le rapport "Marée humaine, la véritable crise migratoire" en anglais (pdf, 2 Mo)
en voici un extrait ...
The number of natural disasters has more than doubled over
the last decade, from 193 in 1996 to 422 in 2005, according to
the IFRC.17
The increase is due to a sharp rise in the number of
weather-related disasters – from 175 in 1996 to 391 in 2005 – an
upward trend that will continue because of climate change.
Poor people are especially vulnerable to displacement by
natural disasters, because their poverty forces them to live in
less favourable places which, for instance, are more prone
to flooding or landslides. Their less-robustly built homes are
similarly more vulnerable to destruction by extreme weather
and earthquakes.18
People who are already displaced from their homes by
conflict or large-scale development projects are also particularly
badly affected by natural disasters. This was evident among the
tens of thousands of people already displaced by the conflicts in
Sri Lanka and Indonesia when the tsunami hit on Boxing Day 2004.
The UN’s expert on the human rights of IDPs, Walter Kälin,
visited the region for the UN Secretary General on the Human
Rights of Internally Displaced Persons. ‘Many observers noted
that in areas already affected by conflict and hosting IDPs, there
had in some cases been unequal treatment in the assistance
provided by governments and international actors, in particular
certain NGOs,’ he reported.
For example, UK
company Asia Energy admits that operating its planned opencast
coal mine in Phulbari, Bangladesh, would require 40,000
people to leave their homes.
And, ironically in the light of Bangladesh’s extreme
vulnerability to rising sea levels caused by climate change, which
could displace 35 million people,32 the mine will displace people
from valuable high ground because it is some 30 metres above
sea level, according to Asia Energy. Burning the coal that comes
out of the mine will produce more of the very greenhouse gases
that are causing climate change.
Opposition to the mine provoked protests in which at least
three people were killed and 200 injured last year, according to
the BBC.33 The government of Bangladesh then postponed a
decision on the future of the mine until after elections that were
due to take place in January this year. However, political violence
caused the elections to be postponed; it is now hoped that they
will take place later this year.
The latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
(IPCC) report highlights the huge numbers of people who are
predicted to suffer a severe impact from climate change. Most
of the references here are taken from unpublished drafts of the
report because, as this report goes to press, the full text is not
available.1
By 2080, it is likely that 1.1 to 3.2 billion people will be
experiencing water scarcity; 200 to 600 million, hunger; 2 to 7
million more per year, coastal flooding,’ says the IPCC.2
‘Stresses such as increased drought, water shortages and
riverine and coastal flooding will affect many local and regional
populations. This will lead in some cases to relocation within
or between countries, exacerbating conflicts and imposing
migration pressures.’3
As this suggests, climate change will displace people from
their homes, both directly and by intensifying conflicts that
cause people to flee. Military planners have been worrying
about such scenarios for years, and have reached alarming
conclusions.
Floods and water shortages
Studies of the effects of climate change on human beings
suggest a future in which millions more people will suffer
extreme events such as tidal waves, droughts, floods and
hurricanes, and the poorest will be hardest hit. Indeed, there
is strong evidence that it is already biting, as the latest IPCC
report points out.
The number of disasters caused by weather-related
phenomena such as hurricanes, floods and droughts has more
than doubled over the past decade, from 175 in 1996 to 391 in
2005.6 The proportion of the world that is affected by drought
has risen substantially since 1980, according to the climate
change experts at the UK Met Office’s Hadley Centre for
Climate Prediction and Research.7
There is high-level recognition that such changes will,
in some cases, force people to leave their homes. The
Stern Review warned: ‘As temperatures rise and conditions
deteriorate significantly, climate change will test the resilience
of many societies around the world.
Large numbers of people
will be compelled to leave their homes when resources drop
below a critical threshold. Bangladesh, for example, faces the
permanent loss of large areas of coastal land, affecting 35
million people (about one-quarter of its population), while onequarter
of China’s population (300 million people) could suffer
from the wholesale reduction in glacial meltwater.’8
The latest IPCC impact report warns that it is the regions
already struggling with other problems which force people
from their homes that are most vulnerable to the effects of
climate change: ‘Vulnerable regions face multiple stresses
that affect their exposure and sensitivity [to climate change] as
well as their capacity to adapt. These stresses arise from, for
example, current climate hazards, poverty and unequal access
to resources, food insecurity, trends in economic globalisation,
conflict and incidence of diseases such as HIV/AIDS.’9
The IPCC also highlights the vast numbers of people
around the world who are at risk from flooding by the sea.
