what drives people to move out of seemingly stable places of origin impacted by climate change (Black et al. 2011a), but rather on how such movements take shape and evolve along the way, in relation to the mobilities of others, of information, the climate and so on. This also means we adopt an open perspective as to how the impacts of climate change are perceivedwhether or not as a risk or a reason for leavingand how this is mediated by these relations and wider socio-political contexts (Hulme 2009;Mortreux and Barnett 2009;Parsons 2019;Wiegel et al. 2021). ...
The discussion on the relation between human mobility and climate change has moved beyond linear and exceptional terms. Building on these debates, this article, and the Special Issue on Climate Mobilities: Migration, im/mobilities and mobilities regimes in a changing climate that it introduces, conceptualises this relation in terms of climate mobilities. Through the concept of climate mobilities, we highlight the multiplicity of mobility in the context of a changing climate, including the interrelations between human mobilities and immobilities and their interplay with other mobile flows, such as the mobilities of ideas, information, or climate risk. We furthermore delve into the politics of climate mobilities, defining climate mobility regimes, and implications for mobility justice among those whose mobility is impacted by these regimes. We argue for research to pay more attention to acts of resistance against dominant climate mobility regimes, including voluntary immobilities and re-emplacements that challenge mass migration frames or imposed relocation policies. The articles in this issue empirically examine these dimensions, reflecting on the plurality of climate mobilities and its politics, each analysing how these evolve in a situated cultural or political context
For the full text, see this link, it is OPEN ACCESS:
https://doi.org/10.1080/1369183X.2022.2066264
... It is also important to consider all cultural responses to disasters (the 'good' and 'bad'), acknowledging that cultural responses to disasters are not necessarily accurate, reliable, or positive in a western scientific sense. This is key to understanding past and future disaster responses, particularly on small islands (Lewis, 1990;Mortreux and Barnett, 2009;Nunn et al., 2017). ...
The role that culture plays in the way different groups experience, respond to, and recover from disasters has been widely discussed. Yet, while there is a considerable (and growing) literature of case study evidence for the need to account for culture in disasters, comparatively few studies take a long-term perspective on cultural interactions with disasters, resulting in a lack of exploration into the diachronic nature of these cultural responses, both past and present. The literature that does exist tends also to focus either on western cultures or on groups that pursue highly traditional livelihoods. Communities that call on elements of both local or vernacular knowledge and scientific or external knowledge are underrepresented.
This article presents an examination of cultural responses to tropical cyclones on Mauritius Island in the South West Indian Ocean over the long-term. We combine historical archive and contemporary interview data to uncover an extensive history of cultural responses to cyclones in Mauritius, including revealing the use of local knowledge, early warning signs, and superstitions surrounding cyclones in early Mauritian history and today.
Our research refutes the portrayal of isolated ‘episodes’ of cultural responses to cyclones, such as the reports of ‘mass hysteria’ following tropical cyclone Hollanda in February 1994, when a considerable proportion of Mauritians believed that a werewolf or loup garou was terrorising villagers. Whilst this experience has been portrayed – both at the time and currently – as an embarrassing and one-off incident, we show that this is rather part of a long pattern of cultural responses to tropical cyclones. Our results therefore have implications for how cyclones and disasters are understood and experienced.
Growing social and economic inequalities, and consequently, unfulfilled life aspirations trigger the migration intentions of millions, if not billions of people around the world. Surveys by Gallup World Poll suggest that more than 750 million adults would like to migrate if they had the chance to do so (Esipova et al., 2018). Hence, globally ‘only’ one in eight adults express a desire to migrate. This is a surprisingly small fraction given the fact that a much larger but unknown number of people would have good reasons to migrate in order to realise economic, professional, political, or social opportunities elsewhere. At the same time, only small fractions of those who aspire to migrate are actually able to realise it.
Indigenous communities have a particular stake in climate and energy developments, and have come to occupy a central role in both the movement toward decarbonization of industrial societies and renewable energy transition. Yet they remain underrepresented and excluded from climate policy processes. This paper critically evaluates the case of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to foster inclusive decision-making, with a specific focus on the place of Indigenous peoples in these processes. We demonstrate the ways in which the IPCC provides limited voice for Indigenous peoples in the Panel’s deliberations. We argue the IPCC’s disregard for Indigenous knowledges – and Indigenous peoples – arises from a configuration of structural problems within the governance of decarbonization and the politics of knowledge production. We conclude the IPCC faces on-going challenges in supporting the democratic functioning of climate decision-making, including in upholding Indigenous peoples’ internationally recognized human rights as political actors.
Communities throughout the Pacific Islands region have experienced, and will continue to experience, extensive non-economic loss and damage (NELD) from climate change. Assessments of loss and damage often fall short of their coverage of the non-economic dimensions, which can distort our understanding of climate change impacts, discount the experiences of some and skew future decision-making. This paper explores how stakeholders in the Pacific Islands understand NELD and perceive to be the best ways of responding to it. An open-ended questionnaire was used to collect qualitative and quantitative data from representatives from governments, donors and development partners, civil society, intergovernmental organisations, and relevant others. This study found that NELD in the Pacific Islands is understood, perceived and experienced through the lens of intangible values, identity and cultural landscapes, and this is encapsulated by a typology with eight interconnected core dimensions. NELD is complex, entangled and interconnected, thereby significantly undermining entire socio-ecological systems. Good practices for working through and preventing NELD have centred around biodiversity conservation and supporting cultural revival or continuity as these help restore and maintain people-ecology interactions that make up the socio-ecological system. Moving forward, responding to NELD in the Pacific Islands region will require a comprehensive approach that protects and conserves complex socio-ecological systems, and provides opportunities to work through loss and damage by means of education and awareness, cultural connection and maintenance, and knowledge preservation.
'The greatest single impact of climate change could be on human migration', stated the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 1990. Since then there has been considerable concern about the large-scale population movements that might take place because of climate change. This book examines emerging patterns of human mobility in relation to climate change, drawing on a multidisciplinary approach including anthropology and geography. It addresses both larger, general questions and concrete local cases, where the link between climate change and human mobility is manifest and demands attention - empirically, analytically and conceptually. Among the cases explored are both historical and contemporary instances of migration in response to climate change, and together they illustrate the necessity of analyzing new patterns of movement, historic cultural images and regulation practices in the wake of new global processes.
