Global Implications of Development, Disasters and Climate Change: Responses to Displacement from Asia Pacific 9781138838178, 9781315734583

Table of contents :
Cover
Title
Copyright
Contents
List of tables and figures
Foreword
Acknowledgements
Contributors
Introduction
Part I Escalating displacements: convergences, rationales and the search for alternatives
1 How climate extremes are affecting the movement of populations in the Asia Pacific region
2 Multiplying displacement impacts: development as usual in a changing global climate
3 Displacement and resettlement as a mode of capitalist transformation: evidence from China
4 ‘Something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue’: a critical evaluation of the newest Indian Land Acquisition, Resettlement and Rehabilitation Act (2013)
Part II Pressures on land: global issues, country strategies and local responses
5 From Banaba to Rabi: a Pacific model for resettlement?
6 India’s grassroots movements against investment-forced displacement
7 Local responses to land grabbing and displacement in rural Cambodia
8 Resettlement and borderlands: adapting to planned population resettlement on the Cambodian-Thai border
9 Community strategies for accountability in displacement: the experience of communities in Boeung Kak Lake, Cambodia
10 Development-forced land grabs and resistance in reforming Myanmar: the Letpadaung Copper Mine
Part III Environment, climate change and disasters
11 A disaster prevention resettlement programme in western China as an adaptation to climate change
12 Conservation-led displacement, poverty and cultural survival: the experiences of the indigenous Rana Tharus community in far-western Nepal
13 Pondering the right to return . . . and the right not to: Fukushima evacuees in limbo
14 Negotiating relocation in a weak state: land tenure and adaptation to sea-level rise in Solomon Islands
15 Land for housing: international standards and resettlement in tsunami-affected Indonesia
Conclusion
Index

Citation preview

Global Implications of Development, Disasters and Climate Change

Displacements in the Asia Pacific region are escalating. The region has for decades experienced more than half of the world’s natural disasters and in recent years a disproportionately high share of extreme weather-related disasters, which displaced 19 million people in 2013 alone. This volume offers an innovative and thought-provoking Asia Pacific perspective on an intensifying global problem: the forced displacement of people from their land, homes and livelihoods due to development, disasters and environmental change. This book draws together theoretical and multidisciplinary perspectives with diverse case studies from around the region – including China’s Three Gorges Reservoir, Japan’s Fukushima disaster and the Pacific’s Banaba resettlement. Focusing on responses to displacement in the context of power asymmetries and questions of the public interest, the book highlights shared experiences of displacement, seeking new approaches and solutions that have potential global application. This book shows how displaced peoples respond to interlinked impacts that unravel their social fabric and productive bases, whether through sporadic protest, organised campaigns, empowered mobility or even community-based negotiation of resettlement solutions. The volume will be of great interest to researchers and postgraduate students in development studies, environmental and climate change studies, anthropology, sociology, human geography, international law and human rights. Susanna Price is a Research Associate in the College of Asia and the Pacific at the Australian National University (ANU), Canberra. Jane Singer is Associate Professor at the Graduate School of Global Environmental Studies, Kyoto University.

Routledge Studies in Development, Displacement and Resettlement

Land Solutions for Climate Displacement Scott Leckie Development-Induced Displacement and Resettlement Edited by Irge Satiroglu and Narae Choi Resettlement Policy in Large Development Projects Edited by Ryo Fujikura and Mikiyasu Nakayama Global Implications of Development, Disasters and Climate Change Edited by Susanna Price and Jane Singer

Global Implications of Development, Disasters and Climate Change Responses to displacement from Asia Pacific Edited by Susanna Price and Jane Singer

