In a recent ruling by the UN Human Rights Committee, the international community, for the first time, recognized that those who have an immediate threat to their life due to climate change and seek refuge across borders should not be forced to repatriate due to risks to their lives and livelihoods. In doing so, the UN has essentially equated climate migration with situations of war or persecution. The move has been lauded by many experts as a positive step towards the recognition of climate-induced migration and the evolution of traditional understandings of migratory patterns.
However, climate migration is a deeply political issue and there continues to be an absence of legally-binding obligations on states to cooperate. For example, Australia played a major role in defeating a proposal by the neighbouring Pacific Island states to create a coordination facility that would manage climate refugees in the region. The conversation surrounding environmentally forced migration is also highly polemical, especially in countries like India where the term has not yet entered political or legal discourse, and there is a lack of refugee-specific legislation.
India has failed to recognize climate-induced migration as separate from existing notions of illegal immigration, and has not sufficiently engaged in dialogue with Bangladesh to collaboratively securitize their shared geographies and create frameworks to deal with climate migrants and refugees.
The International Organization for Migration defines environmental migrants as persons who are "obliged to leave their habitual homes" due to extreme weather events–such as a rise in sea levels, or drought and water scarcity– that "adversely affect their lives or living conditions". For example, even a one-meter rise in sea levels places 145 million people at risk, of which 41% are in South Asia and 32% are in East Asia.
Considering the high number of environmental disasters in South Asia over the past decade, it is imperative for dialogue on climate refugees to be initiated. In 2019, climate change displaced over 2.7 million Indians internally due to drastic flooding and drought in various parts of the country. Further, it is estimated that one in every seven people in Bangladesh will be displaced due to climate change by 2050, of which up to 18 million people will be at risk due to sea-level rise alone.
Bangladesh is home to over 140 million people with a population density of 1,209 people per km2, of which around 75% people live in rural areas. The state is extremely vulnerable to climatic events along its coast, which makes up about 30% of its territory and houses over a quarter of the nation's population. The Bangladesh Centre for Advanced Studies estimates that around 17.5% of land and 11% of the population could be destroyed and displaced with a one-meter rise in sea levels. Further, the Riverbank Erosion Impact Study (REIS) found that 94 of 462 upazillas (sub-districts) and 64 zillas (districts) are witnessing river bed erosion, of which levels in 34 zillas have been deemed ‘severe’.
These climatic risks to Bangladesh have made its people, whose livelihoods primarily depend on natural capital, highly vulnerable. For instance, farmers' and fisherfolk's livelihoods are dependent on relative stability in the ecosystem, as their minimal financial resources inhibit their adaptability to, and preparedness for, severe climatic events.
New Delhi has already been dealing with a large number of internally displaced persons and has always received a steady influx of migrants from Bangladesh. In fact, India is one of few countries to officially recognize the risks associated with internal displacement and has drafted specific policies and frameworks on the issue. The 2007 National Rehabilitation and Resettlement Policy and the 2013 Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Resettlement and Rehabilitation Act (LARR) are in place to ensure adequate recovery packages to affected families and to improve communications between the stakeholders involved in rehabilitation processes. The 2016 National Disaster Management Plan and the National Action Plan on Climate Change also provide guidelines for disaster management strategies that are in line with the internationally recognized Sendai Framework. Despite such frameworks, India is still ill-prepared for potential climate-induced mass migration from across the border due to a lack of bilateral understanding on this issue.
The current Indian position on Bangladeshi migration focuses on traditional notions of socio-economic and political problems rather than looming climate-related issues like rising sea levels and loss of land. But in recent discourse surrounding the National Register of Citizens and the Citizenship Amendment Bill that claim to “deal with” the issue of illegal migration, the focus on religious persecution has taken attention off of other push and pull factors underlying this movement, including climatic threats. Therefore, there has been no discussion on the scope of seasonal or temporary asylum to tackle this particular issue independent of economic or political motivations.
It is imperative that India recognizes climate change as a significant factor in cross-border displacement, especially given the history of shared environmental damage between the two countries. In 2006, a group of scientists confirmed that the Lohachara Island in the Sunderban delta, home to 10,000 people, was washed off the map due to flooding in the 1980s. The submergence of New Moore Island in 2010, over which both countries had territorial claims, is a more recent incident following a similar pattern. Such incidences, which are fueled by poor securitization and environmental policymaking at the borders, necessitate strategic and ecological cooperation.
In 2011, both countries signed a Memorandum of Understanding on the Conservation of the Sunderban to their respective Environmental ministries. But more than seven years later, neither side has much to show in terms of achievement in this regard–it took almost five years for the Joint Working Group to even be convened in New Delhi. Since the mandate of the MoU requires a robust cooperation mechanism that needs constant open information exchange and the participation of multiple stakeholders, it is unlikely that unilateral action by either country will help move these efforts past its pre-initial phases.
In order for Dhaka and New Delhi to fully institutionalize their ecological partnership, both parties need to take a proactive stance to acknowledge that environmental integrity and state sovereignty are not mutually exclusive; rather, it is essential to cooperatively manage shared land and waterscapes to ensure territorial security. They need to formally discuss migration in the specific context of environmental security and employ frameworks to deal with this separately, as the issue of NRC/CAA has already brought up diplomatic insecurities regarding the deportation and repatriation of ‘illegal’ Muslim Bangladeshis.
The neighbours must agree to some kind of temporary or seasonal asylum measures for environmentally displaced migrants wherein India does not lose out on its resources or development to safeguard the interests of Bangladeshi citizens. Of course, this is an ambitious expectation given the resistance towards such measures and the 'inclusion versus exclusion' debate. There are also complications that will arise in the implementation of such a policy, such as determining the legitimacy of these cases and providing measures for rehabilitation and repatriation, but these are for later debates.
Right now, Indian policymakers need to move past the question of “when, where, and how many migrants” and acknowledge that there are underlying climatic factors out of people’s control that force them to move from risky regions and push them towards migration as an adaptation method. If not any concrete measures, the two countries must at least begin a conversation in this regard to hopefully act as a first step towards regional climate change management in South Asia.
The second JWG meeting for the Sunderban MoU is slated to be convened in the first quarter of this year. One hopes that the issue of climate migration is brought up and formally introduced to lay a foundation for possible cooperation in the future.
References
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