C l i m M i g
Conference on Human Rights, Environmental Change, Migration and Displacement
Vienna, 20/21 September 2012
Venue (except for Cinema and Human Rights):
Austrian Research Foundation for International Development (ÖFSE) Sensengasse 3, 1090 Vienna
Conference Venue
ÖFSE, Sensengasse 3, 1090 Vienna
= Conference Venue
20 September 2012
14:00 / Registration &Coffee/Tea14:30 / Opening of the Conference
This session will briefly introduce the ClimMig project, the conference and the key themes that will be addressed.
Manfred Nowak– Welcome address
Margit Ammer,François Gemenne – Opening remarks
15:00 – 17:30 / Keynote speeches– followed by discussions
Three keynote speeches by leading experts in international law and refugee law will set the framework for a rights-based approach of environmental migration and displacement.
Walter Kälin “The Nansen Principles: The way ahead”
Coffee/Tea Break
Jane McAdam “Legal Solutions: If a treaty is not the answer, then what is it?”
Roger Zetter “The local dimension of international legal and normative frameworks: how it works on the ground”
Moderation: Michael Frahm
19:00 –21:30 / Cinema and Human Rights
Screening of themovie “The Grapes of Wrath”by John Ford (1940) – introduced by François Gemenne
In cooperation with /
Venue: Top Kino, Rahlgasse 1, 1060 Vienna
21 September 2012
9:30 / ClimMig - Presentation of the ProjectMargit Ammer – The role of human rights in the project
Pauline Brücker – How international organisations deal with human rights in the context of environmental migration: a mapping exercise
”Key Human Rights Challenges”
10:15 – 12:00 / Parallel sessionsPanel I:
Right to Food (Security), Water, Health, and Land / Panel II:
Civil and Political Rights / Panel III:
Resettlement Schemes and Right to Return
12:00 / Lunch Break
“Addressing Human Rights”
13:45 – 15:30 / Parallel sessions
Panel IV:
Legal Protection / Panel V:
Legal Protection (Case Studies) / Panel VI:
Climate Justice
15:30 / Posters & Coffee/Tea
16:00 – 17:30 / Policy Roundtable: What can the EU do?
Agata Sobiech,International Relations Officer,Commission (DG Home Affairs)
Justin Ginnetti, Advisor, Natural Disasters, Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC), Norwegian Refugee Council
Alina Narusova-Schmitz, Regional Policy and Liaison Officer, IOM
Christian Fellner, Federal Ministry for European and International Affairs
Moderation: François Gemenne
17:30 – 17:45 / Concluding Remarks
Project team
Details Panels / Morning Session “Key Human Rights Challenges”
Panel I: Right to Food (Security), Water, Health, and LandChair:Michael Frahm
Tori Timms (Environmental Justice Foundation): The human cost of adaptation and mitigation failures
Jeanette Schade (University of Bielefeld, COMCAD): Human rights, climate change and climate policies in Kenya: The case of Tana Delta
Claire Debucquois (University of Louvain): Land investment in the South: a rights-based approach
Tania Berger (Danube University Krems): Urban growth, climate change and vulnerability
Panel II: Civil and Political Rights
Chair: Roger Zetter
Maja Bahor, Andrej A. Lukšič (University of Ljubljana): Green citizenship in the light of environmental migrations
Fabian Schuppert (University of Zürich, ETH): Governing climate refugees: Self-determination and finding new territory
Panel III: Resettlement Schemes and Right to Return
Chair: François Gemenne
Michelle Leighton (AmericanUniversity of Central Asia): Population Displacement, Relocation, and Migration: The Law of Adaptation to Climate Change
Nicole de Moor (University of Ghent): Returning to a destructed environment: on the right and duty to return
Mariya Gromilova (TilburgUniversity): Right to development of people: is migration a fair adaptation strategy from a human rights perspective?
Details Panels / Afternoon Session “Addressing Human Rights”
Panel IV: Legal Protection, Chair: Walter KälinMarion Noack (ICMPD): “Climate Refugees” Legal and policy responses to environmentally induced migration
Emilie Kuijt (University of Leiden): Protecting Environmentally Displaced Persons: A Human Right to Humanitarian Assistance in the Aftermath of Natural Disasters?