Climate change presents a considerable threat to food security of low-lying atoll nations in the Pacific including Tuvalu. It is projected to heavily impact agricultural and fishery sectors in Tuvalu, threatening food chains and the ability of Tuvaluans to produce and access safe and nutritious food that meets their dietary and cultural needs. In addition to climate change impacts, food security in Tuvalu is affected by a number of interconnected socio-economic, transboundary and ecosystem factors including access to land, traditional food-acquiring skills, food availability and affordability, cultural practices and the changing way of life. In fact, decline in traditional food-acquiring skills, the lack of interest in local food production practices, and other unfortunate socio-economic circumstances continue adversely affecting food (in)security in Tuvalu. This study assessed the risk of climate change from the perspective of food security domain considering exposure to flood hazard. The results of risk assessment suggested that revival of traditional food-acquiring skills is an important adaptation strategy. Strategies at the community and government levels are proposed to prevent adverse impacts of flooding on and prevent food security in Tuvalu.
Pacific Islands are facing some of the most immediate and direct impacts of climate change. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Special Report of 1.5°C Global Warming (SR15) outlines the possibility that some low-lying atolls will become uninhabitable by 2030 and submerged by 2100. I analyse how and where SR15 presents climate change impacts for Pacific Islands. In doing so, I seek to highlight to what extent the IPCC’s structures and pressures influence SR15’s marginalisation of or emphasis on Pacific perspectives and challenges. The main findings that emerge from this discourse analysis are, first, that climate change impacts for Pacific Islands are largely conceptualised as relating to the physical environment and the economy. Second, SR15 frames Pacific Islands as vulnerable; however, it appears to be reflecting a shift in the literature toward recognising Pacific adaptation and resilience. The third finding is that the IPCC explicitly defines and acknowledges Indigenous and local knowledge but frames this knowledge as alternative to scientific expertise. I interpret these findings in the context of the underrepresentation of Pacific authors, the availability of published knowledge for assessment and the IPCC’s claims of neutrality. Pacific leaders and communities continue to advocate for the 1.5°C threshold investigated in SR15 and are mobilising IPCC assessments.
The negative effects of climate change disproportionately impact Pacific Island nations. Although Pacific Nations contribute the least to climate change compared to other nations, they are the most impacted by rising sea levels. These negative effects can see nations within the region completely submerged or uninhabitable. This article highlights how the Pacific Island diaspora in Australia are acting in solidarity with their homelands in the fight for climate justice. Although Pacific Island diasporic groups have moved away from their (Mother)land, they are still emotionally, mentally and spiritually connected to her. Many Pacific Islanders in the Australian diaspora are passionate and determined to ensure the survival of their Island (Mother)land. Given the lack of information on climate change from Pacific Island perspectives, it is envisioned that this article will bring awareness to climate change issues from Pacific people. The voices of two Samoan activists who were raised in Meanjin (Brisbane), Australia combine to tell this story.
The aim of this paper is to develop a typology of displacement in the context of slow-onset environmental degradation linked to climate change (desertification, droughts and increasing temperatures, sea level rise (SLR), loss of biodiversity, land/forest degradation, and glacial retreat). We differentiate regions under environmental threat according to their social vulnerabilities, mobility patterns, and related policies, and identify twelve types of vulnerability/policy/mobility combinations. The paper is based on a synthesis of 321 published case studies on displacement and slow-onset environmental degradation, representing a comprehensive collection of the literature since the 1970s. We observe that vulnerability is especially critical in small island and coastal contexts, as well as in mountainous zones and desert regions. Migration processes are often not visible in areas affected by environmental degradation. When they do occur, they remain mostly internal and oriented towards cities with occasional rural-to-rural migration. Non-mobile people, as well as those who depend on natural resource industries for their livelihoods, are particularly vulnerable to climate change. Persons with lower levels of education are more likely to respond to environmental shock through short-distance migration, whereas highly educated individuals may migrate over longer distances. Policies that directly address mobility in relation to climate change—mostly through relocation—are seldom mentioned in the literature. Mobility is often perceived as a last-resort solution, whereas a growing body of research identifies mobility as an adaptation strategy.
The aim of this paper is to examine immigration and environmental degradation using bibliometric analysis. This paper also analyzes sources of publication, authorship, citations, distributions publications and other bibliometric indicators. The study focuses on a total of 1372 articles published from 2000 to 2020. These articles were collected through an automated process from the Scopus database and later analyzed using techniques such as bibliometric indicators analysis, VOSviewer, and Perish or Publish. The research identified 991 articles from varieties of published sources. The topic of immigrants and environmental degradation has been an emerging topic since 1981. Starting in 2000, most of the scholars actively producing an articles pertinent to this topic. Most of the articles were published in journals, and English is the primary language of research. United States is the leading country in contributing the publications. Meanwhile, the most significant fields in which the sources were produced were environmental science, agricultural and biological sciences, arts and humanities and earth and planetary sciences. However, some limitations has been found. It has been suggested for future research, to lengthen this work to other databases, as well as bibliometric analyses of immigration and environmental degradation in developed and developing countries by adding a new keyword such as energy consumption and climate change. This paper aims to assess recent trends in the expansion of academic literature on immigration and environmental degradation using the bibliometric analysis method. Network visualization and bibliometric indicators are used in this paper to present the results.
Volume II of The Cambridge History of the Pacific Ocean focuses on the latest era of Pacific history, examining the period from 1800 to the present day. This volume discusses advances and emerging trends in the historiography of the colonial era, before outlining the main themes of the twentieth century when the idea of a Pacific-centred century emerged. It concludes by exploring how history and the past inform preparations for the emerging challenges of the future. These essays emphasise the importance of understanding how the postcolonial period shaped the modern Pacific and its historians.