First published 2016 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2016 selection and editorial matter, Susanna Price and Jane Singer; individual chapters, the contributors The right of the editors to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data   Global implications of development, disasters, and climate change : responses to displacement from Asia Pacific / edited by Susanna Price and Jane Singer.    pages cm. — (Routledge studies in development, displacement, and resettlement)   1.  Internally displaced persons—Asia.  2.  Forced migration—Asia.  3.  Migration, Internal—Asia.  4.  Economic development—Social aspects—Asia.  5. Disasters—Social aspects—Asia.  6. Climatic changes—Social aspects—Asia.  I.  Price, Susanna (Social development specialist), editor.   HB2093.A3G56 2015  362.87095—dc23  2015008570 ISBN: 978-1-138-83817-8 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-315-73458-3 (ebk) Typeset in Goudy by Apex CoVantage, LLC

Contents

List of tables and figuresviii Foreword – Theodore E. Downingx Acknowledgementsxiv Contributorsxv Introduction

1

SUSANNA PRICE

PART I

Escalating displacements: convergences, rationales and the search for alternatives19   1 How climate extremes are affecting the movement of populations in the Asia Pacific region

21

FRANÇOIS GEMENNE, JULIA BLOCHER, FLORENCE DE LONGUEVILLE, NATHALIE PERRIN, SARA VIGIL, CAROLINE ZICKGRAF AND PIERRE OZER

  2 Multiplying displacement impacts: development as usual in a changing global climate

41

KATE HOSHOUR

  3 Displacement and resettlement as a mode of capitalist transformation: evidence from China

59

BROOKE WILMSEN AND MICHAEL WEBBER

  4 ‘Something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue’: a critical evaluation of the newest Indian Land Acquisition, Resettlement and Rehabilitation Act (2013) CHIARA MARIOTTI

74

vi Contents PART II

Pressures on land: global issues, country strategies and local responses89   5 From Banaba to Rabi: a Pacific model for resettlement?

91

JOHN CONNELL AND GIL MARVEL TABUCANON

  6 India’s grassroots movements against investment-forced displacement

108

FELIX PADEL

  7 Local responses to land grabbing and displacement in rural Cambodia

124

ANDREAS NEEF AND SIPHAT TOUCH

  8 Resettlement and borderlands: adapting to planned population resettlement on the Cambodian-Thai border

142

JESSIE CONNELL

  9 Community strategies for accountability in displacement: the experience of communities in Boeung Kak Lake, Cambodia

159

ADAM MCBETH

10 Development-forced land grabs and resistance in reforming Myanmar: the Letpadaung Copper Mine

174

EMEL ZERROUK

PART III

Environment, climate change and disasters189 11 A disaster prevention resettlement programme in western China as an adaptation to climate change

191

YINRU LEI, C. MAX FINLAYSON, RIK THWAITES AND GUOQING SHI

12 Conservation-led displacement, poverty and cultural survival: the experiences of the indigenous Rana Tharus community in far-western Nepal

205

LAI MING LAM

13 Pondering the right to return . . . and the right not to: Fukushima evacuees in limbo JANE SINGER AND WINIFRED BIRD

222

Contents  14 Negotiating relocation in a weak state: land tenure and adaptation to sea-level rise in Solomon Islands

vii 240

REBECCA MONSON AND DANIEL FITZPATRICK

15 Land for housing: international standards and resettlement in tsunami-affected Indonesia

256

DANIEL FITZPATRICK

Conclusion

273

SUSANNA PRICE AND JANE SINGER

Index

281

Tables and figures

Tables 1.1 Average annual number of people affected by intense disasters in Asia Pacific (in millions) 3.1 Estimates of resettlement of various kinds of projects (millions of people) 10.1 Percentage of profit shares in the old and new versions of the Monywa Mines contract 15.1 Displacement and loss or destruction of land 15.2 Housing and land requirements for relocation as of February 2007

28 60 184 258 261

Figures 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 5.1 5.2 5.3 7.1 7.2 8.1 8.2 8.3 8.4

Yearly mean temperatures Daily maximum temperatures exceeding 90th percentile Mean annual rainfall Number of heavy precipitation events (rainfall > 95th percentile) Banaba and its South Pacific neighbours Rabi and Wakaya islands Banaba and Rabi islands Economic land concessions and location of study village in Kratie Province Economic land concessions and location of relocated communities in Koh Kong Province Distribution of relocated households and distance moved from previous residence Map of railway project identifying the resettlement sites Affected community members interviewed by location and settlement type (N = 141) Poipet-Aranyaprathet borderlands, indicating proximity of the resettlement site

