19/06/2018

Deadly Tensions Rise As India’s Water Supply Runs Dangerously Low

New York Times - Maria Abi-Habib | Hari Kumar

When the Indian resort town of Shimla ran severely low on water last month, “key men” like Inder Singh — who open and close the valves that supply water to each neighborhood — felt the people’s wrath. “I would be mobbed by dozens as I was trying to leave my home for work,” he said. Credit Saumya Khandelwal for The New York Times
SHIMLA, India — The people of Shimla haven’t agreed on much lately. A drought in the Himalayan resort has had residents blaming farmers, the tourism industry and one another for depleting the strained water supplies.
And everyone’s been angry at the key men.
Shimla’s decrepit network of water pipes, built under British colonial rule more than 70 years ago, depends on the civil servants known as key men to open and close the valves that supply each neighborhood. The current shortage, which in May left some homes without water for 20 days, has led to such fury toward the key men — accused, in just about every neighborhood, of depriving it of its fair share — that a court ordered police protection for them.
“I was getting angry phone calls calling me everything — stupid, worthless — at one or two in the morning,” said Inder Singh, 44, who has been a key man for 24 years. “I would be mobbed by dozens as I was trying to leave my home for work,” he said, inserting his key — a meter-long metal contraption — into the ground to open a valve.
Tourism is the mainstay of the economy in this mountain city, which the British colonial authorities made their summer capital so they could escape the brutal heat of New Delhi. But the drought — accompanied by unusually high temperatures, above 90 degrees Fahrenheit — has been so severe that in May, some residents took to Twitter to ask tourists to stay away and leave the water for local residents. Many in Shimla call it the worst shortage they can remember.
New York Times
As much as 30 percent of the city’s hotel bookings have been canceled since last month because of concerns about the water supply, said Sanjay Sood, the president of northern India’s hotel and restaurant association. Some of those reservations were canceled by tourists, others by the hotels themselves.
Water tankers have been lined up at hotels along Shimla’s windy mountain roads. A slogan on one of them read, “If there is water, there is a tomorrow.”
A government report released on Thursday said that India was experiencing the worst water crisis in its history, threatening millions of lives and livelihoods. Some 600 million Indians, about half the population, face high to extreme water scarcity conditions, with about 200,000 dying every year from inadequate access to safe water, according to the report. By 2030, it said, the country’s demand for water is likely to be twice the available supply.
In Shimla, rising annual temperatures and dwindling rain and snowfall — the city’s main water sources — have been major factors in the crisis.
“There’s global warming all over India, and Shimla is no exception,” said Vineet Chawdhry, chief secretary of the state of Himachal Pradesh, whose capital is Shimla.
But the city’s ancient pipe system also leaks five million liters of water every day, Mr. Chawdhry said in an interview in his office. A $105 million, World Bank-backed upgrade of the system, including a pipeline drawing water from a nearby river, is scheduled to be finished in 2023.
Shimla’s population essentially doubles during the summer tourist season, increasing the strain on the water supply. Credit Saumya Khandelwal for The New York Times
The strain on the water supply increases greatly during the summer tourist season, when Shimla’s population essentially doubles. In the summer months, Mr. Chawdhry said, the city typically needs 45 million liters a day. He said the current daily supply stood at 31 million liters, and at the height of the crisis in May it was as low as 22 million.