Calum TM Nicholson (University of Swansea):The environmental change, migration and displacement debate: distinguishing analytic and normative frameworks and gaining critical distance
Panel V: Legal Protection – Case Studies, Chair: Jane McAdam
Sarah Nash (University of Glasgow): Forced migration norms in the context of climate change: a case study of Somalia
Alice Baillat (Sciences Po, CERI): A Critical Analysis of Security-Based Discourses on Climate-Induced Migration in Bangladesh: The Silent on Human Rights
Johannes Herbeck/Silja Klepp (University of Bremen): Negotiating Climate Change and Migration in the European Union and the Pacific
Michele Manocchi (University of Turin): From “real story” to “right story”: when one's own story must be silenced
Panel VI: Climate Justice, Chair: Monika Mayrhofer
Teresa Thorp (UtrechtUniversity): Constitutionalism of Climate Justice: Towards An International Legal Framework for Responding to Climate Induced Migration and Displacement
Ritumbra Manuvie (University of Edinburgh): Climate Change and Human Rights: Role of Courts in the event of climate change
Rosa Enn (University of Vienna): The chance for Environmental Justice for the Indigenous Dao?
Posters
Benoît Mayer (NationalUniversity of Singapore): Whose protection? – Questioning the need for a specific human rights regime for environmental migrantsTufail Jarul (JawaharlalNehruUniversity): Climatic change and its impact on the seasonal movement of the Bakarwal tribe and its future in the Valley of Kashmir
Charlotte Huteau (Université de La Rochelle): Disappearing states: How to preserve the identity of the displaced population
Patrick Toussaint (Diplomatic Academy of Vienna):Migration and Human Mobility in the Context of Environmental Displacement
Programme may be subject to amendment
Key experts
Walter Kälin is professor for Constitutional and International Law at the University of Bern. He earned his Doctor of Law from the University of Bern and his LL.M. from HarvardLawSchool.He has acted as a consultant for numerous agencies and organizations – including the Swiss development agency, UNHCR, UNHCHR, UNDP, and others – on matters of decentralization, human rights, and refugee law.In 1991-1992, Kälin served as the Special Rapporteur of the Commission on Human Rights on the situation of human rights in Kuwait under Iraqi occupation. He was also a member of the Swiss government's Steering Committee for "the preparation of constitutional reform" and he was Chairman for the preparation of the reform of the judiciary (1995–1996).From 2003 to 2008, Kälin was a member of the Human Rights Committee of the United Nations.Since 2004, Kälin has served as the Representative of the United Nations' Secretary-General on the Human Rights of Internally Displaced Persons.
Jane McAdam, BA (Hons), LLB (Hons) (Sydney), DPhil (Oxford)) is a professor at the University of New South Wales and an Australian Research Council Future Fellow in the Faculty of Law. She is also the Director of the International Refugee and Migration Law project at the Gilbert + Tobin Centre of Public Law and the convenor of the Faculty's Refugee Law and Policy Group. She is a Non-Resident Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution in WashingtonD.C., and a Research Associate at the University of Oxford’s Refugee Studies Centre. Jane publishes widely in the area of international refugee law, in particular on complementary protection and climate change-related displacement.
RogerZetter is Emeritus Professor of Refugee Studies, University of Oxford, retiring as the fourth Director of the Refugee Studies Centre (RSC) in September 2011. He was founding editor of the Journal of Refugee Studies from 1988 till 2001. Following degrees from Cambridge and NottinghamUniversities he completed his DPhil at the Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex. With research interests in sub-Saharan Africa, the EU and Middle East, his work has covered many aspects of forced displacement. Recent research on environmental displacement and rights has been funded byUNHCR, Governments of Norway and Switzerland. He currentlydirects a project onEnvironmentally displaced people: rights, policies and labels (funded by the MacArthur Foundation). He was lead consultant for the IASC 2011 Strategy for Managing Humanitarian Challenges in Urban Areas. Currently he is directing large-scale projects on the Impacts and Costs of Forced Displacement (World Bank, Danish and Norwegian MFAs), Unlocking the Crisis of Protracted Displacement (Norwegian MFA), and is editor of the forthcoming IFRC World Disasters Report 2012 focused on forced migration.
