Governing climate displacement: the ethics and politics of human resettlement

Abstract Projected impacts of climate change raise difficult ethical questions about the responsibility of national governments and international institutions to protect human populations displaced by climate disasters and long-term environmental change. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change projects that climate change will entail large-scale displacement of populations exposed to the disruption of food supplies, health systems, human settlements and livelihoods. The ethics of supporting policies that expose very poor people to the risk of climate-induced disasters, and the politics of developing policies that would reduce the risk of this kind of suffering, are explored. Drawing upon the capabilities approach of Martha Nussbaum and Amartya Sen, the ethics and politics of promoting human resettlement as a means of mitigating the risk of climate disasters in low-income areas of the developing world are considered. Keywords: climate changedisplacementresettlementethicscapabilities approach Acknowledgements The research for this article was made possible by a grant from the ESRC-SSRC Visiting Fellowship Programme, which was carried out at the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research and the Environmental Change Institute, both at the University of Oxford. Helpful comments were received from John Barry, Tom Deligiannis, Polly Ericksen, Kamal Kapadia, James Morrissey, Andy Newsham, Ian Spears, Petra Tschakert and Roger Zetter. Special thanks to the two anonymous reviewers, whose comments were enormously helpful in refining the logic and coherence of the ultimate draft. The usual disclaimers apply. Notes 1. Important recent contributions in the field include Byravan and Rajan (2006), Biermann and Boas (2008a, 2008b, 2010), Brown et al. (2007), Reuveny (2007), Burton (2008), Raleigh et al. (2008), the German Advisory Council (WBGU 2008), the Norwegian Refugee Council (Kolmannskog, 2008), de Sherbinin et al. (2011) as well as the collection of essays in Couldrey and Herson (2008) and research currently being carried out by the Institute for Environment and Human Security at the United Nations University in Bonn (summarised in Bogardi and Warner 2009). Counter-arguments can be found in Hulme (2008), Boano et al. (2008) and Hartmann (2010). Recent international conferences on these themes include the Threatened Island Nations Conference held from 23–25 May 2011 at the Columbia University Center for Climate Change Law ( http://www.law.columbia.edu/centers/climatechange/resources/threatened-island-nations) and the Nansen Conference on Climate Change and Displacement held from 6–7 June 2011 in Oslo, Norway ( http://www.nansenconference.no/). 2. Space restrictions preclude an extended treatment of the ways in which models of environmental migration are theorising the factors that motivate household decisions to move (either temporarily or permanently) in the first place. Suffice to say, however, that some of the more alarmist predictions have been criticised for understating the factors that are well known to motivate household and individual decision-making, the epistemological and normative terms on which adaptation may be defined and the extent to which 'environmental migration' has been happening or – on the basis of future projections – may be expected to happen in the future (cf. Black 2001, Boano et al. 2008, Hulme 2008, Hartmann 2010). 3. Under the Convention, refugees are defined as persons 'owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group, or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality and is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country' (CSR, Art. 1.A.2, available from: http://www.unhcr. org/pages/49da0e466.html [Accessed 5 July 2011]). 4. Kolmannskog (2008) and Westra (2009) identify a number of conditions under which environmental factors may be used as grounds for protection under the Convention. One is the principle of non-refoulement, which holds that people cannot be returned to places where their lives or freedoms are under threat. In theory, returning populations to homelands that have been rendered effectively uninhabitable would violate non-refoulement, thereby creating obligations on the part of national governments (Kolmannskog 2008). A second concerns the nature of persecution. Where it can be established that environmental degradation (e.g. draining of marshlands, etc.) is being intentionally used to harm populations on the basis of 'race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group, or political opinion', such groups may conceivably claim protection on the grounds of political persecution (Kolmannskog 2008, Westra 2009). 5. The Government of Mali (2007, p. 53), for instance, is quite explicit in its aim of promoting la 'sédentarisation des population et réduction des migrations'. 6. See, for instance, the very interesting exchange between Hulme (2008) and Biermann and Boas (2008a, 2008b). 7. Assuming that post-Kyoto negotiations are able to achieve stabilisation targets (at 450 ppm CO2 equivalents), there is a good chance that global warming can be maintained at 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels (IPCC WG-I 2007). However, existing concentrations are already believed to be leading to a 0.4–0.6 degree Celsius increase by 2030, irrespective of future emissions scenarios (IPCC, cited in WBGU 2008, p. 55). In the absence of 'effective climate protection', it is projected that future climate scenarios will entail a further rise in temperature of 2 to 7 degrees Celsius by the end of the next century. 8. Whether responsibility should be placed on individuals as opposed to 'collectivities', such as governments, countries or firms, is a difficult question, well addressed by Caney (2005, 2008), who argues that individuals in collectivities cannot reasonably be expected to account for the actions of other group members, and therefore argues in favour of a distributional justice rooted in individual responsibility. 9. Such norms are now widely recognised within the humanitarian community (e.g. Cernea 1997, Cernea and Schmidt-Soltau 2006, Raleigh et al. 2008, pp. 26–27). The Code of Conduct outlined by the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement, for instance, articulates the idea that aid beneficiaries play a leading role in identifying needs and shaping humanitarian practice (cited in Riddell 2008, p. 329). Similarly, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees' (UNHCR) code of conduct aims to uphold 'the fullest possible participation of refugees and other persons of concern – as individuals, families and communities – in decisions that affect their lives', respecting 'the dignity and worth of every individual', as well as 'the cultures, customs and traditions of all peoples'. Providing these cultures, customs and traditions do not entail the persecution or violation of others. Available from: http://www.unhcr.org/422dbc89a.html [Accessed 7 June 2011]. 10. See Caney (2008) for an excellent discussion of rights, discount rates and inter-generational equity in the context of greenhouse gas emissions and climate change. 11. For the purposes of this paper, risk may be defined as a condition under which it is possible to assign probabilities to outcomes. Uncertainty, on the other hand, implies that probabilities are effectively unknown (cf. Sunstein 2007; Gardiner 2010). 12. Available from: http://unfccc.int/files/documentation/text/html/list_search.php? what=keywords&val=&valan=a&anf=0&id=891 [Accessed 21 June 2011]. 13. Whether decisions are being made on the basis of 'pure uncertainty' is a matter of some debate. Sunstein (2007, p. 29), for instance, argues that regulators 'are rarely operating under circumstances of pure uncertainty', highlighting the notion that 'rough probabilities' can be assigned to possible outcomes and that information about probabilities is likely to improve over time. 14. Perhaps the most important application of the capabilities approach is the Human Development Index (HDI), which aims to assess the development performance of national economies by ranking them in relation to a set of human development indicators, which include 'conventional' measurements, such as life expectancy, child and maternal mortality, literacy, income and GDP per capita, as well as ones that affect the capabilities that people living in these countries have in relation to major social groupings, such as gender, ethnicity and class. 15. Rights, in turn, may be usefully understood as a claim to an entitlement (e.g. education, healthcare, freedom of expression) that states have agreed to uphold (Sen 2001). Rights may be group specific, in the sense that they are extended to a specific class of individuals, or universal, in that they apply to all individuals who can legitimately claim citizenship (or membership) under a single political authority. 16. For an excellent treatment of the distribution of burdens of GHG mitigation, see Caney (2005). 17. See Hulme (2008) for a brief critique along these lines.

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