Shimla is not the only Indian city whose water supplies are under increasing pressure. Last year was the country’s fourth hottest since record-keeping began in 1901, with rainfall down by nearly 6 percent from 2016, according to the Indian Ministry of Earth Sciences.
New Delhi, the capital, is one of many Indian cities with chronic water supply problems. Two men, a father and son, died in the city’s Wazirpur neighborhood this year after a fight broke out among people waiting for a water tanker. Credit Saumya Khandelwal for The New York Times
And many of the country’s cities have outdated water distribution systems, said Rajendra Singh, founder and chairman of Tarun Bharat Sangh, a conservation group. India has also fallen short on conservation measures like capturing rainfall and snowmelt, he said.
“There are around 90 cities in India which are water stressed. They face crisis today, tomorrow and the day after,” Mr. Singh said. “Shimla got more media attention, but many areas are facing water scarcity.”
That includes the capital, New Delhi. This year, in the city’s chronically water-deprived neighborhood of Wazirpur, a father and son died after a scuffle broke out among people waiting in line for a tanker.
Rahul Kumar, 18, was fatally injured in the fight in the grueling March heat, which began when a neighbor accused him and his brother of jumping the line. His father, Lal Bahadur, 60, died of a heart attack after trying to intervene, the authorities said.
A Shimla resident carrying water. The city’s water crisis has eased since last month. Credit Saumya Khandelwal for The New York Times
Mr. Kumar’s mother, Sushila Devi, said that Wazirpur had run out of water in January — earlier in the season than usual. Other Wazirpur residents said that in the rare instances when tap water flows, it is dirty and undrinkable.
“My husband and son died because of water,” Ms. Devi said.
On a hot recent afternoon in Wazirpur, neighbors lined up again with empty jugs waiting for a government-supplied tanker. This time, as the tanker arrived, an older man directed the crowd, to make sure it was orderly.
“I do a public service,” the man said. “After the fight we came together in the neighborhood and made this system of queuing.”
But there were still tense moments. “Why is your pot so big? It’s too big!” one woman yelled at another. “It’s fine,” the other woman snapped back.
A tanker in the state of Himachal Pradesh. “Shimla got more media attention, but many areas are facing water scarcity,” said Rajendra Singh, the founder of an Indian conservation group. Credit Saumya Khandelwal for The New York Times
In Shimla, the water crisis has eased since last month. Municipal officials divided the city into three zones in late May, distributing water to them on a rotating basis so that none would go without for more than two days. Residents complained that the city had been slow to act, but over all, tensions have decreased.
“Namashkar!” residents yelled cheerfully to Mr. Singh, the key man, from their balconies as he made his rounds recently. Mr. Singh returned the traditional greeting, but he said they hadn’t always been so nice.
He said he was cursed and shouted at during the worst days of the crisis, but never physically attacked. But some of the city’s 61 other key men were held down by mobs and forced to keep the water on, municipal officials said.
The pandemonium moved Shimla’s High Court to act. It ordered that key men be supervised to ensure that they were not giving favorable treatment to hotels or V.I.P.s. The acting chief justice went into the streets personally to watch some of them work.
“The key man not only holds the key, but in fact, by the strength of the key, he can put the entire town to ransom,” the court said in its ruling this month.
The court also ordered that every key man be escorted by two police officers while on duty to ensure their safety. Some key men — surrounded by a veritable entourage — said they had never felt so important in their lives.

