Welcome to Catastrophic Science, the series where we consider new research about catastrophes
– and that can hopefully save us from disasters in the future.
Climate change will bring more frequent extreme weather events, droughts and sea level rise.
It is likely many people will be forced from their homes – some estimate this could even be
in the hundreds of millions in the decades ahead.
We’re already seeing displacement as a result of climate change and disasters now.
In fact climate change means that normal disasters suddenly become disasters on steroids.
As we saw in Vanuatu in the aftermath of Cyclone Pam in 2015, extreme weather events can displace people from their homes.
The most vulnerable people in society are the ones who are affected most.
This is because they don’t have the financial security or the social networks to get themselves out of harm’s way.
A lot of the debate about how to manage future climate migrants has been dominated by academics and governments.
For Johannes Luetz, this was not necessarily the right approach
so for his PhD at UNSW, he set off to conduct field work in several countries
where people are already migrating due to changes in their environments.
I see these communities as the real experts of climate migration.
They’re the ones who have lived through the experiences
they’re the ones who can best identify challenges and solutions from their perspective
and we just can’t bypass them in the process.
In Bolivia, he saw that droughts had caused mass migration to cities like Santa Cruz and La Paz.
The erosion of the world’s highest ski slopes also threatened La Paz’s water supply.
In Bangladesh he visited areas where up to seven kilometres of land had eroded along coasts and rivers.
The erosion was so great, it outpaced Google Earth satellite updates
and has displaced hundreds of thousands of people.
And in the Maldives, he met people from Hathifushi island.
After storms which flooded the island up to 1 metre
their isolation and soil salinisation meant they could no longer sustain life there.
Within weeks all 295 residents had to be permanently evacuated.
So what did the migrants from the island of Hathifushi have to say?
Because everything was pretty much an ad hoc response which hadn’t been pre-planned,
people found it very, very difficult to cope.
The islanders ended up living in host communities, on the island of Hanimaadhoo
and four and a half years on they were still basically at the mercy of their island host communities
awaiting for these houses to be finished and constructed, with no firm word on exactly when that would happen.
That’s a horrible situation for them to be in.
With the majority of the Maldives a metre or less above sea level
what do you think is going to happen in the future?
The government started a new project, which is cautiously seen as a pilot project.
What they’ve done is they’ve raised an island to a level of two metres above sea level using concrete,
using sand that they’ve mined from the ocean floor.
It’s really an artificial masterpiece of human engineering
which could serve as a solution for climate change.
With that though, we’re altering nature, is this a sustainable solution?
I think the jury on that is out.
As they concrete out right to the edge of the reef, people live now in closer proximity to the waves,
which potentially makes people more vulnerable,
so it’s not really clear if that’s necessarily always the best solution.
So Johannes, having spoken to all these migrants, is there a common theme that’s coming through your research?
People really if given a choice, would want to stay right where they are.
There’s just no place like home.
Forward thinking migration planning leads to more benign migration outcomes.
First of all, at the grass roots level, both the affected community
and the community into which people might move
need to be educated about the issues.
Secondly, at the international level, governments need to look at where the protection gaps are
and ensure that they develop strategies that can help people to move them out of harm’s way in the first place
but also to protect those who do end up displaced.
because there’s no clear international legal framework.