24 25 26 27 96 97 98 130 136 145 146 147 152

Tables and figures  ix 1 0.1 Land lease area of Letpadaung Mine with surrounding villages 180 10.2 Reporting trends based on media analysis of 12 news sources (three each of four media groupings) 182 11.1 Case study locations 193 11.2 The one-day maximum precipitation in Shangnan County (1981–2012)194 11.3 The frequency and land area affected by drought-flood disasters in Shangnan County (1981–2012) 194 13.1 Evacuation zones in Fukushima as of 2013 225 13.2 Bags of contaminated soil after decontamination efforts in the town of Iitate 233 14.1 Solomon Islands, showing current provincial boundaries 241

Foreword

Five decades of research and experience confirm that disaster- and developmentforced displacement creates interconnected social and economic risks with lasting negative impacts. Productive systems are dismantled. Well-defined spatial-temporal and social landscapes are nullified. Fortunately, the findings have also established that such harm might be avoided or mitigated. Building on this foundation, Global Implications of Development, Disasters and Climate Change explores the extent to which these findings are applicable to the extensive Asian and Pacific forced displacements. This exploration comes at a time when forced displacement is becoming a moral minefield, sown with discredited excuses and false justifications by those who stand to benefit from a project. No longer can a state or an enterprise easily justify the forceful taking of land and livelihoods as being in ‘the public interest’. It is difficult to rationalise the dismissal of the property, lives and livelihoods of those people deemed ‘in the way’ in favour of the benefits a project would bring to society at large. The claim that ‘you can’t make an omelette without breaking a few eggs’ reveals a callous ignorance of alternative, technical options. People are now asking: ‘Whose eggs will be broken? Who gets the omelette? Who will pay for it?’ Politicians once engineered public opinion to support a forced displacement by branding those who opposed it as ‘enemies of the state’. They are discovering the winds blow in both directions. Displacees may also be viewed as victims of political corruption. Equally discredited is the argument that compensation for lost houses or land is enough to make the displacees whole. Those who view involuntary resettlement, forced displacement, land grabs or forced resettlement as simple land transactions must face the painful truth. Involuntary resettlement is not a real-estate transaction. More than 400 years ago, Shakespeare knew the difference: You take my house when you do take the prop That doth sustain my house; You take my life When you do take the means whereby I live. The Merchant of Venice (1596–98)

Foreword 

xi

Also being questioned are the attempts to avoid paying displacees full compensation by narrowing the definition of who is entitled to compensation. As the full spectrum of the socio-economic disabling and multisided pauperization impacts unleashed by forced displacement becomes clearer, under-assessments for compensating land expropriation and exclusion are denounced as flawed economics. The flaws may be responsible for untrustworthy project budgets that fail to fully disclose project liabilities. The bottom line is: development that impoverishes is not development. This book offers ample evidence that existing national and subnational laws and policies are insufficiently robust to avoid or mitigate the sociocultural and economic risks facing the forcefully displaced. In Asia and elsewhere, a few nations have been reforming their national land acquisition laws and policies to facilitate economic development and ease private sector access to natural resources. After earlier, misguided forced displacement norms and practices harmed millions of people, China began to substantially reform its involuntary resettlement policies. These reforms were based on its own high-quality social research and negative experiences, with the active assistance of the World Bank. The Chinese became aware that the traditional compensation-for-land model of involuntary resettlement created new poverty, a serious contraction to the intent of socialism. New industry needed access to land, threatening serious social unrest. Consequently, government has encouraged a rewriting of scores of new involuntary resettlement laws and regulations. Over 20 years ago, China began to recalculate land compensation rates, not on understated appraised or market value but on the future livelihood value of the land. They did this by compensating for the average annual output value (AAOV) years prior to the acquisitioning of land and multiplying it by a factor up to 16 (Cernea and Mathur 2008, Wilmsen 2011). China also began taking encouraging steps to address less tangible sociocultural risks using methods that may be transferable elsewhere. At the time of this writing, China’s resettlement policies provide a higher level of protection with more financial support for displaced people’s economic reconstruction than the World Bank’s policy (OP/BP 4.12). Unfortunately, these enlightened national policies are not yet used as guidelines for overseas Chinese-financed or Chinese-sponsored projects in developing countries. India also modernized its old policy framework, the outdated Land ­Acquisition Act of 1894, passing the “Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act, 2013” (LARR). The LARR clarifies what is and is not a public purpose, defines land ownership, sets limits on acquisition, provides for just and fair compensation and legislates the need for rehabilitation. Certain types of takings, from a scientific perspective, were unjustifiably excluded from the act, including special economic zones and railways. Political circumstances have led to subsequent repeals and changes in some elements of this act, but this does not nullify the incremental progress that has been made.