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ASIC Warns On Climate Risk As Heat Turns On Directors

Fairfax - Clancy Yeates

An ASIC commissioner has urged company directors to take seriously a leading barrister's opinion that they could face lawsuits for failing to consider risks related to climate change.
As large corporations face pressure to tell their investors more about risks they may face from climate change, ASIC Commissioner John Price said in a speech on Monday directors "would do well" to carefully consider a 2016 legal opinion by Noel Hutley SC and Sebastien Hartford-Davis.
ASIC commissioner John Price says the regulator is looking at climate change disclosure across the ASX 300. Photo: Ryan Stuart
The legal advice, which was commissioned by the Centre for Policy Development (CPD) and the Future Business Council, said directors not thinking about climate change risks today could be found liable for breaching their duty of care in the future.
"While matters such as this will, in the end, be determined by a court, we think the Hutley opinion is relatively unremarkable," Mr Price said in a speech to a CPD event in Sydney.
"We say that in the sense that, in our view, the opinion appears legally sound and is reflective of our understanding of the position under the prevailing case law in Australia in so far as directors’ duties are concerned."
The legal advice of Mr Hutley said it would likely be "only a matter of time" until a director personally faced litigation over their statutory duty of care relating to climate change.
AICD general manager advocacy Louise Petschler said:  "The AICD promoted the Hutley opinion to widely to our members, noting there is little downside, and much potential upside, for directors in properly considering and disclosing climate risks.
"As the opinion itself stresses, the relevance of climate change risks to a specific company will be assessed on a case-by-case basis, and any allegation of a breach of duty in avoiding ‘foreseeable risk’ would be determined on its individual merits. The opinion is, necessarily, general," she said.
A key legal issue in any such climate change lawsuit would likely be whether the company was "materially" exposed to climate risk, and Mr Price said this would be determined by looking at the specific circumstances of the company.
Even so, Mr Price is the latest senior regulator to urge company directors to think about the potential for climate risks, which have become a growing concern of major investors here and overseas in recent years.
In another sign the corporate cop is closely focused on the issue, Mr Price also said ASIC was working on a review of how companies across the ASX 300 index disclosed information on climate change, and it planned to publish the findings later this year.
The comments come as regulators in Australia and internationally are taking a growing interest in the potential for climate change to destabilise financial markets.
The Council of Financial Regulators - which includes ASIC, Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA), the Reserve Bank and the federal Treasury - has also created a working group looking at climate risk as it affects the financial system.
APRA executive board member Geoff Summerhayes last year also cited Mr Hutley's advice in a speech in which he described climate change as a "material" risk for the financial system.
A new report from the CPD, a progressive think tank, on Monday said more Australian companies were looking at how the Paris agreement on climate change could affect their businesses.
But it also said many big businesses' attempts to model potential climate change scenarios were based on "questionable" assumptions and did not consider the physical effects of climate change.
Mr Price also highlighted that social and environmental issues were an "acute" concern for some investors, and corporate boards should consider whether they were responding in a way that was consistent with their "social contract."

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Climate Change A 'Man-Made Problem With A Feminist Solution' Says Robinson

Reuters - Zoe Tabary

U.N. rights commissioner Mary Robinson: “Climate change is a man-made problem and must have a feminist solution.” James Akena / Reuters
LONDON - Women must be at the heart of climate action if the world is to limit the deadly impact of disasters such as floods, former Irish president and U.N. rights commissioner Mary Robinson said on Monday.
Robinson, also a former U.N. climate envoy, said women were most adversely affected by disasters and yet are rarely “put front and centre” of efforts to protect the most vulnerable.
“Climate change is a man-made problem and must have a feminist solution,” she said at a meeting of climate experts at London’s Marshall Institute for Philanthropy and Entrepreneurship.
“Feminism doesn’t mean excluding men, it’s about being more inclusive of women and -in this case - acknowledging the role they can play in tackling climate change.”
Research has shown that women’s vulnerabilities are exposed during the chaos of cyclones, earthquakes and floods, according to the British think-tank Overseas Development Institute.
In many developing countries, for example, women are involved in food production, but are not allowed to manage the cash earned by selling their crops, said Robinson.
The lack of access to financial resources can hamper their ability to cope with extreme weather, she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation on the sidelines of the event.
“Women all over the world are ... on the frontlines of the fall-out from climate change and therefore on the forefront of climate action,” said Natalie Samarasinghe, executive director of Britain’s United Nations Association.
“What we – the international community – need to do is talk to them, learn from them and support them in scaling up what they know works best in their communities,” she said at the meeting.
Robinson served as Irish president from 1990-1997 before taking over as the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, and now leads a foundation devoted to climate justice.