Kiribati is the largest coral atoll state threatened by climate change. Marine livelihoods and fresh water supplies will be first threatened, increasing vulnerability, since mitigation possibilities are scarce. In recent years economic development has been limited, aid dependency considerable, and population growth rapid, resulting in significant development challenges. Unsustainable urbanisation accounts for half the national population; the more remote atolls are losing population. Even in pre-contact times atoll residents had a range of livelihood strategies, including migration, in response to hazards and scarce local opportunities. Over the past century i-Kiribati have migrated in search of employment, to the phosphate mines of Nauru, and on merchant shipping lines, and national agencies have increasingly trained i-Kiribati for overseas employment. Within Kiribati, settlement schemes, in response to poverty and food insecurity, from the Phoenix to the Line Islands, have settled relatively few. Growing population pressure on resources led to the notion of ‘migration with dignity’: planned movement into better paid employment overseas with a consequent greater flow of remittances. I-Kiribati have grasped diverse employment opportunities overseas, including agricultural labour, employment on cruise ships or employment in the Australian tourism industry. While recent policy has favoured rural development on outer atolls, international migration in search of superior livelihoods and better economic well-being is unlikely to diminish. Meeting everyday needs remains more crucial that contemplating worsening environmental pressures. International migration has become more permanent, favouring New Zealand, while climate change is likely to increase the demand for migration and resettlement.
The extinction narrative of the ‘sinking island states’ is well known and discussed extensively in the climate change institutions, academic literature, and media accounts of climate change. This article questions the theoretical basis upon which this narrative has developed, asking how it became so embedded in climate change politics, and what implications this narrative has both for islands and for action on climate change. Focussing on the Pacific, this article uses the insights of racial capitalism and critical feminism to historicise the sinking islands extinction narrative. This historical analysis shows that underlying these extinction narratives of doomed islands and islanders is a colonial logic of disposability that has developed over time, shifting to naturalise changing forms of violence and exploitation in the Pacific. This argument has implications for climate change politics where extinction narratives are widespread, including in justice arguments. The racialised and gendered colonial logics that underlie vulnerability discourse means it does not function to strengthen arguments for mitigation, but instead to naturalise the suffering and loss of those deemed vulnerable. Questioning how discourses of vulnerability impact on capitalist accumulations and dispossessions is therefore important, as the solutions to vulnerability are different if it is understood not as inherent, but as an actively reproduced condition that is being resisted by vulnerabilised communities.
The small Pacific island state of Tuvalu was one of few states to have remained free from COVID-19 in 2020, after closing its borders quickly. With an economy supported by remittances, Tuvalu has a century-long history of temporary and increasingly permanent migration, to the urbanised capital island, Funafuti, and to New Zealand. Migration became a vehicle of adaptation and response to COVID-19 with people being encouraged to move to outer islands, for health security and to engage in agriculture and fishing. Some 15% of the population left Funafuti for outer islands, putting pressure on their resources. Smaller numbers left the main island of Funafuti for other islands on the same atoll. Such decentralisation reversed longstanding migration flows, in and beyond Tuvalu, and proved the key to resilience.
The northwest African country of Mauritania is a vast, desert territory, which was historically been dominated by pastoral nomads. Since independence in 1960, the country has witnessed a dramatic sedentarization of its nomadic population, as well as settlements in and movements to urban centers. This vast sedentarization movement coupled with internal and interregional migration has resulted in the growth of Mauritania’s urban population from less than 10 percent of the total population in 1965 to nearly 90 percent in 2013. Factors that have caused this rapid urbanization, include the droughts that spanned the late 1960s through to the early 1980s, and the turbulent transformation of Mauritania’s political economy. The aim of this study is to determine and examine internal migration flows to analyze the relationship between long-term rainfall changes and dynamic spatial demographic shifts in terms of movements toward urban centers. In this regard, we propose an assessment approach that integrates official statistics from the decennial census and rainfall data, with available socioeconomic variables, to characterize interregional migration flows. Our result confirms that rates of interregional migration remain elevated and are expected to increase. In 2013, 702,575 individuals were documented as having participated in interregional migration, comprising 17.5 percent of the total population. In comparison, there were 477,814 individuals, which migrated inter-regionally in 2000, and 208,039 in 1988. These results demonstrate distinct interactions between climate variability and interregional migration in Mauritania throughout the past four decades.
Adaptation to climate change is inescapably influenced by processes of social identity – how people perceive themselves, others, and their place in the world around them. Yet there is sparse evidence into the specific ways in which identity processes shape adaptation planning and responses. This paper proposes three key ways to understand the relationship between identity formation and adaptation processes: 1) how social identities change in response to perceived climate change risks and threats; 2) how identity change may be an objective of adaptation; and 3) how identity issues can constrain or enable adaptive action. It examines these three areas of focus through a synthesis of evidence on community responses to flooding and subsequent policy responses in Somerset county, UK and the Gippsland East region in Australia, based on indepth longitudinal data collected among those experiencing and enacting adaptation. The results show that adaptation policies are more likely to be effective when they give individuals confidence in the continuity of their in-groups, enhance the self-esteem of these groups, and develop their sense of self-efficacy. These processes of identity formation and evolution are therefore central to individual and collective responses to climate risks.
Purpose
It is predicted that increasing numbers of citizens of the Pacific Island nation of Tuvalu will migrate to New Zealand in the coming decades due to the threat of climate change. Tuvaluans currently living in New Zealand face disparities in income, education and health. This study aims to understand the views of recent Tuvaluan immigrants to Auckland, New Zealand on health behaviors, health care and immigration.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors conducted semi-structured interviews, key informant interviews and participant observation using a focused ethnography methodology.
Findings
Participants explained that Tuvaluans in New Zealand do not fully use primary care services, have a poorer diet and physical activity compared to those living in Tuvalu, and struggle to maintain well-paying, full-time employment.
Practical implications
As Tuvaluan immigration to New Zealand continues, it will be important to educate the Tuvaluan community about the role of primary health-care services and healthy behaviors, facilitate the current process of immigration and provide job training to recent immigrants to improve their opportunities for full-time employment and ensure cultural survival in the face of the threat of climate change.
Originality/value
This paper contributes to a greater understanding of the challenges to be faced by Tuvaluan environmental migrants in the future and features a high proportion of study participants who migrated due to climate change.
Agricultural employment is critical to the lives of hundreds of millions of men and women across the globe as well as to the farms that employ them and the communities in which they live. However, as the agricultural transformation unfolds, workers move off the farm to jobs in an expanding food services sector, in urban areas, and abroad, with far-reaching ramifications for agricultural producers and labor markets. This chapter examines the changing role of agricultural employment in developing and developed economies. It draws from two decades of research using a wide diversity of analytical approaches to document how agricultural labor markets evolve and the impact this evolution has on workers, farmers, and rural economies. We highlight new empirical findings, emerging themes, and policy implications, including the growing concentration of off-farm agri-food employment, migration, changing gender roles, climate change and the legacy of the COVID-19 pandemic.