xii Foreword In China, India and elsewhere, national and subnational laws extend far beyond the limited reach of the policies and guidelines of the international financial intermediaries. Advocates for justice are discovering that national legal changes are rewarding and dynamic, but demand constant vigilance lest they be reversed. The new frameworks are encountering resistance from those who gain, unfairly and unjustly, at the expense of those who are in their way. Who are the real enemies of the state? Advocates of sustainable, equitable development in Asia and the Pacific have an opportunity to correct a legacy of abuse. They can find inspiration and support in the research-based findings and international standards referenced in this volume. My colleagues who are working with forced displacements have unearthed a paradox. Development-induced, forced displacement may cause its opposite – counter-development – or, as specialists in my organisation prefer to call it, ‘new poverty’, making poor people poorer. This underlying paradox offers an important lesson for development economists and sociologists. Development-forced displacement and resettlement (DFDR) is proving to be much more than an economic transaction. Humans define themselves, in great part, in much wider dimensions. Economies are embedded and supported by organising social transactions within routine spatial and temporal patterns. To cite the most obvious, economic transactions regularly peak at certain places and certain times and when life cycles enter new phases, such as when couples marry. Forced displacement alters the embedded socio-cultural foundations of an economy, a change likely to have wide-ranging, long-term consequences. In this situation, the sociocultural tail wags the economic dog. Forced displacements create localised, economic chaos by shattering the spatial and temporal orders in which an economy is embedded. Payment for one factor of production, compensating for land, is only one side of this multilateral equation. The landscapes being razed are a consequence of historical – often forgotten – negotiations and decisions, of detailed social interactions, of reciprocal and informal ties and agreements: a sociocultural assemblage of what we call routine culture that facilitates, supports and sustains an economy (Downing and Garcia-Downing 2009). Conversely, these economic constructs and actions are fundamental to routine culture, assuring that both essential resources and energy can be identified and supplied sufficient to meet the community’s material needs. Routine culture is often organised around regular cycles of natural forces – this is the basis of the real socio-economic threat from the vicissitudes of climate change. Consequently, the restoration of livelihoods and lives following a forced displacement is not a simple land acquisition – it is one of the most theoretical and practical challenges in development. Theodore E. Downing President, International Network on Displacement and Resettlement (www.displacement.net) and Professor of Social Development, University of Arizona

Foreword 

xiii

References Cernea M and H Mohan Mathur 2008 Can compensation prevent impoverishment? Oxford: Oxford University Press. Downing T E and C Garcia-Downing 2009 Routine and dissonant culture: a theory about the psycho-socio-cultural disruptions of involuntary displacement and ways to mitigate them without inflicting even more damage. In Oliver-Smith A ed Development and dispossession: the anthropology of displacement and resettlement. Santa Fe, NM: School for Advanced Research Press. (www.teddowning.com) Wilmsen B 2011 Progress, problems and prospects of dam-induced displacement and resettlement in China. China Information 25(2) 139–164.