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18/06/2018

The Climate Litigation Threat Is Getting Credible

Bloomberg - Sony Kapoor

With more climate laws, and more precedents, oil companies and governments face greater risks in the courts.
Is the sun setting on big oil? Photographer: /Universal Images Group Editorial
Last month, a group of 10 families filed an action against the European Union at the European General Court, the EU’s second highest court. All claim to have suffered loss from climate change. Specifically, they argue that greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from the EU have violated their fundamental rights to health, occupation, property and equal treatment.
The plaintiffs want the EU to tighten its greenhouse gas reduction targets by building on the successful 2015 Urgenda case, where the Dutch courts obliged the government to act more forcefully to fight climate change. The Dutch government has appealed, but the case has already inspired copycat suits the world over.
Climate change lawsuits are on the rise, and not just against governments. A big target is the oil majors. Cities such as New York and San Francisco in the U.S. allege that these companies continued to produce and market fossil fuels while knowingly concealing climate risks. They are also being sued by private plaintiffs for being a public nuisance, for failure to warn about climate risks, climate-related negligence and trespassing.
Even if most of the more than 1,000 climate lawsuits outstanding in 28 national and 7 international jurisdictions fail, they contribute to raising awareness that neither governments nor oil companies are doing enough to address climate change. They also make investors and regulators more aware of the risks to fossil fuel firms from both stricter policies and the potential award of damages. The process of “discovery,” already underway in a number of the suits, is likely to bring new and potentially damaging information to light, further tilting the scales of public opinion, risk perception and future legal liability against the fossil fuel majors.
And some may not fail. Risks from climate lawsuits for fossil fuel firms are likely to increase sharply -- and they may soon start crystallizing into costs, for a number of reasons.
First, the number of national and international statutes pertaining to climate change continues to rise, with 106 new laws already having been passed since the Paris agreement, including 28 that explicitly reference it. Adding in existing laws and executive polices takes that to 2,000. The more laws there are, the more lawsuits and legal routes to remedy to expect.
Second, each successful lawsuit creates a precedent, which others can often build on. Even when the precedent is in other jurisdictions, it can help inspire plaintiffs bring similar suits. Successful climate change lawsuits will also help change jurisprudence, even where precedent may not apply directly.
Third, the damage from climate change is accelerating, with the frequency of extreme weather events having risen five-fold in the past 30 to 40 years, for example. Rating agencies such as Moody’s are already starting to factor exposure to climate change in their ratings. Expect an increasing number of litigants to seek compensation.
Fourth, the science of attributing specific damage, for example, from a flood, to climate change, has improved exponentially in the past decade. Scientists are increasingly ready to serve as expert witnesses. Courts already regularly accept probabilistic arguments, such as on exposure to hazardous chemicals. Causality linking damage and harm to climate change can now be established with increasing confidence and robustness.
Fifth, advances in measurements such as the development of the Carbon Majors database means that the proportional culpability of specific listed firms, such as Exxon Mobil, can be reliably established through their share of cumulative emissions.
Every small victory sets an important precedent, which future lawsuits can build on. Many of the earliest lawsuits against Big Tobacco also failed, but they were critical in helping to establish precedents on scientific consensus, on the harm being caused and on the duplicity of tobacco companies that had actively suppressed research thus misleading the public on the harmful effects of smoking.
While successes have been few thus far, the attitudes of judges shift with the times. An international panel of senior judges admitted that judges are influenced by the zeitgeist of growing worries and mounting evidence about climate change, so are more likely to look favorably at climate liability lawsuits. It concluded that, in fact, many companies may already be in violation of existing laws on climate change.
Some oil majors are finally starting to acknowledge the rising risk. In a recent filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission Chevron admitted that climate litigation risks could have a “material adverse effect on the company,” “curtail profitability” and even render the business model of carbon majors such as itself “economically infeasible.” In a rather bizarre exchange with shareholders, BP’s CEO Bob Dudley refused to disclose certain climate targets, or even answer some questions from activist investors, citing a very real threat from class-action lawsuits in the U.S.
Last week, Legal & General, Europe’s second largest asset manager, pledged to vote against companies that were falling behind on action to tackle climate change. The boards of fossil fuel majors and the asset managers that are major shareholders have a duty to be more transparent about the risks they are facing and offer strategies for managing them. So far, they have shown mainly reluctance.