As with all social processes, human migration is a dynamic process that requires regular theoretical reflection. This article offers such reflection as related to the role of the natural environment in contemporary migration research and theory. A growing body of evidence suggests that environmental contexts, as shifting social and ecological realities, are consequential to migration theory. In this article, we review some of this evidence, providing migration research examples that integrate environmental context and are applicable to core migration theories, including neoclassical economic and migration systems perspectives, the “push-pull” framework, and the new economics of labor migration. We suggest that neglecting consideration of the natural environment may yield misspecified migration models that attribute migration too heavily to social and economic factors, particularly in the context of contemporary climate change. On the other hand, we suggest, failure to consider migration theory in climate scenarios may lead to simplistic projections and understandings, as in the case of “climate refugees.” We conclude that migration researchers have an obligation to accurately reflect the complexity of migration's drivers, including the environment, within migration scholarship, especially in the context of global climate change.
This article surveys contemporary theories of international migration in order to illuminate their leading propositions, assumptions, and hypotheses. It hopes to pave the way for a systematic empirical evaluation of their guiding tenets. The authors divide the theories conceptually into those advanced to explain the initiation of international migration and those put forth to account for the persistence of migration across space and time. Because they are specified at such different levels of analysis, the theories are not inherently logically inconsistent. The task of selecting between theories and propositions thus becomes an empirical exercise, one that must occur before a truly integrated theoretical framework can be fully realized. -Authors
Adaptation has emerged as an important area of research and assessment among climate change scientists. Most scholarly work has identified resource constraints as being the most significant determinants of adaptation. However, empirical research on adaptation has so far mostly not addressed the importance of measurable and alterable psychological factors in determining adaptation. Drawing from the literature in psychology and behavioural economics, we develop a socio-cognitive Model of Private
Proactive Adaptation to Climate Change (MPPACC). MPPACC separates out the psychological steps to taking action in response to perception, and allows one to see where the most important bottlenecks occur—including risk perception and perceived adaptive capacity, a factor largely neglected in previous climate change research. We then examine two case studies—one from urban Germany and one from rural Zimbabwe—to explore the validity of MPPACC to explaining adaptation. In the German study, we find that MPPACC provides better statistical power than traditional socio-economic models. In the Zimbabwean case study, we find a qualitative match between MPPACC and adaptive behaviour. Finally, we discuss the important implications of our findings both on vulnerability and adaptation assessments, and on efforts to promote adaptation through outside intervention.
Remittances sent home by seafarers employed on international merchant and fishing ships are a significant income component for the Kiribati economy, with immediate benefits for families and communities. This paper explores the strategies used and the amounts sent by seafarers to their family members by drawing on different data sets, such as remittances data kept in the form of allotment lists by employment agencies, and comparing these with interview responses from seafarers and their families. Remittances are spread throughout extended families and communities firstly via direct allotments sent to individual bank accounts, and secondly through channels of family and community obligations. This paper shows that the general flow of seafarers’ remittances into Kiribati is continuous and has increased over the years with more people engaged in seafaring employment. Families, however, were found to be dependent on individual decisions made by seafarers of how to share their remittances. Kiribati has no institutionalised social welfare system, and as a consequence remittances function as a private safety net for seafarer families.
Given a certain pre-existing commitment to sea-level rise due to the long thermal lags of the ocean system, several million people living in coastal areas and small islands will inevitably be displaced by the middle of the century. These climate exiles will have nowhere to go. Rather than deal with this in an ad hoc manner as the problem arises, the authors propose a mechanism by which these exiles would be given immigration benefits by countries through a formula that ties numbers of immigrants to a country's historical greenhouse gas emissions. Such a compensatory mechanism appears to be a fair way of addressing the problems faced by climate exiles.
Elevated ocean temperatures can cause coral bleaching, the loss of colour from reef-building corals because of a breakdown of the symbiosis with the dinoflagellate Symbiodinium. Recent studies have warned that global climate change could increase the frequency of coral bleaching and threaten the long-term viability of coral reefs. These assertions are based on projecting the coarse output from atmosphere–ocean general circulation models (GCMs) to the local conditions around representative coral reefs.
Here, we conduct the first comprehensive global assessment of coral bleaching under climate change by adapting the NOAA Coral Reef Watch bleaching prediction method to the output of a low- and high-climate sensitivity GCM. First, we develop and test algorithms for predicting mass coral bleaching with GCM-resolution sea surface temperatures for thousands of coral reefs, using a global coral reef map and 1985–2002 bleaching prediction data. We then use the algorithms to determine the frequency of coral bleaching and required thermal adaptation by corals and their endosymbionts under two different emissions scenarios.
The results indicate that bleaching could become an annual or biannual event for the vast majority of the world's coral reefs in the next 30–50 years without an increase in thermal tolerance of 0.2–1.0°C per decade. The geographic variability in required thermal adaptation found in each model and emissions scenario suggests that coral reefs in some regions, like Micronesia and western Polynesia, may be particularly vulnerable to climate change. Advances in modelling and monitoring will refine the forecast for individual reefs, but this assessment concludes that the global prognosis is unlikely to change without an accelerated effort to stabilize atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations.
Climate change-induced sea-level rise, sea-surface warming, and increased frequency and intensity of extreme weather events puts the long-term ability of humans to inhabit atolls at risk. We argue that this risk constitutes a dangerous level of climatic change to atoll countries by potentially undermining their national sovereignty. We outline the novel challenges this presents to both climate change research and policy. For research, the challenge is to identify the critical thresholds of change beyond which atoll social-ecological systems may collapse. We explain how thresholds may be behaviorally driven as well as ecologically driven through the role of expectations in resource management. The challenge for the international policy process, centred on the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), is to recognize the particular vulnerability of atoll countries by operationalising international norms of justice, sovereignty, and human and national security in the regime.