Acknowledgements

Considering the magnitude of displacement and resettlement problems in today’s world, it was most appropriate that this subject featured large at the 20th New Zealand Asian Studies Society International (NZASIA) Conference 2013 at Auckland University, with a full session on each of the three days. This made the subject a major connecting theme throughout the conference, which had the overall title Displacement and Cultural Space: Reconstructing Spatial and Temporal Meaning. This volume arose from discussions stimulated at the conference and involved scholars from around the Asia Pacific region. The editors would like to acknowledge, with thanks, the work of the original conference organisers in Auckland and of the contributors to this volume, which took shape over some months. The editors would also like to thank the editorial and publications specialists at Routledge, particularly Helen Bell, and Maria Ainley-Taylor for invaluable assistance in production. Our special thanks to Khanam Virjee of Routledge for her great support in promoting the book from its conception. We gratefully acknowledge the crucial financial and logistical support provided by our respective academic institutions, Australian National University and Kyoto University, and the input and assistance from our colleagues there. Finally, we would like to warmly thank our families. Susanna Price would like to thank Jack Harvey for his forbearance and superior knowledge of grammatical constructs. Jane Singer would like to thank Hiroshi, Adam and Gina Mizuguchi for their advice, understanding and emotional and nutritional support. Any errors in this volume are the responsibility of the editors.

Contributors

Winifred Bird is a journalist and translator based in the Chicago area. From 2005 to 2014 she lived in Japan, where she covered the environment and architecture for publications including The Japan Times, Dwell and Environmental Health Perspectives. She has written extensively about the impacts of Japan’s 2011 tsunami and nuclear disaster on natural and human communities. Julia Blocher is a PhD candidate at the University of Liège Centre for Ethnic and Migration Studies (CEDEM). She is involved in the HELIX and MECLEP research projects and has previously worked with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre. Jessie Connell is completing her PhD with the Mekong Research Group at the University of Sydney. She is an experienced social policy and development consultant. Her PhD examines the ways communities recover from involuntary resettlement in Cambodia. She has been based in Bangladesh since January 2015. John Connell is professor of human geography at the School of Geosciences, University of Sydney. He has written several books on migration and development with a focus on the Pacific region, most recently Islands at Risk (2013). C. Max Finlayson is a wetland ecologist at the Institute for Land, Water and Society. He has published more than 90 journal papers and 20 books. He has extensive experience in Australia and overseas in water pollution, mining and agricultural impacts, invasive species, climate change, human well-being and wetlands. Daniel Fitzpatrick writes on property rights in a development context. He has been a global visiting professor at New York University School of Law (2011), a visiting professor at the National University of Singapore (2006–09), a visiting professor at the University of Muenster (2002) and a distinguished visitor at the University of Toronto (2007). In the autumn of 2014, he returned to New York University School of Law as a global senior visiting research fellow. Currently, he is an Australian Research Council future fellow (2012–2016). He was the UN’s land rights adviser in post-conflict East Timor (2000) and post-tsunami Aceh (2005–6) and was the primary author of the UN’s land and

xvi Contributors disasters guidance for practitioners (2010). He has undertaken professional consultancies on law and development with the World Bank, AusAID, the Asian Development Bank and Oxfam International, among others. In 2011, he established the master’s degree in law, governance and development at the Australian National University. François Gemenne is an FNRS (National Fund for Scientific Research) senior research associate at the University of Liège (CEDEM). A specialist in environmental changes and migration, he is the scientific coordinator of the MECLEP project. He also teaches at Sciences Po (Paris) and the Free University of Brussels. Guoqing Shi is a social scientist at the National Research Center for Resettlement. He has published more than 160 journal papers. His research focuses on involuntary resettlement, social safeguards, financial and economic analysis, environmental sociology and integrated water resource management. Cathy “Kate” Hoshour is social anthropologist with 15 years of experience in advocacy, research, and writing to challenge destructive development models and practices and uphold human rights, with a focus on development-forced eviction. Kate provides strategic support to community-led efforts to halt proposed coal projects in South Asia and has carried out extended research on state-directed resettlement in Indonesia. Lai Ming Lam is an associate professor of anthropology at Osaka University. Since 2003, she has been carrying out research on the impact of conservation policies on the welfare of local communities, particularly those in Nepal. Her work demonstrates the complex conflicts that arise in the relationships between displacement, poverty and cultural change. Yinru Lei is a social researcher at the Institute of Wetland Research, Chinese Academy of Forestry. Lei’s specific research focuses on the migration decision-making process, climate change–migration nexus, climate change adaptation, forced displacement and resettlement caused by development projects, environmental policies, land resource management and environmental and social impact evaluation. Florence de Longueville, PhD, is a geographer at the University of Liège (CEDEM). She specialises in migration, environment and health issues and is involved in the HELIX project. Chiara Mariotti is a development economist with expertise in involuntary resettlement and chronic poverty. She holds a PhD in economics from the School of Oriental and African Studies, where she investigated the resettlement of the people displaced by the Polavaram Dam in Andhra Pradesh. She is currently based at the Overseas Development Institute in London, where she works on various issues relating to chronic poverty and pro-poor growth.