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Australian Firms Told To Catch Up On Climate Change Risk Checks

The Guardian - 

New report says Australian companies lag behind international organisations 
The report says that while some of Australia’s bigger companies have sophisticated models in place for thinking about climate change, more need to to do so. Photograph: David Crosling/AAP
Australian companies are not doing enough work to model the risks of climate change and how it will affect their profitability, a new report by a thinktank says.
Progressive thinktank the Centre for Policy Development says that while most companies have committed to considering what climate change and the Paris climate agreement means for their business strategy, too few have begun using scenario analysis techniques to model what its impacts could be and how to respond to it.
Australia’s financial regulator stepped up its warnings last year that climate change posed a risk to the financial system and urged companies to adapt.
The Financial Stability Board’s Taskforce on Climate-Related Financial Disclosures has identified scenario analysis as a critical tool for companies and investors that are serious about responding to climate risks.
CPD policy director Sam Hurley said while many companies had said they will commit to modelling the impacts of climate change and potential responses for their business, few had actually started to undertake that work.
He said Australia was potentially exposed to large risks due to climate change, but there were also opportunities.
“Scenario analysis is going to be a really important driver of better strategies and of better outcomes for businesses that are preparing for these risks and opportunities,” he said.
“Some organisations in Australia have made a start doing that kind of analysis and more have committed to it.
“But what we’re going to need to see is more consistent, ambitious scenario analysis so that markets and investors have more accurate information when assessing how well companies are placed for transition to a zero-carbon economy.”
Hurley said, internationally, more organisations had begun considering how major emissions reductions and changes in policy as a result of climate change could affect their business and its profitability.
He said some of Australia’s biggest companies in the financial and resources sector already had sophisticated models in place for thinking about climate change and more needed to follow suit.
Companies that didn’t could expect scrutiny from their shareholders, as well as regulators.
“The period for words on this is over. What we really need to see over the next reporting season is companies walking the walk as well as talking the talk,” he said.
“Expectations around proper management of this issue are increasing and for companies that aren’t doing it, it’s going to be harder and harder to get away with it.”

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17/06/2018

Climate Change Strips Nutrients From Food Crops

Deutsche Welle - Ineke Mules

Environmental changes are posing a serious threat to production and nutritional value of our crops. Not taking action could have major global implications for food security and public health, a new study outlines.

A new study has further revealed how climate change is reducing yields and sucking the nutrients from our vegetables and legumes, raising serious questions over the future of food security and public health around the world.
The report, which was led by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, is apparently the first of its kind to methodically examine to what extent environmental changes such as water scarcity, increases in temperature and a greater concentration of carbon dioxide could impact the nutritional quality and yield of crops vital to our everyday nutrition.
Previous research into the impact of environmental change on food has mostly focused on the yield of staple crops such as wheat, rice and corn. However, there has been comparatively little discussion on how climate change is affecting nutritious foods that are considered more important to a healthy diet.

Vegetables scorched by a heat wave in China — such events may become more common in the future due to climate change
The 'junk food effect'
The phenomenon of crops being stripped of their high nutritional qualities due to environmental factors has become known as the "junk food effect."
For some time now, researchers have been aware that many of our most important plant-based foods are becoming less nutritious. Studies have shown how the mineral, protein and vitamin content in fruits and vegetables has decreased over the past few decades, although until recently this had been explained away by the fact that we had been prioritizing higher yields over nutrition.
"Vegetables and legumes are vital components of a healthy, balanced and sustainable diet, and nutritional guidelines consistently advise people to incorporate more vegetables and legumes into their diet," says lead author Pauline Scheelbeek.
"However, our new analysis suggests that this advice conflicts with the potential impacts of environmental changes that will decrease the availability of these crops."

The carbon dioxide factor
Alongside water scarcity and increasing temperatures, higher levels of carbon dioxide are being blamed for stripping crops of their nutritional value.
But carbon dioxide is good for plants, so why should we be worried about rising CO2 levels? While it's true that plants do require carbon dioxide in order to grow and thrive, it's possible to have too much of a good thing.
Rising carbon dioxide levels ramp up the process of photosynthesis — which is what allows plants to transform sunlight into food. While this certainly helps plants grow, it has the side effect of causing them to produce more simple carbohydrates such as glucose.
And this comes at the expense of other important nutrients we need in order to stay healthy including protein, zinc and iron.