Understanding what constitutes dangerous climate change is of critical importance for future concerted action (Schneider,
2001, 2002). To date separate scientific and policy discourses have proceeded with competing and somewhat arbitrary definitions
of danger based on a variety of assumptions and assessments generally undertaken by `experts'. We argue that it is not possible
to make progress on defining dangerous climate change, or in developing sustainable responses to this global problem, without
recognising the central role played by social or individual perceptions of danger. There are therefore at least two contrasting
perspectives on dangerous climate change, what we term `external' and `internal' definitions of risk. External definitions
are usually based on scientific risk analysis, performed by experts, of system characteristics of the physical or social world.
Internal definitions of danger recognise that to be real, danger has to be either experienced or perceived – it is the individual
or collective experience or perception of insecurity or lack of safety that constitutes the danger. A robust policy response
must appreciate both external and internal definitions of danger.
People process uncertainty information in two qualitatively different systems. Most climate forecast communications assume people process information analytically. Yet people also rely heavily on an experiential processing system. Better understanding of experiential processing may lead to more comprehensible risk communication products. Retranslation of statistical information into concrete (vicarious) experience facilitates intuitive understanding of probabilistic information and motivates contingency planning. Sharing vicarious experience in group discussions or simulations of forecasts, decisions, and outcomes provides a richer and more representative sample of relevant experience. The emotional impact of the concretization of abstract risks motivates action in ways not provided by an analytic understanding.
Migration can be seen as a process in which large numbers of individuals and families begin to write a new history for themselves. The initial act of leaving one's parents, family, neighbourhood, society and culture, and adopting a new life- and work-style is a crucial one. Only a small proportion of people who enter a migration process, or who have participated in major migration movements in the past, have had a clear perception of what they were going to encounter, or the extent to which their lives were going to change. While it is very likely that a large proportion of the individual migrants are the forerunners in a migration which will ultimately involve other members of their kin network, they are not usually able to foresee this at the time.
The impact of migration on the construction of cultural identities is examined by focusing on Tongan migrants in Melbourne. Within contexts such as the church and the family these immigrants are shown to be self-consciously defining, reconstructing, and contesting the nature of anga fakatonga (the Tongan way). Significant variation is revealed within and between families in definitions of and adherence to anga fakatonga, and the effect of this on child socialization is explored. Attention is paid to the younger Tongans who have been brought to Australia by their parents or who have been born in Australia. Although some individuals are clearly rejecting at least some aspects of their Tongan identity, others are experiencing a resurgence of interest in “Tongan culture” and in being Polynesian.
This paper explores Aotearoa/New Zealand’s distinctive heritage as both a ‘traditional land of immigration’ as well as a ‘country of emigration’, with particular reference to contemporary policy issues and research initiatives. An underlying theme of the argument is the need for an approach which takes account of all types of movement into and out of the country when researching immigration, both as a process and as a policy domain.
For several decades there has been extensive migration from the small island states of the South Pacific and the eastern Caribbean to metropolitan countries, resulting in absolute population decline in some states and new social, economic and political relationships between these island regions and distant worlds. Early research on the consequences for island development of return migration and remittances dwelt upon the unproductive nature of expenditures and the various problems return migration and remittances cause. Questioning this view, a new conceptualization of the influences of migration, circulation and remittances on recipient families, communities and societies in the island states of the South Pacific and the Caribbean is presented. Regional similarities and differences are recognized, yet commonalities of island microstates' experiences emerge. Remittances are a very significant private transfer of capital and return migrants represent people endowed with human capital, capable of enriching the social and cultural capital stocks of their island communities. In both insular regions, the consolidation of transnational linkages emphasizes the significance of diaspora relations for migrant households at home and abroad and offers some prospects for sustainable development, beyond those offered solely by domestic economic opportunities.
Throughout the world, vast areas of land are becoming unfit for human habitation - unsustainable land-use practices have reduced carrying capacities throughout the Third World and high-risk technologies have sometimes resulted in accidents such as at Chernobyl, leaving whole regions uninhabitable. The growing numbers of people fleeing from environmental decline adds a new dimension to an already controversial global refugee problem, and the author examines this under the following sub-headings: in search of fertile soils; unnatural disasters; home is where the toxics are; and the threat of inundation. -after Author
Clarifying lay views is a crucial step in characterizing the “social construct” of global change. This article discusses lay perceptions of ecological risks associated with three global environmental change processes: (a) climate change, (b) ozone depletion, and (c) species loss. A psychometric risk perception study obtained judgements from 68 subjects about 65 ecological risk items in terms of 31 scales. The findings show that sources of the three global change processes (eg refrigeration) are viewed quite differently than are the consequences (eg ozone depletion). There seems to be a persistent lack of connection in judgements regarding causes and consequences. Several possible explanations for these patterns are discussed. Implications of these patterns are considered in terms of possible policy responses, and improved risk communication strategies.
Abstract Tuvalu, a place whose image in the ‘West’ is as a small island state, insignificant and remote on the world stage, is becoming remarkably prominent in connection with the contemporary issue of climate change-related sea-level rise. My aim in this paper is to advance understanding of the linkages between climate change and island places, by exploring the discursive negotiation of the identity of geographically distant islands and island peoples in the Australian news media. Specifically, I use discourse analytic methods to critically explore how, and to what effects, various representations of the Tuvaluan islands and people in an Australian broadsheet, the Sydney Morning Herald, emphasize difference between Australia and Tuvalu. My hypothesis is that implicating climate change in the identity of people and place can constitute Tuvaluans as .tragic victims. of environmental displacement, marginalizing discourses of adaptation for Tuvaluans and other inhabitants of low-lying islands, and silencing alternative constructions of Tuvaluan identity that could emphasize resilience and resourcefulness. By drawing attention to the problematic ways that island identities are constituted in climate change discourse in the news media, I advocate a more critical approach to the production and consumption of representations of climate change.
Gender-related inequalities are pervasive in the developing world. Although women account for almost 80 per cent of the agricultural sector in Africa, they remain vulnerable and poor. Seventy per cent of the 1.3 billion people in the developing world living below the threshold of poverty are women. It is important that the consequences of climate change should not lead already marginalised sections of communities into further deprivation. But key development issues have been at best sidetracked, and at worst blatantly omitted, from policy debates on climate change. The threats posed by global warming have failed to impress on policy-makers the importance of placing women at the heart of their vision of sustainable development. This article argues that if climate change policy is about ensuring a sustainable future by combining development and environment issues, it must take into account the interests of all stakeholders. The Global Environment Facility and the Clean Development Mechanism of the Kyoto Protocol can play a role in ensuring sustainable development, provided they are implemented in a way that does not disadvantage women and the poor.
