NO. 2/ JANUARY 2008 EACH-FOR Newsletter Prof. Thomas Faist Scientific Board, A new year has started and hence halftime for the EACH-FOR project. In the course of the last 12 months, several important steps have been realized. In the frames of a multidisciplinary team, a common methodology has been set up, desktop research has been concluded, and quite a few first experiences in the field have been made. In the months to come, we will have to analyse if the guiding hypothesis of EACH-FOR environmental degradation leads to migration turns out to be a helpful guidepost. First results will be presented to the public during the EFMSV conference in October 2008 in Bonn. Several recent events have shown that the subject of our research subject is more pressing and timely than ever. Recently, the UN Climate Change Conference in Bali (Indonesia) discussed a roadmap for a future international agreement on how to fight climate change in the period after 2012. As the 4 th Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has shown in clear and unequivocal words, climate change has become an irreversible process. As a reminder, during the last weeks, we have been witnessing two major disasters. Cyclone Sidr in Bangladesh caused largescale evacuations of around 2 million people, led to fatalities estimated between 5,000 and 10,000 people and has caused economic damage of around $ 450 Mio. In the Mexican state of Tabasco, unrestrained oil and gas exploitation, heavy rains and negligence in maintaining the regional hydraulic system led to a severe flooding. 80% of the surface area has been inundated and over 1 million people about half of the total population are severely affected. The economic damage is estimated to amount to 5 billion dollars and reconstruction of Southeastern Mexico s Eden might take several years. What is lurking behind these figures listing economic damages in a book-keeping fashion? Families lost their houses, their crops, their sources of income. This dramatic situation which is not only observable in natural disasters, but also in slower forms of environmental degradation leads in many cases to In the case of Tabasco, until now the Mexican state with the lowest emigration rate, there is already some evidence of an increasing emigration towards the North. It is a central concern of EACH-FOR to look beyond the bare figures and to track down how people s livelihoods have been affected by environmental degradation. This will be a main task in the fieldwork of our researchers in the coming months. In the long run the findings may contribute to outlining steps to strengthen the capabilities of persons to weather environmental change. I m really looking forward to discuss first results. With best wishes for 2008, Thomas Faist ABOUT Prof. Faist Dr. Thomas Faist is Professor of Transnational Relations and Development Studies at the Faculty of Sociology, University of Bielefeld in Germany. He is also the director of the Center on Migration, Citizenship and Development (COMCAD). EACH-FOR Project Environmental Change and Forced Migration Scenarios (EACH-FOR) is a co-financed research project within the Sixth Framework Program of t h e E u r o p e a n Commission. For more information please visit the official p r o j e c t s w e b s i t e www.each-for.eu and/ or www.ehs.unu.edu Inside this issue: EACH-FOR in the Media 2 Notes from the Field 3 Recent Events 4 Publications of Interest 5 Upcoming Events 6
Page 2 EACH-FOR attracts the media Enviromental degradation, Climate change and its linkages with migration are hot topics picked up by the Media worldwide. Therefore EACH-FOR is being drawn increasingly attention to and is given the chance to make its results and insights known not only to the scientific community but also to the general public. Paroles du Monde, a monthly programme of the French parliamentary television channel Public Sénat, was devoted to the issue of climate change refugees in December 2007. NOTES FROM THE FIELD F r a n ç o i s G e m e n n e (University of Liège, Belgium), a researcher of the EACH-FOR project, was invited to discuss the topic, along with climatologist Jean Jouzel and journalist Donatien Garnier. The full version of the programme can be viewed online at: http://www.publicsenat.fr/ cms/video-a-la-demande/ vod.html?ide=56140 Early results coming in from around the globe Several researchers of the EACH-FOR project have completed their field work in their respective areas whereas others are still to be conducted in the upcoming months. By Francois Gemenne François Gemenne (University of Liège, Belgium) spent the summer in Tuvalu and Auckland, documenting migration induced by sealevel rise from the little archipelago in the South Pacific Ocean. Gorges Dam, the world s largest dam project. In the upcoming months, Robert Stojanov (Palacký University, Czech Republic) will travel to Bangladesh, India and Northern China to study migration associated with sealevel rise and desertification. Tamer Afifi will be conducting his research for the EACH- FOR project in January to February 2008 in Niger, assessing the linkages between drought, floods and Road taking up nearly all the space on Tuvalu, Pacific Islands Haina Lu (University of Liège, Belgium) is just back from her fieldwork in China, where she i n v e s t i g a t e d t h e displacements associated with the construction of the Three- The researchers of UNU-EHS (Germany) have recently completed their fieldwork: Tamer Afifi in Egypt, Marc Stal in Mozambique and Olivia Dun in Viet Nam. EACH-FOR researcher in Viet Nam Regular flooding have forced people to make coping a way of life in Viet Nam. But increasing