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Explorations in Integrated Approaches for SPC: Climate
Change and Disaster & Risk
Human Dimension of Climate Change and Disaster Risk
Management
CC-DRM Platform Meeting
27th May 2015
Mark Atterton
The Human Dimension
Health:
Climate change is creating new human health risks such as increased mortality due to heat
waves, increased occurrence of malaria and diarrheal disease, malnutrition due to local food
insecurity, and injuries due to violent weather. Most of these risks can affect entire
communities, but individual health risks tend to affect the poor disproportionately and to
have long-term effects on their well-being and ability to accumulate assets. Workers may be
disabled by excessive heat or affected by re-emerging infectious diseases such as yellow fever
and dengue.
Food security:
Climate change plays a role in declining household food security. Food security is a central
determinant of how poor households choose to deal with short- and long-term risk and how
they address trade-offs between immediate survival and the need to manage natural
resources for the future. Declining food security must be a major consideration in adaptation
and DRR efforts.
Decreasing livelihood options:
Coastal communities dependent on marine resources for their livelihood (fish, seagrass, coral
reefs) facing a rapid degradation of the resource base due to the combined impacts of climate
change, land use change, and competition from industrial fishing fleets
The Human Dimension
Markets that exclude the poor:
Semi-subsistence farmers who purchase much of their food and who face declining terms of
trade.
People living in forest areas who are facing increasing shifts to monocultures, which constrain
traditional methods for risk-spreading based on biodiversity.
Security:
New and intensifying forms of conflict: People experiencing conflicts arising from pressures on
land and other resources due to declining productivity in some areas; and those experiencing
conflict over land due to displacement caused by both sudden-onset disasters such as floods and
landslides and gradual changes such as desertification and rising sea levels
Drinking Water:
In a context where nearly a billion people lack access to safe drinking water, and 2.5 billion do not
have access to sanitation, climate change constitutes an added obstacle to ensuring such access,
and clearly a human rights concern. Climate change will, and already does, impact on people’s
rights to water and sanitation by causing floods and droughts, changes in precipitation and
temperature extremes that result in water scarcity, contamination of drinking water and
exacerbation of the spread of disease. Water scarcity may also result in increasing the cost of
water and sanitation provision. The poor, who are among the most vulnerable, are also likely to
be affected the most.
The Human Dimension
Migration:
Of course migration may be the only possible adaptive response in the case of some of the Small Island and
low-lying states where rising seas will eventually flood large parts of the country. Migration is typically seen as
a failure of adaptation, not a form of it. There are precedents though. Between 1984-5 the Ethiopian
government resettled tens of thousands of people from drought-stricken areas. Two decades later the Asian
Tsunami gave new impetus to plans in the Maldives to organize a “staged retreat” from their outlying islands.
The plan is to concentrate the islands’ 290,000 residents on several dozen, slightly higher islands than the 200
islands that the population is currently spread across. Migration with Dignity Policy (RMI, Tuvalu and Kiribati)
(SIDS Conference 2014 – negative connotations of ‘refugee’ status)
Immigration policy in less-affected countries in response (NZ ruled out changes to Refugee Convention)
With the eventual evacuation of entire national populations as a real prospect, these cases raise bigger
questions of ongoing sovereign rights over land and ocean zones once they are uninhabitable on a permanent
basis.
Gender and Climate Change:
Impacts of climate change, such as drought, floods, extreme weather events and reduced food and water
security, affect women and men differently with the poorest being the most vulnerable. Even though women
are therefore disproportionately affected, at the same time they play a crucial role in climate change
adaptation and mitigation actions. It is increasingly evident that involving women and men in all decisionmaking processes on climate action is a significant factor in meeting the climate challenge and achieving the
long-term objectives of the Convention.
The Human Dimension
Proposed Strategies
1. Mainstreaming of a human dimension approach in all
climate change programming - Human Rights Based
Approach to Development.
2. Human specific programming – new areas of work to
explore: culture, youth, gender, children disability, migration,
sovereignty of seas, compensation to populations affected,
preparedness for migration with dignity, policy development
and human rights and legalities of climate change.
A rights based approach to the human
dimension of climate change and DRM
Participation, Accountability, Non-discrimination and equality,
Empowerment and Legality
The Human Rights Council has recognized that “climate change-related
impacts have a range of implications, both direct and indirect, for the
effective enjoyment of human rights”. In affirming that “human rights
obligations and commitments have the potential to inform and
strengthen international and national policymaking in the area of
climate change,” it reminded us of the importance of applying a
human rights-based approach to the global response to the crisis.
(Resolution 10/4, 25 March 2009)
The SPC PAC
RRRT support across programmes
SPC Niche
• SPC is well equipped through track record, inhouse expertise and past experience to further its
engagement in Climate Change and the Human
Dimension Programming:
• Expertise and experience in all Divisions
• Ongoing Climate Change Adaptation and
Mitigation Human Dimension Programmes
• Partnership with SPC member states and other
multi-lateral and bi-lateral organisations such as
the EU, UN agencies, GIZ etc.
SPC and the Human Dimension
Issues for discussion
The role of the Statistics for Development Division
- Do we have adequate and disaggregated data to feed into climate change programming?
- Are we measuring migration and cause?
New climate change strategy and proposal development
- Where does specific climate change and human dimension programming sit within SPC?
- How can programmes involving multiple divisions be managed?
- Where is the new strategy or proposal development led from?
Vanishing islands and survival of nations
- If a nation is under water, is it still a state?
- Does it still have a seat at the United Nations?
- What becomes of its exclusive economic zone, the basis for its fishing rights?
- What obligations do other nations have to take in the displaced populations, and what are these
peoples’ rights and legal status once they arrive?
- Should there be a new international agreement on climate-displaced populations?
- Do these nations and their citizens have any legal recourse for compensation?
- Are there any courts that will hear their claims, and based on what theories?
SPC and the Human Dimension
Issues for discussion
Climate change and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)
The proposed Oceans and Seas SDG will commit the governments of the world to conserve
and sustainably use the oceans, seas and marine resources for sustainable development,
whilst increasing the extent of sanctuaries and for ocean conservation generally. Does this
fit/promote/conflict with local communities and their rights?
Humanitarian response
SPC is not a humanitarian organisation; however, it is significantly involved in Cyclone Pam
response, recovery, rehabilitation and preparedness works. New areas of work, for
example, social protection, culture, gender and youth in emergencies.