In the context of health, safety, and environmental decisions, the concept of risk involves value judgments that reflect much more than just the probability and consequences of the occur rence of an event. This article conceptualizes risk as a game, in which the rules must be socially negotiated within the context of a specific problem. This contextualist view of risk provides insight into why technical approaches to risk management often fail with problems such as those involving radiation and chemicals, where scientific experts and the public disagree on the nature of the risks. It also highlights the need for the interested parties to define and play the game, thus emphasizing the importance of institutional, procedural, and societal processes in risk management decisions. This contextu alist approach is illustrated using the problem of siting hazardous waste facilities.
Tuvalu has come to epitomize the approaching environmental catastrophe of worldwide climate change andsea-level rise. This is a somewhat ironic fact, since its population of under twelve thousand is dwarfed by the millions of other people who also stand to be displaced from their homelands in the next century. Nonetheless, Tuvalu's iconic role as "poster child" for encroaching global disaster is well established by the five films reviewed here, all of which have been produced in the last five years. A steady stream of newspaper stories and magazine articles has also depicted the "sinking," "drowning," or "disappearing" of Tuvalu under "rising waters." (A slightly earlier film, Rising Waters: Global Warming and the Fate of the Pacific Islands [2000], focused particularly on Sämoa, Kiribati, and the Marshall Islands, and was reviewed by John Hay in The Contemporary Pacific 14:291–293.)
Media attraction to Tuvalu as an appealing victim of global warming is understandable. Composed of nine atolls and reef islands, Tuvalu has a land area of just twenty-six square kilometers (the fourth smallest country in the world, about half the size ofManhattan Island) and a resident population of some 11,600 people. It is isolated, photogenic, culturally distinct, an independent nation since 1978, and a member of the United Nations since 2000. Tuvalu has also taken a leadership role in discussions of global climate change, seeking to raise public awareness through speeches in the United Nations, leadership in regional organizations, and high-profile participation in global policy conferences. Tuvaluan leaders are demanding that the wider world acknowledge the fact of global climate change, accept responsibility forthe rising sea levels and altered weather patterns that Tuvalu is experiencing, and do something about them.
If climate change trends continue, Tuvalu could become uninhabitable within the next half century, perhaps the first nation of environmental refugees. These five films all document that grim reality, providing compelling images of the local lifestyle, environmental changes, and individuals' responses, while raising important ethical and practical questions for viewers. They also all focus on urban Funafuti, Tuvalu's capital, where half the population now lives. This choice inevitably simplifies and masks some aspects of Tuvalu life because outer island communities still remain the real homeland for most Tuvaluans, and the essence of what will be lost should Tuvalu succumb to "rising waters." Each film uses a distinctive mix of techniques, sound, story line, and content to represent Tuvalu's situation. They share significant commonalities, yet ultimately tell very different stories.
This French-American coproduction isthe longest and most detailed of the films. Its opening scenes of rush-hour freeway traffic and suburban sprawl in Southern California effectively link Tuvalu's "trouble," and its possible future disappearance, with lifestyles in larger industrialized countries. These connections are deepened when the British-accented narrator expresses feelings that many viewers can easily share: modern life involves a furious pace and an insatiable desire for more, as well as a disquieting sense that our consumption habits are unlikely to be sustainable in the long term. Accompanied by a montage of urban scenes, the narrator reveals that having just learned that Tuvalu obtains revenue from selling rights to its Internet domain, dot.tv, he now realizes that this place he had never heard of before "is about to be wiped off themap."
With this lead-in, the viewer is transported to Funafuti and given a brisk introduction to local life. Enele Sopoaga, ambassador to the United Nations, provides a fact-filled overview. Engaging scenes document the "coexistence of modernity and tradition" and the distinctive atoll environment: narrow ribbon of land, lagoon versus ocean sides, elevation of only a meter or two. We see the new paved road that has "changed the feel of the capital" (and, the filmmakers note, brought more vehicles and emissions). The scenes selected are ethnographically coherent and illustrate core features of local life. For example, the airfield's open space is accurately described as "the community's living room," and is shown thronged with people in the late afternoon.
The filmmakers lay a foundation that easily engages...
This article is a theory-based attempt to present the issues and challenges of emigration dynamics in developing countries. The topic is discussed within several basic assumptions: first, that emigration dynamics in developing countries have certain features that are different from those in developed countries; second, that countries in the regions covered by the study (sub-Saharan Africa, Central America and the Caribbean, and South Asia) are representative of developing countries.The article has been considerably facilitated by two recently concluded and reported projects: the IOM/UNFPA project, “Emigration dynamics in developing countries: sub-Saharan Africa, Central America and the Caribbean, and South Asia”(Appleyard, 1998, 1999), and the UAP/CEIFO project on “International migration in and from Africa: dimensions, challenges and prospects”(Adepoju and Hammar, 1996). Any serious academic study of emigration dynamics in developing countries must acknowledge these landmark scholarly studies if they hope to advance understanding of the essential features of emigration dynamics in developing countries.A prime objective of the present article is to focus attention on aspects of the emigration process that will enable policy makers to utilize emigration for development, especially through national and international cooperation at regional and global levels.The article is predicated upon the need for a theory or model of emigration dynamics in developing countries that meets both internal and external dimensions. The adequacy of such a theory can be measured at three different levels: observation, description and explanation (Chomsky, 1965).
Greenhouse-induced sea-level rise (SLR) threatens coral atolls and particularly the few atoll states, such as Tuvalu. This central Pacific island microstate has minimal economic development options, and has increasingly perceived emigration and remittances as a development strategy, despite restricted opportunities. Internal migration, in search of wage employment, has brought almost half the national population to Funafuti atoll, with negative local environmental consequences. Short-term scientific data show no evidence of SLR in Tuvalu, but the Government of Tuvalu has argued that there is visual evidence of SLR, through such consequences as increased erosion, flooding and salinity. Global media have increasingly emphasised a doomsday scenario, with Tuvalu as synecdoche and symbol of all threatened island environments. Environmental problems of diverse origin have been entirely attributed to distant processes causing SLR, in terms of ‘garbage can anarchy’ or a ‘conspiracy narrative’, and thus to distant causes. The Tuvalu Government has consequently sought compensation from, and migration opportunities in, distant states. The construction of apparently imminent hazard has potential domestic political and economic advantages, but environmental costs.