intensity of natural events might exceed people s ability to adapt, forcing them to migrate. Example of floating house on Mekong River, An Giang Province - planned for relocation by the Vietnamese government by Olivia Dun Olivia Dun is currently conducting research facilitated by the International Organisation for Migration Viet Nam for the EACH-FOR project. She has been focusing on the issue of flooding in the Mekong Delta region of southern Viet Nam. Migration out of the Mekong Delta region is largely towards urban areas with people in search of work or a better life. Olivia is currently researching whether flooding interacts with social, economic and other factors in triggering people to migrate. She has conducted just over 40 interviews with experts from the government sector, n o n - g o v e r n m e n t organisations, academic institutions and international organisations who are working in the fields of environment, migration, development, disaster relief, social science and social welfare. She has also conducted questionnaires which have been completed by households already resettled or due to be resettled by the government because they live in dangerous areas subject to river bank erosion/collapse. In addition, Olivia has conducted semi-structured interviews with migrants and potential migrants from the Mekong Delta region. Olivia Dun conducting an interview with a household living in a floating house on the Mekong River in An Giang Province
Interim reports from Egypt and Mozambique EACH-FOR interviewed two of the researchers during their studies in Africa. Their preliminary reports disclose some of the linkages between environmental degradation and Resettlement Centre near Mutarara, Mozambique Andras Vag (ATLAS, coordinator of the EACH-FOR project) posed some questions to Dr. Tamer Afifi (UNU-EHS) who conducted his research in Egypt from August to September 2007 and to Marc Stal (UNU-EHS) who did his field study in Mozambique in September and October 2007. Vag (EACH-FOR): Where exactly do you meet your interviewees? Afifi (Egypt): Most of the qualitative interviews have been run with university experts and scholars here in Cairo. Up until now I have conducted questionnaires in some areas along the Nile Valley (people are suffering from water shortage or soil salinity, but are still staying there), in the area of the Western Desert (reclamation projects, where people left their original villages in order to f ind new livelihoods), in the South of Egypt (people displaced due to the construction of the Higher Dam of Assuan) and i n t h e N i l e D e l t a (people left the areas after the enormous soil scrapping i n t h e 1 9 8 0 s ). Stal (Mozambique): I started my visit to Mozambique in the Capital Maputo, where I was conducting several expert Interviews including NGOs, Governmental Officials and Scientists. Currently I am in Mutarara, a little village at the Zambezi River in Central Mozambique. Before that I was in Chinde, a district in the delta of the Zambezi River. In both places people had been living in the low lying river areas (Zona Baixa) and were displaced during the heavy 2001 and 2007 floods. Since the government does not want the people to return to their places of origin, it provides them with new land and new houses in those new areas, which are called Resettlement Centres (RC). In order to see different types of RCs, to talk to the internal displacees and to conduct the questionnaires, I will travel upstream the Zambezi River. V a g : A r e t h e r e e n v i r o n m e n t a l "hotspots"? If yes which hotspot exactly? If not what other phenomena can you observe? Afifi: In Egypt there are no severe cases, that you could c a l l e n v i r o n m e n t a l h o t s p o t s, s u c h as hurricanes, earthquakes and floods - at least they are not a common or frequent feature. There are rather gradual processes taking p l a c e, s u c h a s desertification, water shortage, soil salinity and pollution. In most of the places I have visited so far, people suffer and/or have suffered in one or the other way from at least one of these problems. Stal: Yes, there are definitely environmental hotspots in Mozambique: The low lying river areas, and islands in the river are high flood risk areas, but at the same time also the most fertile and sometimes only land to grow crops on. People had been living in these areas for a long time to make their living. In order to avoid the risk of flooding, the new RCs are built further away from the River (approximately 5-10km), where drought is a big problem and the people cannot grow their crops. This is especially the case for Mutarara, which is further away from the coastal areas. In the Chinde District, a triangle island formed by two rivers (Rio Zambezi and Rio Chinde) and the Indian Ocean, soil erosion is a big problem and goes hand in hand with the deforestation of the mangrove trees. Therefore the current village Chinde had to be rebuild twice, every time further inland. Vag: What "problems" do your interviewees face? Afifi: It is really case by case, but we can mainly talk of soil salinity, water shortage, poverty and unemployment. Stal: Problems that are mainly mentioned in the interviews - and the resettled people face - are the missing rain, the water shortage and the lack of support from the government in providing the promised houses. Vag (EACH-FOR): Do you see any chance to meet people who have moved? Afifi: Definitely yes. For example I have met people, who have been displaced (or whose parents have been displaced), due to the construction of the dam in 1971 or the soil scrapping in the 1980s. I was able to meet people