The future of farming in a warming world
Food security a growing concern
The latest findings, published in Nature, have alarming implications for food security and raise some disconcerting questions about the future of our planet's food supply.
Hotter regions such as Southern Europe, Africa and South Asia are most at risk, where higher temperatures are already expected to reduce crop yields by about 31 percent.
But Scheelbeek says the total crop yield is not necessarily the most important factor to consider.
"I think we have shifted from food intake being the biggest problem in terms of global food security to the issue of nutrition," she told DW.

We currently grow far too many grains, say some experts
Tim Benton, a visiting fellow at Chatham House and a specialist in food security and sustainability, agrees that the issue of food security — at least from a global perspective — needs to be looked at through the lens of public health and nutrition rather than focusing on the amount of crops that we grow.
"It's a developed world problem and a developing world problem," he told DW. Benton, who was not involved in the new study, doesn't see the world heading toward starvation due to not being able to grow crops. "But we are going to be in a situation where public health gets worse."

Potential for a nutritional crisis
The reduced nutritional quality of important crops could mark the beginning of a looming health crisis.
One of the biggest concerns addressed by the report is the potential increase of micronutrient deficiencies. Around 1.5 million deaths per year are already linked to low vegetable intake, according to the Global Burden of Disease (GBD) study. The worldwide per capita daily consumption of fruit and vegetables is already from 20 to 50 percent below the minimum recommended levels.
A paper published in Nature in 2014 highlighted how increased levels of carbon dioxide could also impact the nutritional value of staple crops such as rice, wheat and soybeans.
But Benton stresses that at this stage, we should be more worried about the non-staples. A focus on cash crops is part of the problem, he added.
"We currently grow three times as much grain and about a third of the amount of fruit and vegetables that we need," he told DW.

A lack of veg? Benton says too much grains and not enough nutritious fruit and vegetables are cultivated worldwide
Scheelbeek says various issues need to be considered if the consumption of legumes and vegetables drops as a result of environmental changes.
"For example, what would people eat instead? What would be their substitution for a less-available or more expensive legume on the market? It's certainly something we need to address."

Adaptation key to crisis
Experts say the best way to alleviate the threat to crops in the future is to prioritize changes in agricultural production.
Benton believes looking toward growing new crop varieties is "absolutely necessary" if we wish to avoid a crisis.
Scheelbeek says the results of the study represent a "business-as-usual scenario," assuming very little action is taken over the next few decades.
"We hope of course that the [results] of this study are a bit of an eye-opener, and that this is a gap that we need to bridge to make sure that there is enough nutritious food until the end of the century."

Feeding the world of the future: is hydroponics the answer?
Tackling food insecurity with hydroponics 
The challenge of feeding a planet that’s set to have 3 billion more people on it by 2050 - made even more acute by climate change as some parts of the planet become wetter, while others drier - means the pressure is on to find ways to feed the planet. So farming has to become more productive – and new areas to grow, especially in dry climates, must be found. One potential solution: hydroponics. MORE
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A Storm Of Climate Change Migration Is Brewing In South Asia

East Asia Forum - Simrit Kaur* | Harpreet Kaur*

With climate change and the associated warmer temperatures already altering the timings and patterns of bird migrations, climate change-induced human migration is not far behind. Estimates suggest that by 2050 there are likely to be between 25 million and 1 billion environmental migrants in the world, with a major proportion of these originating from low and lower-middle income countries.