This paper contributes political and cultural-economy perspectives to the critique of the MIRAB model 20 years on. In it, we celebrate the politically grounded reading by MIRAB analysts of development in the small island nations of the Pacific and their attention to both the empirical and the structural in their treatment of the economies of these countries. We address aspects, however, of one of the common critiques of MIRAB analyses: their failure to capture accurately the nature of small island socio-cultural economies. We focus on the workings of remittance systems on two of the Cook Islands, Mauke and Manihiki, as the basis for a more thorough critique. We argue that rather than living economically and nationally determined lives, Cook Islanders live in rich networks of flows of goods, people, labour and meaning that the MIRAB model does not fully capture. The microeconomics of the transnational kin or household unit and the remittance decision are deeply embedded in such networks. These networks generate their own, temporary constellations of responsibility, economy and decision-making, which may or may not materialise at any point as household economy. We consider some of the consequences of a network view for MIRAB analyses and for development in small island nations.
For several decades there has been extensive migration from the small island states of the South Pacific and the eastern Caribbean to metropolitan countries, resulting in absolute population decline in some states and new social, economic and political relationships between these island regions and distant worlds. Early research on the consequences for island development of return migration and remittances dwelt upon the unproductive nature of expenditures and the various problems return migration and remittances cause. Questioning this view, a new conceptualization of the influences of migration, circulation and remittances on recipient families, communities and societies in the island states of the South Pacific and the Caribbean is presented. Regional similarities and differences are recognized, yet commonalities of island microstates' experiences emerge. Remittances are a very significant private transfer of capital and return migrants represent people endowed with human capital, capable of enriching the social and cultural capital stocks of their island communities. In both insular regions, the consolidation of transnational linkages emphasizes the significance of diaspora relations for migrant households at home and abroad and offers some prospects for sustainable development, beyond those offered solely by domestic economic opportunities.
Climate change has been presented as a likely trigger formigration of people, especially in dryland areas of less developed countries.The underlying research questions focus on the strength of adaptationcapacity of subsistence farmers in Northern Ethiopia, and evaluate historicalexperiences gained from drought-induced migration. Through a survey of104 peasants who had to migrant due to persistent drought, vulnerabilityto climate change has shown to be a complex issue, including themultiplicity of factors comprising a household environment. Still, to bevulnerable does not make someone a potential climate migrant, as peoplein marginal regions have developed a great variety of adaptationmechanisms, which strengthen their ability to cope with both, slow climaticchanges and extreme climatic events.
Many who study global change, particularly from industrialized countries, are optimistic about the capacity of agriculture to successfully adapt to climate change. This optimism is based on historic trends in yield increases, on the spread of cropping systems far beyond their traditional agroecological boundaries, and the inherent flexibility of systems of international trade. Analysis of the success (or in rare cases, failure) of adaptation is by analogy—either to analogous socioeconomic or technological change or to short term environmental change. Such studies have been limited to industrialized countries.
This paper uses five analogs from developing countries to examine potential adaptation to global climate change by poor people. Two are studies of comparative developing country responses to drought, flood, and tropical cyclone and to the Sahelian droughts of the 1970s and 80s that illustrate adaptations to climate and weather events:. Two address food production and rapid population growth in South Asia and Africa. Three types of adaptive social costs are considered: the direct costs of adaptation, the costs of adapting to the adaptations, and the costs of failing to adapt. A final analog reviews 30 village-level studies for the role that these social costs of adaptation play in perpetuating poverty and environmental degradation.
In Africa, climatic variations, as typified by widespread rainfall fluctuations, are a prominent feature of the climate of the continent. The effects of these climatic variations are multifarious and affect the environmental, economic and social well-being of the societies concerned. This is particularly so since the majority of the people depend on rain supported agricultural production for their sustenance and livelihood. Any short-fall in the amount, frequency and manner of occurrence of the rains received, tends to reflect on the people's spatial behaviour, particularly as migration in trying to make up for the impact of the deficit. This paper describes the nature of climatic variations over the continent and highlights the extent to which climatic variations play a significant role in population movement and the health of peoples as documented in studies carried out in different parts of the region. An awareness of the implications of climatic variations as reviewed in this work suggests the need for better monitoring systems to measure the impacts of climatic variations. This will provide governments and all stakeholders with a proper perspective of the vagaries of climate and enhance the development of suitable policies to mitigate and alleviate the impact on the general populace of the affected areas. This is especially important in the face of changing world climate and its antecedant effects which are especially felt in developing societies.
There are fast-growing numbers of people who can no longer gain a secure livelihood in their homelands because of drought, soil erosion, desertification, deforestation and other environmental problems. In their desperation, these environmental refugees—as they are increasingly coming to be known and as they are termed in this paper—feel they have no alternative but to seek sanctuary elsewhere, however hazardous the attempt. Not all of them have fled their countries, many being internally displaced. But all have abandoned their homelands on a semi-permanent if not permanent basis, having little hope of a foreseeable return.
It is possible that climatic change may stimulate population movements as people turn to migration as one strategy of adaptation. This paper attempts to assess possible migration flows which may occur, in response to climatic shifts over the next thirty years, from small island states in the south-west Pacific ocean region to the United States, Australia and New Zealand. It is argued that the small island states appear vulnerable to climatic change, with low coral atolls being most at risk. Adverse impacts of climatic change will be one extra pressure on small island states, many of which are already struggling to cope with sustainable management of their natural resources and with the demands of their rapidly growing populations for education, housing and employment. The migration strategy is likely to entail significant medium-term health, psychological and social costs for some Pacific island migrants as they try to move or cope with life in western industrialised societies.
This article presents a conceptual model to investigate population migration as a possible adaptive response to risks associated
with climate change. The model reflects established theories of human migration behaviour, and is based upon the concepts
of vulnerability, exposure to risk and adaptive capacity, as developed in the climate change research community. The application
of the model is illustrated using the case of 1930s migration patterns in rural Eastern Oklahoma, which took place during
a period of repeated crop failures due to drought and flooding.