who had moved also because of other reasons - mainly for what they called money reasons rather than environmental problems, the latter not being an explicit problem for them. Stal: In the Resettlement Centres people have moved already, but are not willing to continue to move even with forecasts of no rain fall for the next five years: [ ] moving destroys culture, social networks and rips families apart. No we are not moving away from here[ ]. Even the younger generation in general does not move away according to the statements of the interviewees. This is in stark contrast to the people in Malawi, where I got the impression from some brief conversations, that they do not feel so much affiliation to their lands and therefore tend to leave in order to find a better livelihood. At the same time the people in the RCs in general do not want to return to their places of origin, like they did after the floods in the year 2001. Dr. Afifi inspecting a water pump on a plantation site in Egypt
Page 4 RECENT EVENTS Conference Migration and Development in Czech Republic Students joined top ranked scientists in the discussion of migration, environmental migration and development as the central issues of the Conference hosted by the University of Ostrava (Czech Republic). Prof. Janos Bogardi (UNU-EHS) opening the Conference by Robert Stojanov Ostrava (Czech Republic): On 4-5 September 2007 the international conference Migration and Development was hosted by the Department of Human Geography and Regional Development at the Faculty of Science, University of Ostrava in the Czech Republic. Its realisation was kindly supported by the European Social Fund. The programme of the conference was divided up into three main panels: 1) Migration, 2) Development and 3) Environmental The over forty participants of the conference came from Asia, Europe, Australia/ Oceania, North-America and South America. The scientific board of the conference was represented by top ranked scientists in their respective field of interest: The conference was opened by the Chairman of the Scientific Board Prof. Janos J. Bogardi (UNU-EHS, Germany), Prof. Graeme Hugo (Department of Geographical and Environmental Studies, University of Adelaide, Australia), Prof. Ronald Skeldon (Department of Geography, University of Sussex, UK) and Assoc. Prof. Dušan Drbohlav (Department of Social Geography and Regional Development, Charles University, Czech Republic). Several relevant topics were highlighted: the role of labour migration in national or local development, ethnic migration, the relationship between international migration and development, the role of assistance in developmental efforts and environmental migration from a theoretical point of view. Those issues were further explicated by multiple interesting and insightful case studies. Following the official conclusion of the conference, the organisers dedicated some time to a special session to the EACH FOR project, which provided the participating EACH-FOR members with feedback from other conference guests, interested in theoretical approaches to the study of environmental For more details on the Conference please visit the conference website at http:// www1.osu.cz/igeography/md-conference/ Expert Working Group meets at UNU-EHS in Bonn Dr. Koko Warner outlined the linkages between vulnerability and environmental migration during 4th Expert Working Group on Measuring Vulnerability at the UN Campus in Bonn, 19-21 November 2007. Bonn (Germany): Warner shared findings from UNU- E H S m o d e l i n g t h a t established a statistically significant correlation between 13 indicators of environmental degradation and migration, along with some of UNU-EHS s early field findings. She noted growing evidence that u n d e r s t a n d i n g t h e vulnerability characteristics of groups faced with environmental change Dr. Koko Warner International workshop on environment-induced migration can help better assess the potential for migration and the threat of displacement. These EACH-FOR findings will be published in a joint publication in 2008. Environmental Change was identified as a major cause for migration and resettlement at the event organised in November 2007 in the Basque Country. Vitoria-Gasteiz (Basque Country): The international Workshop on Environment induced Migration. An interdisciplinary Overview was organised and hosted by the Faculty of Philology, Geography and History at the University of Basque country. Among a variety of presentations concerning migration and environmental change, the EACH-FOR project and its findings of some case studies were discussed by Robert S t o j a n o v ( P a l a c k ý University, Czech Republic), O s c a r A l v a r e z G i l a (University of the Basque Country) and Haina Lu (University of Liège, Belgium). The presentations explored the concept of environmental migration as a significant phenomenon of i n t e r n a t i o n a l a n d intranational migration in order to asses the general impact of environmental c h a n g e i n c l u d i n g development projects on forced
