Bangladesh - climate change

Climate change: The urge to adapt.

The case of Banglades

        Global warming and environmental degradation produce major population movements within states and beyond their borders. The case of environmentally displaced undergoing such transformations is far from being addressed uniformly by international law. If these realities with varied contours escape the existing conventions on refugees, they require more than ever the implementation of a specific protection system. By 2050, the world could have 200 million climate refugees, or 250 million for the same period, figures on which the World Organization of Immigration and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees agree.

Bangladesh, one of the countries most vulnerable to climate change, will face a situation of mass migration, which could quickly spread to neighboring countries.  

Indeed, Bangladesh suffers from a very fragile geological situation. Bordered by 230 rivers from the Ganges and Brahmaputra rivers and the river Teesta, all from the mountains of Tibet, Bangladesh inherits 92% of past water from the Himalayas. These rivers flowing into the Indian Ocean by its coasts, the country faces devastating erosion, caused both by land subsidence and rising sea levels, which could reach 45 cm in 2050. The erosion contributing to heat streams will make monsoons to become more violent and with a more frequent flooding; thus this erosion threatens 80% of the country. In addition, several Indian dams are already installed along the river Teesta and other dams are also problematic, including the Farakka on the Ganga. These dams are located in India near the border with Bangladesh, which greatly reduce the flow of rivers; so 50% of Bangladeshis living in agriculture will suffer from these projects besides to geological problems.

With a population of 156 million, according to the census of 2013, for a surface area of ​​just over 140,000 km², the population density is over 1,000 inhabitants / km² which quantitatively increases the consequences related to environmental problems. India believes that in 2012 between 10 and 20 million Bangladeshi had already migrated to India. So to prevent this massive migration, India has decided to build a separation barrier made of 3286km barbed for a border of 4085km between the two countries.  

Hemmed in by India, Bangladesh depends, like Lebanon with Syria, on Indian political decisions. India is therefore in a strong position here, and may be trying to promote a humanitarian disaster of great magnitude.

What to do at a global level?

        Knowing also that there is no "climate refugee” status in international law and given the geopolitical neglect of the rest of the international community, it seems complex that help from the outside will come to mitigate the consequences of the problems the country is facing. UN negotiations on climate change on their side have trouble to lead to financial solutions for Bangladesh to adapt to these environmental conditions and to mitigate the consequences.

What solutions law can offer to help the millions of people sentenced to escape the consequences of climate change?

Diversity of situations, imprecise definitions

        A debate then established, dividing specialists: how to name the victims of environmental change given that the sources are many and varied? Indeed, this variety of sources leads to a plurality of situations in which it is still difficult to reduce all victims to a single legal category.

Reductive legal category: the "climate refugees"

A report prepared in 1985 for the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) served as the starting point to the ever-present debate on the legal status of those who are now called climate refugees.

Can the environmental disruption spread to consequences of natural disasters such as drought, famine, floods, cyclones, earthquakes, the effects of soil degradation, the land use policies and industrial accidents or wars? On the other hand, and since the people who are victims find shelter both inside and outside their country, what connection can there be between "environmental refugees" and migrants?

The concept of "climate refugees" has been the subject of a definition: "climate refugees" are "people who left immediately or are about to leave in the near future where they live because of sudden or gradual deterioration of the natural environment caused by one of the three following impacts from climate change: impacts of increased sea levels, extreme weather events (cyclones, storms), drought, scarcity of water “. The concept can be criticized on several viewpoints. From a legal point of view, it seems inappropriate in the light of the Geneva Convention, which defines a refugee as one who fears "persecution because of his race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group or political opinion (...)". Second, the person must have left his country to another, which involves the crossing of frontiers. But migration linked to environmental problems is mostly internal to the states.

Furthermore, the people concerned often dismiss the term “refugee”. They consider that it is reducing and non-protective, and especially as the link between climate change and their situation is often ignored or not felt. Typically, they are not invited to testify at roundtable discussions and diplomatic negotiations. This is all the more true that, being particularly vulnerable, they suffer from less access to media and political resources.

This feeling is reinforced by the exclusive application of the term "refugee" to people in developing countries. After the passage of Hurricane Katrina in the US in 2005, or storm Xynthia in France in 2010, the media spoke of "victims" and "survivors" but never of "climate refugees".

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