The reef islands formed on coral atolls are generally small, low, and flat, with elevations of only a few meters. These islands are thus highly vulnerable to elevated sea levels caused by extreme events and global warming. Such vulnerability was recently evidenced at Fongafale Islet, the capital of Tuvalu, when it flooded during accelerated spring high tides possibly related to sea level rise caused by global warming. Many factors, not only environmental but also economic and social, determine the vulnerability of an island to sea level rise. In this study, we used data spanning 108 yrs to reconstruct changes in topography, land use/cover, population, and the distribution of buildings at Fongafale Islet. The results indicate that the vulnerability of Fongafale Islet relates to its original landform characteristics: the central part of the island was formerly dominated by swampland that flooded at high tides. Fongafale Islet experienced greater population in-migration and centralization beginning in the 1970s following the independence of Tuvalu and Kiribati. Migrants were also responding to declines in overseas mining operations and limited options for paid employment. As the population increased, construction took place in vulnerable swampland areas. Our results clearly demonstrate that examinations of global environmental issues should focus on characteristics specific to the region of interest. These characteristics should be specified using historical reconstruction to understand and address the vulnerability of an area to global environmental changes.
This paper investigates the problem of scientific uncertainty and the way it impedes planning for climate change and accelerated sea-level rise (CC & ASLR) in Pacific Island Countries (PICs). The paper begins by discussing the problems CC & ASLR poses for PICs, and it explores the limitations of the dominant approach to vulnerability and adaptation. Next, the paper considers the way scientific uncertainty problematizes policies aimed at adaptation to CC & ASLR. It argues that the prevailing approach, which requires anticipation of impacts, is unsuccessful, and the paper proposes a complementary strategy aimed to enhance the resilience of whole island social-ecological systems. Recent developments in the theory and practice of resilience are discussed and then applied to formulate goals for adaptation policy in PICs.
Human society affects environmental change but is also vulnerable to these changes. This relation has generated a number of theories that either focus on how we affect the environment or how the environment affects us. Few theories explicitly focus on the interaction. This paper will establish the range of data required to give an assessment of how likely an ecosystem is to change (which we label environmental sensitivity) and the ability of communities to adapt (social resilience). These findings allow us to generate a new method for assessing the reflexive relation between society and the environment.
"Emerging insights from adaptive and community-based resource management suggest that building resilience into both human and ecological systems is an effective way to cope with environmental change characterized by future surprises or unknowable risks. We argue that these emerging insights have implications for policies and strategies for responding to climate change. We review perspectives on collective action for natural resource management to inform understanding of climate response capacity. We demonstrate the importance of social learning, specifically in relation to the acceptance of strategies that build social and ecological resilience. Societies and communities dependent on natural resources need to enhance their capacity to adapt to the impacts of future climate change, particularly when such impacts could lie outside their experienced coping range. This argument is illustrated by an example of present-day collective action for community-based coastal management in Trinidad and Tobago. The case demonstrates that community-based management enhances adaptive capacity in two ways: by building networks that are important for coping with extreme events and by retaining the resilience of the underpinning resources and ecological systems."
Estudio sobre el fenómeno de la migración internacional visto desde el punto de vista de los cambios globales y del desarrollo de las naciones a partir de los años ochenta del siglo XX. Se analizan los factores económicos, políticos y sociales sobre los que tiene efecto el movimiento de la población; en particular, se estudian la formación de minorías étnicas, los migrantes y las minorías en las relaciones laborales, las políticas migratorias y la globalización de la migración internacional.
There is a new phenomenon in the global arena: environmental refugees. These are people who can no longer gain a secure livelihood in their homelands because of drought, soil erosion, desertification, deforestation and other environmental problems, together with the associated problems of population pressures and profound poverty. In their desperation, these people feel they have no alternative but to seek sanctuary elsewhere, however hazardous the attempt. Not all of them have fled their countries, many being internally displaced. But all have abandoned their homelands on a semi-permanent if not permanent basis, with little hope of a foreseeable return. In 1995, environmental refugees totalled at least 25 million people, compared with 27 million traditional refugees (people fleeing political oppression, religious persecution and ethnic troubles). The total number of environmental refugees could well double by the year 2010, and increase steadily for a good while thereafter as growing numbers of impoverished people press ever harder on overloaded environments. When global warming takes hold, there could be as many as 200 million people overtaken by sea-level rise and coastal flooding, by disruptions of monsoon systems and other rainfall regimes, and by droughts of unprecedented severity and duration.
"This article focuses on international migration occurring as a result of environmental changes and processes. It briefly reviews attempts to conceptualize environment-related migration and then considers the extent to which environmental factors have been and may be significant in initiating migration. Following is an examination of migration as an independent variable in the migration-environment relationship. Finally, ethical and policy dimensions are addressed."
PIP
According to Nobel, the definition of the contemporary refugee has been modified by the UN High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) to include well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons mentioned in the Geneva Convention as well as external aggression, occupation, foreign domination, and massive human rights violations. Additionally, Olson's definition includes physical dangers (floods, volcanic eruptions) and economic insufficiency (drought, famine). The term environmental refugee has gained wide usage lately. Richmond's model recognizes the predisposing factors: the nature of the biophysical environment, structural constraints, facilitating factors, precipitating events, and the feedback effects of the environmentally induced migration. As to environmental factors as a cause of migration, a global survey of natural disasters for the period of 1947-1980 indicated that the overall number of disasters is increasing and 86% of the lives lost occurred in Asia. China and India dominated in the number of environmental refugees during 1976-1994. Furthermore, the droughts of 1968-73 and 1982-84 led to millions of environmental refugees in Africa. There were 1 million environmental refugees in Burkina Faso alone. The precipitating events and conditions were population growth, widespread poverty, food production efforts, loosened regulations, lacking environmental legislation, and climate change. The bulk of refugees move within the national boundaries, but there has been an increasing trend of South-North international migration in the last decade and the emergence of an international immigration industry. The environmental impacts of international migration has surfaced in Australia because of detrimental effects on the national ecology, but resource management policies could handle environmental concerns. Ethical and policy implications mean that much of contemporary environmental degradation in developing countries are rooted in colonial expansion and the problem will require a global solution.