Oxford Conference: An unsettled future for forced migrants? Scholars convened to explore the current state of the art of and recommendable directions for the research concerning forced migrants and their future. Haina Lu, Francois Gemenne and Sophia Schmidl introducing EACH-FOR in Oxford Oxford (United Kingdom): As the culmination of the celebration of its 25 years of pioneering research in the field of refugee and forced migration studies, the Refugee Studies Centre (RSC) at the University of Oxford hosted a two-day international conference on 7-8 December 2007 titled An Unsettled Future? Forced Migration and Refugee Studies in the 21st Century. The RSC dedicated the conference to getting scholars together to take stock of the state of research on refugee and f o r c e d m i g r a t i o n movements. The conference considered, in particular, how refugee and forced migration studies have progressed in the recent y e a r s a n d w h a t contemporary challenges and future directions should inform the o ngoing development of these areas of study. The first day of the conference was dedicated to Conceptualising the Fields of forced migration and refugee studies whereas the second day of the conference considered Key Future Research Areas in refugee and forced migration studies for the coming years. Among others the issue of environmentally induced migration was identified as a major area to be considered for future research. One very well attended panel discussion was especially dedicated to the EACH-FOR project, which was featured by the presentations of F r a n c o i s G e m e n n e (University of Liège, Belg ium), Haina Lu (University of Liège) and Sophia Schmidl (UNU-EHS, Germany). It was an excellent opportunity to introduce the EACH-FOR project to the scholarly community, which expressed a great interest in the project and its topic. EACH-FOR partners with OSCE in the Mediterranean Dr. Tamer Afifi (UNU-EHS) was invited to act as a co-facilitator in a workshop organised by the OSCE and NATO Valencia (Spain): Dr. Tamer Afifi was invited to act as a co-facilitator in the Working Group: Loss of livelihoods and increased migration, at the OSCE Chairmanship - NATO Workshop on 'Water Scarcity, Land Degradation and Desertification in the Mediterranean Region' in Valencia, Spain, 10-11 December 2007. A main recommendation of the event was to further support case studies on environmentally induced Dr. José L.Rubio, Mr. Philip Reuchlin, Dr.Tamer Afifi, Dr. David Mouat PUBLICATIONS Climate change as a security risk The new report, entitled Climate Change as a Security Risk, has been prepared by the German Advisory Council on Global Change drawing on the work of international experts and organizations including UNEP. Preparing for a warmer world The Global Governance Project (Glogov.org), a joint research programme of eleven European research institutions that seeks to advance understanding of the new actors, institutions and mechanisms of global governance has published a The report suggests four 'climate-induced conflict constellations': degradation of freshwaters; decline in food production; increase in storm and flood disasters and environmentally-in duced new Working Paper entitled Preparing for a Warmer World. Towards a Global Governance System to Protect Climate Refugees. The paper discusses the problem of lacking of concepts or feasibility in It also tries to define and explain what may constitute vulnerable states and societies. The publication can be downloaded at the following address: www.wbgu.de/ wbgu_jg2007_engl.html governing the expected flux of migration in this century. The report can be downloaded at the following address: www.glogov.org/images/ doc/wp33.pdf
Page 6 Website of migration conference online: www.efmsv2008.org UNU-EHS proudly presents the new website of the upcoming international conference on "Environment, Forced Migration and Social Vulnerability" to be held on 9-11 October 2008 in Bonn, Germany. The website provides the conference programme, latest news and further details about the conference, useful information about accommodation and the conference venue as well as the registration procedures. Abstracts are due on 28 February 2008. For registration and further details on the conference please visit the website at: www.efmsv2008.org UPCOMING EVENTS Forum to fight human trafficking Vienna (Austria): UNU-EHS will present preliminary results of the EACH-FOR project at the Vienna-Forum to Fight Human Trafficking held on 13-15 February 2008 in Vienna. It will discuss the issues of vulnerability and the financial issues concerning humanitarian help as well as the opportunity to build a coalition to reduce human trafficking and exploitation. For further information, please visit: www.ungift.org Summer Academy on environmental change and migration Munich (Germany): Munich Re Foundation and UNU-EHS proudly announce the second annual Summer Academy on Social Vulnerability. The theme of the 2008 Summer Academy will be Environmental Change, Migration and Social Vulnerability. It will take place on 27 July to 02 August 2008. Applications for qualified doctoral students are due on 15 January 2008. To find out about the Munich Re Chair on Social Vulnerability, the UNU-EHS or past summer academies, please visit the w e b s i t e a t www.ehs.unu.edu or w w w. m u n i c h r e - foundation.org. ABOUT EACH-FOR UPDATE Imprint: ViSdP: UNU-EHS Editorial Team: Sophia Schmidl, Koko Warner, Ilona Roberts, Michael Zissener, Marc Stal Contact: Dr. Koko Warner Section Head, Social Vulnerability and Environmental Migration c/o UNU-EHS UN Campus Hermann-Ehlers-Str. 10 D-53113 Bonn, Germany Tel.: ++49 (0) 228 815-0227 Fax.: ++49 (0) 228 815-0299 E-Mail: info@each-for.eu Website: www.each-for.eu EC contract No.: 044468 Copyright 2007-2008 All rights reserved. The next EACH-FOR UPDATE No.3 will provide you with more information about the methodologies of the research project, recent and upcoming events, notes from the field and interviews. If you wish to subscribe to the newsletter, please visit the official EACH-FOR project website: www.each-for.eu or send an email with the subject EACH-FOR UPDATE to: newsletter@each-for.eu Sincerely, the EACH-FOR project team