Panel I
Tori Timms
The human cost of adaptation and mitigation failures
There is a profound human cost associated with climate change mitigation and adaptation failures. Declining access to adequate food and water, the collapse of rural livelihoods and forced migration are some of the core humanitarian challenges created by the negative and complex impacts of climate change. The worst affected countries and populations are those where exposure to impacts is most pronounced, sensitivity is high and there is limited capacity to adapt – largely speaking, low-lying, coastal, small island, arid and mountainous developing countries. Rather than being an issue for the future, these impacts are being felt today and this paper outlines some of the experiences felt by individuals in ‘frontline’ countries. They demonstrate the urgency of which action on climate change is needed. The most effective responses to the impacts of climate change will involve planning and preparedness and participation from affected communities and populations. There need to be greater synergies between economic, environmental, social and human rights frameworks, goals and strategies to mitigate the negative impacts of climate change. Civil society organizations (CSOs) can play an important role in information sharing and facilitating effective dialogues between communities, researchers and policy-makers.
Tori Timms is a Campaigner at the Environmental Justice Foundation (EJF). She joined EJF in 2009, where she has worked as a researcher and campaigner on issues including environmental and social abuses in cotton production, persistent organic pollutants (POPs) and climate change. She has contributed to publications such as ‘No Place Like Home: where next for climate refugees?’ and ‘A Nation under Threat: The impacts of climate change on human rights and forced migration in Bangladesh’. She was part of the EJF team investigating the human rights threats posed by climate change in Bangladesh, and works with EJF’s partners as part of the Home Truths – Climate Witness Network. She has also worked as a researcher on the international trade of endangered species and shark fisheries for the international NGO WildAid.
Jeanette Schade
Human rights, climate change and climate policies in Kenya: The case of Tana Delta
Coming from the arid and drought hidden North of Kenya Tana River is the only adjacent watercourse which carries water the whole year through. Thus its delta serves as an important fallback zone for nomadic pastoralists form those provinces and is moreover home to small-scale farmers, local semi-nomadic pastoralists, hunters and gatherers and to a rich biodiversity. The environmental conditions and hydrological system of the Tana Delta are, however, strongly impaired by three developments: Up-stream economic activities impact upon the delta’s flooding scheme and thus upon local agriculture; climate change increases rainfall variability; and the Kenyan government plans to boost agrofuel production in the delta region as a part of its climate change mitigation and adaptation strategies. All three factors jeopardise the right to water and to food of the delta’s inhabitants as well as of the seasonally in-migrating pastoralists. Expanding agrofuel cultivation, moreover, implies that people get evicted from their lands, displaced, and deprived of commonly used natural resources. This happens despite the newconstitution of August 2010 because Kenya’s land tenure system is currently still shaped by the legacy of the post-colonial land management system, which made Kenyans highly land insecure. The field study, carried out in summer 2011, shows how environmental change, climate policies, and land regulations interact with each other to the disadvantage of already vulnerable groups and the fulfilment of their human rights to water, food, and housing, which are anchored in both international standards and the new Kenyan constitution.
Jeanette Schade completed her M.A. in philosophy at the Munich School of Philosophy of the Society of Jesus and holds a diploma in development studies from the University of Bremen. She worked for the Institute for Development and Peace (INEF) of the University of Duisburg, where she received her PhD on international relations (focus on civil society actors). At the Center on Migration, Citizenship and Development (COMCAD) of Bielefeld University she is now in charge of the conference series on Environmental Change, Migration and Conflict, a collaboration between the University and the European Science Foundation. Since 2011 she is the acting vice chair of the COST Action on Climate Change and Migration.
