Is Cambodia the future shelter for Vietnamese climate exiles?

Neak Leung (Prey Veng, Cambodia). 16/11/2002: Storm near the Neak Leung pier, on the road from Cambodia to Vietnam
©John Vink/Magnum

Ka-set
http://cambodia.ka-set.info/

By Laurent Le Gouanvic
22-06-2009

Will Cambodia collapse under the weight of thousands of starving Vietnamese exiles, fleeing fields devastated by roaring waves? Much dreaded by Cambodians, the invasion of their territory by the children of Uncle Ho may result not from aggressive territorial ambitions, but from the dramatic consequences of a global warming that would force farmers into a rural exodus as their lands were gradually lost to the sea. If the scenario of a sudden arrival in mass of Vietnamese migrants on the Khmer soil seems unlikely today, several recent reports point out the major environmental risks which people in the Mekong Delta may be faced with in the forthcoming decades. A new challenge for the two nations after a long common history of much turmoil.

Predicting the future with maps, that is what researchers from the United Nations University, the NGO Care International and Columbia University have endeavoured to do in a report published in May 2009, entitled “In Search of Shelter: Mapping the Effects of Climate Change on Human Migration and Displacement”. Supported by documents and statistics, the three authors attempt to understand and explain “how environmental shocks and stresses, especially those related to climate change, can push people to leave their homes in search of ‘greener pastures’ … or just to survive.” On the eight maps intended to present regions of the world that are particularly vulnerable and symbolic of ongoing changes, two focus on the consequences of climate changes in the countries where the Mekong flows.

From the sources to the Mekong Delta
One of them features the enormous Himalaya chain, genuine “water towers of Asia” due to the presence of gigantic glaciers where mythical and vital rivers such as the Ganges, the Irrawady or the Mekong take their birth. The glaciers, which constitute natural water resources, are melting at a worrying pace, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The accelerated melting may jeopardise the survival of hundreds of thousands of Cambodians and Vietnamese whose farming lands are subjected to the Mekong’s whims.

The fast melting of the glaciers of the Tibetan plateau, the authors stress, will likely provoke important flooding, mainly downstream first, that is in the Mekong Delta, Vietnam and Cambodia. In a second time, in addition to the disastrous floods, there may be the consequences of the construction of new hydropower dams upstream - which will temporarily benefit from important flows but may tend, with time, to deprive inhabitants downstream of diminishing hydraulic resources. A tragedy that is already unfolding, the report underlines.

Increasingly dramatic floods
If floods have long become an integral part of the daily lives of those living in the Mekong Delta, as their lives follow the river’s ebb and flow, their seriousness and frequency have been on the increase and become more and more problematic. “[E]nvironmental change (flooding in this case study) is shown to be a trigger for independent migration decisions [in the Mekong Delta] when livelihoods are negatively affected,” the authors claim, citing the testimonies of Vietnamese who settled in Cambodia, in Phnom Penh, and were interviewed for a field study carried out between October and December 2007 for the “Environmental Change and Forced Migration Scenarios” (EACH-FOR) program.

“Disasters occurred so often [in my native region],” then explained one of the 32 Vietnamese migrants living in the Cambodian capital and interviewed for the study “[M]y family lost the crop [and] had to borrow money to spend. Now, my family is not able to pay off the loan so I have to come here to work to help my family to pay the loan.” Among the 32 people - a non-representative sample of the population of Vietnamese migrants in Cambodia -, three quarters of them spontaneously cited problems related to the natural environment as one of the causes that influenced their decision to leave their homes. Half of them even claimed that the environmental issues had been the reason for their departure. “[T]he floods and the storms occurred all the time, we decided to migrate to earn a living,” confided one of the respondents.

From climate change to human trafficking
In the same study, a Vietnamese doctor working in Phnom Penh reported even more tragic situations: some Vietnamese families allegedly sold their daughters to prostitution networks in Cambodia to ensure their survival, after their crops were destroyed by successive floods. Although this may not be made into a general statement, this observation seems to point to an unexpected consequence of climate change: the increase in human trafficking. The writers conclude that the link between the two phenomena is real, although it was not effectively measured.

Flooded worlds
In addition to the fears prompted by the melting glaciers in the Himalaya, there is another threat, which is more localised and addressed in another map of the report “In Search of Shelter”: the rising sea level. Here again, the researchers from the UNU, Care International and Columbia University echo the conclusions of a previous study made by the World Bank, which claimed that due to the density of its population and of threatened farming areas, Vietnam was one of the two countries at risk of suffering most seriously from a rising general sea level.