‘In the absence of an improvement to protection, coastal
flooding could grow tenfold or more by the 2080s to more than
100 million people a year, just due to sea-level rise alone.’10
In Africa, it suggests that without mitigation of climate change
and adaptation to its effects, between 350 million and 600
million people would suffer increased water scarcity if global
temperature were to rise by 2°C over pre-industrial levels.11
This, in turn, would affect their ability to grow food. ‘In some
countries, yield from rain-fed agriculture could
In Asia and Latin America, water shortages will be a major
problem, with a 2°C rise in temperature affecting between 200
million and 1 billion people in Asia, and 80 to 180 million people
in Latin America.13
A report released by the Hadley Centre in 2006 warned
that very large increases in both the spread and the severity
of droughts will leave almost a third of the planet with extreme
water shortages by the end of this century.14
As well as the increased frequency of extreme events that
climate change will bring, there will be other impacts that also
push people from their homes. Gradual changes in regional
and local climates – for example slowly decreasing rainfall – are
likely to undermine people’s ability to make a living – especially
for the 1 billion people in the world who currently rely on
smallholder agriculture for their survival and income.
Steadily and silently, people will be forced to leave their
land and seek alternative means of survival elsewhere. The
likelihood is that people displaced in this way will migrate to
the nearest town or city, accelerating the pace of rural to urban
migration or perhaps, in time, further afield.
This will put increasing strain on already overburdened
urban infrastructure, but it may also fail to deliver people from
the impact of climate change – many of the places to which
they will naturally gravitate, such as large coastal cities, will also
increasingly be at risk.
This slow-onset crisis can be prevented. But to achieve this
it is essential that drastic action is taken to cut CO2 emissions
globally in order to keep average temperature increases to
below 2°C. Furthermore, additional funds must be released to
help people adapt the way they live to cope with an increasingly
harsh climate.
Regions where climate change holds the greatest risk of
creating population displacement include countries that
are already wracked by conflict and are hosts to groups
that pose security concerns internally and internationally.’
Professor Robert McLeman of the University of Ottawa, Canada
Oumou and Ibrahim Karembé with four of their seven young
grandchildren outside their stone hut in the village of Solo-Joy,
northern Mali. All eight of their children have been forced to leave
the village because there is not enough rain for their crops
Oumou Karembé has four sons and four daughters. More
than enough to look after her in her old age, she thought. But
that was in the days when enough rain fell – most of the time
– to sustain the farmers living in Africa’s Sahel region. After the
massive droughts in the early 1980s, Oumou’s village never fully
recovered. Indeed, since then, the rain has become less and
less predictable. Two years ago, the last of Oumou’s sons was
forced to leave the remote village in northern Mali because he
could no longer feed his family with what he was able to grow.
Now aged 76, she sits on a straw mat in her stone hut,
sheltering from the 35°C heat with her 79-year-old husband. At
a time when she could expect a rest from the back-breaking
work she has endured her whole life, Oumou instead has
seven young grandchildren to look after, aged between 18
months and 15 years.
One son has agreed to come back and help during the
growing season, and his parents say they will do everything
possible to convince him to stay for good – even crying openly
in front of him if that’s what it takes.
‘One by one my children asked permission to leave,’ said
Oumou’s husband, Ibrahim. ‘Every time they didn’t come
back, it was a shock. But with the changing climate it would be
difficult for them all to stay here.’