South Asia is particularly vulnerable to climate change. Nearly half of the region’s population lives in areas that are projected to become moderate to severe climate hotspots by 2050. Unhealthy temperatures and variable precipitation patterns have contributed to declines in agricultural production, productivity and food security. Natural calamities such as floods, tsunamis and earthquakes have increased the susceptibility of the region’s already vulnerable population.
Migration has emerged as an important survival and adaptation strategy. In Bangladesh alone, 15 million people are expected to be displaced due to the environmental degradation of the country’s coastal zone. The bulk of forced climate-induced migration has involved the most vulnerable.
The major migration corridors in South Asia are between Bangladesh–India, Afghanistan–Pakistan, India–Pakistan and Nepal–India. In 2015, more than 85 per cent of migrants in South Asia originated from other countries in the region. There are currently about 3,230,025 and 810,172 migrants from Bangladesh and Nepal respectively in India. Pakistan has about 2,326,275 Afghani migrants. With current levels of transboundary migration already high, it is difficult to decipher the number of these who are climate-induced migrants. As such, climate change has remained largely invisible in discussions about migration.
Empirical evidence suggests that environmental degradation is an important factor in pushing migration, particularly in less developed countries. With climate change already impacting the availability of water, food and arable land in host countries, transboundary migration is expected to trigger conflicts and exacerbate tensions. Migration also contributes to ethnic tensions, discords, distrust and the demolition of social capital.
For instance, many illegal Bangladeshi immigrants are seeking employment in India. This is leading to rising Indian intolerance towards Bangladeshis, especially in Assam and West Bengal. Tensions are also brewing between Bangladeshi migrants and the ethnic Bodo group in Assam. The presence of a large number of Afghan refugees in Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa is seen by the Pakistani military as a security risk that aggravates drug trafficking, smuggling and terrorist activities. Following the 2015 earthquake in Nepal, agitation by the Madhesis (an ethnic group of Indian origin) in Nepal contributed to nation-wide political turmoil.
The presence of Nepali migrants in Bhutan and India, Sri Lankan Tamils in India and Chakmas in Bangladesh have increased security issues for these countries. South Asia is already considered the second most violent place on earth after Iraq. In 2016, about 20 per cent of all conflicts in the world took place in this volatile region and resulted in about 22 per cent of total conflict-related deaths. Climate-induced migration will worsen these existing tensions.
Cross-border migration also impacts the psyche of migrants. For instance, Pakistan has often used pressure tactics to repatriate Afghan refugees that include imposing insecure legal statuses, threatening to deport asylum seekers in the winter, enforcing arbitrary detentions and conducting nocturnal police raids.
The large-scale trafficking of women and children across borders in the region is another matter of grave concern. Barring Afghanistan, no other South Asian country has signed the 1951 UN Convention relating to the Status of Refugees and its 1967 Protocol.
Climate-induced migration necessitates the acknowledgement of two issues. First, there are no official definitions of climate-induced migration or displacement at the international level. Second, the negligible data on climate-induced migration inhibits the design of effective resilience and adaptation policies, especially for trans-boundary migration. It is thus important to invest in data and analysis to understand migration patterns and trajectories.
Countries must embed climate-induced migration in their development planning. Bangladesh’s Disaster Management Act 2012, which mentions the rehabilitation of displaced people, and Sri Lanka’s proposed relocation of coastal communities are steps in the right direction. But more needs to be done. Countries need inclusive frameworks that focus on adaptability, such as building climate-smart infrastructure and addressing declines in agricultural yields. To achieve this, South Asian countries need to effectively manage their irrigation projects and adopt land-based greenhouse gas mitigation policies involving agriculture, forestry and other land uses. In the long run, investing in human capital, diversifying income generating activities and pushing towards less climate-vulnerable sectors (including non-farm activities) would help combat migration.
While the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) does recognise climate change as a challenge, migration concerns are only scantly mentioned in the 2014 SAARC Kathmandu Declaration and 2005 SAARC Social Charter. It is important to build solidarity and increase cooperation among the South Asian nations that face common challenges. Developing early warning systems, regional food banks and amenable solutions to water disputes would enhance resilience and reduce forced migration. It would also help in improving the public’s attitudes towards migrant populations and in resolving the social tensions caused by climate migration.

*Simrit Kaur is a Professor of Economics and Public Policy and the Principal of Shri Ram College of Commerce, University of Delhi, India.
*Harpeet Kaur is Assistant Professor in Sri Guru Gobind Singh College of Commerce at the University of Delhi, India.

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