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Pacific Islanders face need to eventually migrate, due to rising sea levels

Pacific Islanders reject ‘climate refugee’ status, want to ‘migrate with dignity’, SIDS conference hears ABC News 4 Sept 14 They have long been described as climate refugees: the hundreds of thousands of people living on low-lying Pacific islands who may be forced to migrate if rising sea levels leave their homes uninhabitable.

But it is a term Pacific leaders say is loaded with political connotations and does not reflect the true dimensions of the problem.

“They see [refugee] as a negative term that connotes victimhood and people in need of protection by the international community,” Professor Jane McAdam, director of the Andrew & Renata Kaldor Centre for International Refugee Law at UNSW, told the ABC.

“For them it signifies that they’ve become people who don’t have any agency or aren’t able to contribute.

“What Pacific Islanders have told me is that, ‘we want to be seen as active economic and social contributors to any country to which we might need to move. We would like to have opportunities to migrate with dignity rather than have to wait until the situation becomes so dire that we are forcibly displaced’.”

The sentiment was echoed at the International Conference on Small Island Developing States (SIDS) which wrapped up in Apia, Samoa, on Thursday………

Australia has joined the steering group of the Nansen Initiative on Disaster-Induced Cross-Border Displacement, which aims to “build consensus on the development of a protection agenda” for those forced to flee natural disasters and the effects of climate change.

“We do need to enable people to have opportunities to migrate … but we also need to combine that with disaster risk reduction strategies, with adaptation strategies and with good development practices so that we have a holistic approach to the issue,” said Professor McAdam, who sits on the Nansen Initiative’s consultative committee.

She said the Nansen Initiative will put forward “a comprehensive framework of solutions” next year.http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-09-05/pacific-islanders-reject-calls-for-27climate-refugee27-status/5723078

September 6, 2014 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | climate change