On the basis of predictions made in February 2007 by the experts mandated by the World Bank, the May 2009 report stressed that in the future, one Vietnamese out of ten would be faced with displacement due to a seal level rise in the Mekong Delta. Today, no less than 18 million people live in the Mekong Delta, that is 22% of the total population of Vietnam. Also and even more importantly, the region is Vietnam’s green belt, as it represents about 40% of the cultivated land in the country, which provide “half of its national rice production and 80% of its fruit production.”

Two-meter increase, 14 million migrants
The authors speculate that, should the global sea level rise of two meters, nearly 14.2 million Vietnamese - a figure higher than the total population of Cambodia, which currently stands at 13.4 million people - would lose their land to the waters. A frightening prospect. Especially when the figures are read in light of the introduction of the report: “[…] societies affected by climate change may find themselves locked into a downward spiral of ecological degradation, towards the bottom of which social safety nets collapse while tensions and violence rise. In this all-too-plausible worst-case scenario, large populations would be forced to migrate as a matter of immediate survival.”

Vietnam, but also the whole region, including Cambodia, would therefore be faced with an unprecedented migratory and humanitarian crisis that may have economic and political consequences. The Khmer Kingdom, itself subject to draught, in areas that already suffer from it, and to periods of flooding, would then also be faced with the arrival in mass of unwanted Vietnamese farmers ready for everything to save their lives.

Unpredictable consequences
However, the catastrophic scenario, which is based on a two-meter rise of the sea level, represents a hypothesis that not everyone agrees upon. The various patterns selected by the IPCC in the 2007 report, which serves as the reference on this issue, foresees that global warming will increase between +0.6oC and +4oC by 2099. According to the various envisaged predictions, the increases would result in the sea level rising from 0.18 to 0.59 meter by the end of the century. The IPCC warns that these figures are to be taken with a pinch of salt, as the Panel is issuing here scenarios that exclude “future rapid dynamical changes in ice flow”: “[T]he upper values of the ranges given are not to be considered upper bounds for sea level rise,” it stresses. “The projections include a contribution due to increased ice flow from Greenland and Antarctica at the rates observed for 1993-2003, but these flow rates could increase or decrease in the future.” Increase? Decrease? Under these circumstances, it is difficult to predict what the state of farming lands in the Mekong Delta will be in the next fifty years.

Prompting governments to react
The most pessimistic predictions therefore offer at least one interest: that of prompting governments of concerned countries to react in order to anticipate and adapt – if not to fight on their own against climate change. Thus, Vietnamese authorities have decided to set up a programme aimed at controlling population movements related to the new environmental phenomena, entitled “Vietnam Disaster Prevention”, which consists in relocating families living in vulnerable areas. The challenge is significant: the relocations are heavy operations as they require not only to find available land but also to make sure that the displaced families will have access to new means of subsistence and social, health and education structures.

In Cambodia, since 2006, the government drafted a “National Adaptation Programme of Action to Climate Change” supposed to coordinate the various operations and information in this area. However, the Kingdom appears as one of the Asian countries least prepared, according to the “Climate Change Vulnerability Mapping for Southeast Asia” published in January 2009 by the Economy and Environment Program for Southeast Asia. Cambodia is reportedly the country with the weakest “adaptive capacity” in South-East Asia. Although less exposed than other territories to storms and natural catastrophes, the country is, after the Philippines, most at risk of being affected by climate change, due to its weak adaptive capacities.

At the regional level, a lukewarm awareness
Finally, at the regional level, the issue of global warming and CO2 emissions has timidly started to appear at the top of the agenda. On June 16th and 17th, the Asian Development Bank sponsored a high-level meeting on climate change in Asia and the Pacific, while the institution announced the doubling, from 2013, of its investments in “clean energies.” However, a long way remains before the issue of internal and transborder displacements of population be tackled upfront.

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Climate “refugees” or “migrants”, fundamental issues behind the words
While some organisations refer to “climate refugees”, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) recalls that the word “refugee”, as defined in the 1951 Geneva Convention on the statute of refugees, legally concerns only the individuals who have left the country of their nationality due to persecution or founded fear of persecution. Following this official definition, individuals who have left their place of residence for economic or environmental reasons may not be considered as refugees. The terms “environmental migrants or displaced people” are therefore used in the official jargon. The International Organization for Migration therefore uses the following definition: “Environmental migrants are persons or groups of persons who, for reasons of sudden or progressive changes in the environment that adversely affect their lives or living conditions, are obliged to have to leave their habitual homes, or choose to do so, either temporarily or permanently, and who move either within their territory or abroad.” The issues involved in these terms and their definitions go beyond the linguistic dimension: a person benefiting from the statute of refugee has the right to be accepted on the territory of state parties to the Geneva Convention, a right that “economic” or “environmental migrants” may not claim currently. The UNHCR therefore demands a global discussion on the statute of the new migrants to ensure their global protection and, if required, to be entrusted with new responsibilities… and the funds necessary.