The Sahel region is a swathe of land stretching across Africa
from Senegal on the Atlantic coast to Somalia on the Indian
Ocean. This region, which cuts across the north of Mali, is what
is known as a semi-arid area, between highly fertile land and
the desert, where agriculture is very vulnerable to changes in
rainfall patterns. Mounting evidence suggests that the effects
of global warming are already being felt throughout the Sahel
– changing the delicate balance between humans and their
environment that has endured for thousands of years. A study
published by the UK Met Office’s Hadley Centre for Climate
Prediction and Research last year found that extreme drought
is liable to affect a third of the planet by 2100. Places which are
already suffering periodic droughts and unpredictable rains will
get progressively drier and the Sahel will eventually become
uninhabitable.1
Many Malian farmers are already noticing changes
consistent with these predictions, and the country’s rainfall
data further supports this view. Over the past 30 years, the
rainfall on which the farmers depend has lessened dramatically
and has become much more erratic (see graph below). Once,
farmers could predict the rains and plant accordingly. During the
past five years, farmers report rain disappearing in the middle
of the growing season, which drastically reduces, if not totally
destroys, their crops.
This change in rainfall patterns is creating a new wave of
migrants who are being driven from their homes in search of
water, leaving the very old and the very young in the villages to
cope as best they can. Already the third poorest country in the
world, the fragile Malian economy is facing yet another shock.
While we have made the technological and logistical advances
necessary to send teams rapidly anywhere in the world, there has
been no corresponding moral and ethical revolution by the global
community to make it possible to assist and protect everyone
everywhere in accordance with humanitarian principles and our
agreed responsibility to protect.’
Jan Egeland, former United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator
Climate change
Scientific forecasts about the effects of climate change are
frightening. They suggest a world in which people in already poor
countries will have an even harder struggle to survive. Although
there are no up-to-date statistics to show how many people are
being displaced by climate change, it is clear that the numbers
are potentially in the hundreds of millions. This, in turn, is likely to
fuel conflicts that will push still more people to flee.
It is poor people who will suffer most as a result of climate
change, but rich people who are most to blame for it. In sub-
Saharan Africa, people emit less than one tonne of CO2 per
year while in the US it is 24 tonnes.
The latest scientific studies suggest that the climate is
changing more quickly than was previously predicted. In
addition, because of international prevarication over reducing
CO2 emissions, the scale and speed of action needed now is
greater than previously imagined. A massive, international effort
is needed to reduce CO2 emissions and keep global average
temperature increases below 2°C. Even then, climate change
will cause serious disruption, especially in poor communities.
• A new international, science-based and equitable agreement
is needed along the lines of a ‘global carbon budget’. This
must be consistent with the 2°C-limit and recognise the right
of developing and less-developed countries to increase the
size of their economies and reduce poverty in a way that
does not lead to further growth in global CO2 emissions.
• The agreement should have at its heart development-friendly
mechanisms with which rich countries will fund adaptation
and clean-development activities in poor countries.
• As part of the agreement, rich countries that have emitted
most pollution must establish a US$100 (£50) billion a year
global fund to help poor, vulnerable counties to adapt to sealevel
rises, increasing drought and more extreme weather.
Funding could be based on CO2 taxation or trading, or both.
• This money should not be taken from existing aid budgets
– it is partial compensation for the damage done by climate
change. It should be paid in proportion to countries’ CO2
emissions since 1990 (when negotiations on the UN
Framework Convention on Climate Change began), and
national wealth.
• In addition, it is in all countries’ interests to share and develop
low-carbon technology and pass on know-how. The costs
of this should be borne by rich countries, and intellectual
property rights should not stand in the way of stabilising the
amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. At the Conference of the
Parties to the Framework Convention on Climate Change, the
importance of discussions on technology transfer should be
elevated, with rich countries taking seriously their obligations
in Article 5 to take ‘all practicable steps’ to ‘promote, facilitate
and finance’ technology transfer.
• In the short term, financial support for adaptation should be
increased via more rapid debt cancellation and increases in
overseas development assistance. In addition, rich countries
must live up to the pledges they have made to help the poor
cope with climate change.
• The UK should pay all the money it has pledged to the climate
change funds without delay. Pledging £10 million but staging
payments over three years harms the adaptation efforts of
the poorest countries in the world.
• The UK should lead the way towards a science-based,
equitable international agreement and towards mechanisms
to fund clean development and adaptation in countries that
have limited resources to deal with them.