Claire Debucquois
Land Appropriations in the South: a Rights-based Approach
Arable land in the South is increasingly becoming a tradable commodity, and is changing hands on the international market. I analyse this phenomenon according to two benchmarks, the right to food and a hypothesis of “globalizing property rights,” paying particular attention to the bargaining and contesting tools available to rural communities. Firstly, local communities are increasingly struggling to access and manage the land, water and natural resources that have supported their livelihoods for generations. These are now being converted into large-scale agro-industrial plantations, mostly aimed at non-food production (agro-fuels). Secondly, the spread of western-style property rights regimes as a universal institution is apparently resulting in the disruption of pre-existing social structures, fostering land-related conflicts as well as rural-urban migrations and reinforcing social hierarchies and dependency patterns. While international law provides effective protection for foreign investment, international human rights law too often remains inaccessible for people affected at the grassroots level.
Claire Debucquois is a fellow at the Belgian National Fund for Scientific Research (Aspirante auprès du F.R.S.-FNRS) and attached to the University of Louvain (UCL, Louvain-la-Neuve) and Columbia Law School. She is member of the Research Team of Prof. Dr. O. De Schutter, United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food.
Tania Berger
Urban growth, climate change and vulnerability - How are people in informal urban settlements in the Global South affected by and do respond to natural disasters?
Rural to urban migration is a dominant process in the Global South. Rural poverty and lake of service provision figure as pushing factors while urban employment and income generating opportunities pull people to the agglomerations. Despite appalling living conditions in the quarters of those newly migrated to the city, these agglomerations function as development catalysts, enabling new citizens to access social services formally unavailable to them in remote countryside locations. Living on limited premises excludes rural migrants from participating in the formal housing market and forces them to informally settle in unsuitable locations and suffering from lake of secure tenure. Due to their location in areas of hazard risk and their appliance of cheap and inappropriate materials these marginalized settlements are extremely vulnerable to disaster. Increased frequency of natural hazards is expected to be among the impacts of climate change. Urban poor are therefore among those most affected.
Tania Berger is an architect by training, PhD in Natural Resources and Applied Life Sciences. Currently she is engaged in establishing a centre for Social Housing within the Department for Migration and Globalization at Danube University Krems, Austria. Dr. Berger has been coordinating several research projects on national and international level concerning energy efficiency in the built environment, including aspects such as passive house building design, building integrated PV, impacts of climate change in the built Environment.
Panel II
Maja Bahor (co-author Andrej A.Lukšič)
Green citizenship in the light of environmental migrations
In a paper ecological migrations will be addressed from a radical political ecological perspective that all people live within the same biosphere, therefore all people are interconnected and mutually responsible to each other. In this light, environmental migrations have political implications to all people in different social and geographical positions. These implications will be highlighted from conceptual point of view through critical revision of a citizenship. Green political theorists interrogate the concept of citizenship through 'natural condition'. The paper presents an up to date compilation of different views to linkage between green politics and theories of citizenship: starting from a search to appropriate theory of citizenship in globalised world, through ecological revision of liberal and republican notion of citizenship, to designing of fundamentally different notion of ecological citizenship. The ecological citizenship moves in radically new directions and it is an illustration of how the principle can lead to actions rooted in justice.
Maja Bahor, Msc,is a doctor student candidate on Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Ljubljana and works as a researcher and a teaching assistant at the same Faculty. Her research work is focused on green political theory, democracy and sustainable development. In recent years she cooperated in two projects. In the first, Professional training for professionals in education in the field of social and civic competences, she gave lectures and performed workshops on sustainability, ecology and democracy in numerous different groups of teachers all around Slovenia. In the second project – Citizen(ship) in the new age: citizenship education in multicultural and globalized world, she performed researches about topics within citizenship education and researched new pedagogical methods and tools in topics related to citizenship, democracy and environment.
Andrej A. Lukšic, PhD, is Associate Professor of Political Theory and a Head of the Centre for critical approach to political science at the Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Ljubljana. At the Faculty of Social Sciences he teaches several subjects from political sciences at the undergraduate level, at graduate level he teaches Political Ecology. Since 1993 he is a director of The Institute of Ecology. He has experiences in editorial and project management, research and teaching at undergraduate, graduate and post-graduate level. His research and educational work focuses on relationships between various types of technologies, different forms of democracy and democratization, and green political theory. As a member of the Institute of Social Sciences he was holder and cooperating in several different projects from political science field.