Contributors 

xvii

Her countries and areas of interest include India, Nigeria, east Africa and south-east Asia. Adam McBeth is an associate professor in the Faculty of Law at Monash University and a deputy director of the Castan Centre for Human Rights Law. He is currently part of a team, funded by the Monash University-Oxfam Australia Partnership, that is studying the community experience of accountability processes in the context of development projects in Cambodia. Rebecca Monson is a lecturer at the Australian National University College of Law and convenor of the Law, Governance and Development programme. Her work draws on law, geography and anthropology to explore the intersections of state and customary law in the south-west Pacific, particularly in relation to social differentiation and inequality. She has conducted fieldwork in Solomon Islands, Vanuatu and Fiji, and regularly undertakes consultancies on justice systems, gender and development for donors, non-governmental organisations and government agencies. Before joining ANU, she specialised in emergency and disaster law. She is currently completing a book that examines transformations in land tenure and gender relations in Solomon Islands and how local contests over the ‘ownership’ of land are entwined with state formation. Monson and Daniel Fitzpatrick are also investigators in an Australian Research Council discovery project looking at rising sea levels and local relocations in Solomon Islands. Andreas Neef is professor in development studies at the University of Auckland. His research focuses on natural resource governance, with a particular emphasis on the ethics and politics of land grabbing, development-induced displacement, adaptation to climate change and post-disaster response and recovery. He has served twice as the scientific adviser to the German parliament on issues of global food security and on societal and political discourses on the commodification of biodiversity and ecosystem services. Pierre Ozer, PhD, is a professor at the University of Liège. A climate scientist by training, he is an expert on desertification and extreme events. Felix Padel is a social anthropologist/sociologist, who trained at Oxford University and the Delhi School of Economics. He has written three books on tribal, mining and environmental issues: Sacrificing People: Invasions of a Tribal Landscape (1995/2010), Out of This Earth: East India Adivasis and the Aluminium Cartel (2010 with Samarendra Das) and Ecology, Economy: Quest for a Socially Informed Connection (2013 with Ajay Dandekar and Jeemol Unni). Nathalie Perrin is a research fellow at the University of Liège (CEDEM). She is a specialist in the social dimensions of migration and is involved in the MECLEP project. Gil Marvel Tabucanon has recently completed a PhD at the Macquarie University School of Law, entitled ‘Environmental Migration in the Pacific:

xviii Contributors Resettlement and Legal Frameworks for Protection’. He has published work in Australia and in the United States on the legal protections of environmentally displaced Pacific populations. Rik Thwaites is at the Institute for Land, Water and Society. His research focuses on climate change and, in particular, how rural landholders perceive and are adapting to it. Siphat Touch is director of the Research Office under Cambodia’s Department of Research and Training, Ministry of Rural Development, and is currently working on the development of the climate change action plan for Cambodia’s Rural Development Sector 2014–2018. He holds a BA in sociology from the Royal University of Phnom Penh and an MA in sustainable development from Chiang Mai University. Sara Vigil is an FNRS research fellow and PhD candidate at the University of Liège (CEDEM). Her work considers the issues of land grabbing and migration, with a focus on Senegal and Cambodia. Michael Webber is professor emeritus at the School of Geography, the University of Melbourne. A political economic geographer, he has conducted research on the development of capitalism in China since the mid-1990s. His latest book on that theme is Making Capitalism in Rural China. Brooke Wilmsen is a research fellow and lecturer in international development at the School of Social Sciences and Communications, La Trobe University. She is currently undertaking a longitudinal study of the people displaced by the Three Gorges Dam in China, funded by an ARC Discovery Early Career Researcher Award. Emel Zerrouk has a Ph.D. from the Graduate School of Global Environmental Studies, Kyoto University. Her primary focus is on water security and land rights. Current work includes studying reforming Myanmar and the displacement of local populations resulting from changes in land tenure and water resource development. Caroline Zickgraf, PhD, is a political scientist at the University of Liège (CEDEM). She is a specialist of immobility and is involved in the HELIX project.

Editors Susanna Price is currently a research associate at the College of Asia and the Pacific, the Australian National University. Her work on resettlement policy enhancement in Asia Pacific won the Praxis Award from the Washington Association of Professional Anthropologists (2003) and the ninth Canadian Award for International Cooperation (2000). Recent publications include (with Kathryn Robinson of ANU) Making a Difference? Social Assessment Policy and Praxis and Its Emergence in China (Berghahn Books, January 2015).

Contributors 

xix

Jane Singer is an associate professor at the Graduate School of Global Environmental Studies, Kyoto University. She has a master’s degree in international affairs, specialising in economic and political development, from the School of International and Public Affairs, Columbia University, New York, and a PhD in global environmental studies from Kyoto University, focusing on development-forced displacement and resettlement. For the past three years, she has led a Japanese government-funded, multidisciplinary project investigating community resilience among dam-displaced ethnic minority communities in central Vietnam. A long-term resident of Japan, Singer has three decades of professional experience as a writer, editor and associate publisher for commercial and academic newspapers, journals and magazines.

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Introduction Susanna Price

This book offers an Asia Pacific1 regional perspective on an intensifying global problem: the forced displacement of people from their land, homes and livelihoods in escalating numbers. In this book we ask why and how displacement is increasing in Asia Pacific, a region which is recognised globally for its rapid growth. We open a window to the fears and hopes of people displaced, as they respond to the shock of their newly dislocated worlds. Drawing upon their responses, and those of national and local governments, we conclude with some ideas for the future.

Asia Pacific: growth, displacement and risks to poverty reduction The Asia Pacific region is a leader in global change. Rapid economic growth and foreign investment have raised living standards significantly and dramatically reduced extreme poverty. This region produces nearly 40 per cent of global gross domestic product (GDP) in purchasing power parity terms, and about one-third of world exports (Asian Development Bank 2014). Almost two-thirds of the region’s economies raised investment spending between 2000 and 2013, expanding their productive capacity to promote further growth (ibid.). Asia Pacific now accounts for over half of the global population, with six of the world’s 10 most populous countries and a high rate of urbanisation (ibid.). Infrastructure investment and energy consumption are both rising steeply. Rapid growth, however, is not without cost. Asia Pacific now consumes more than two-fifths of the world’s energy, accounts for increasing emissions of greenhouse gases and other pollutants and rapidly consumes scarce resources, including its own forest land (Asian Development Bank 2014). Unprecedented urbanisation absorbs large tracts of farmland, displacing productive rural communities. Land degradation – erosion, pollution, nutrition depletion and salinisation – and growing water shortages constrain food production and drive people to move. Meanwhile, population growth and lifestyle changes increase the demand for food across the region, raising prices. Rising food insecurity is now a major concern in Asia Pacific (ibid.), especially since the landless and urban poor spend a large proportion of their budget on food. Food insecurity exacerbates the impact of displacement, particularly for the poor.

2  Susanna Price Natural disasters – floods, fires, droughts, earthquakes – across the region have noticeably increased in severity, frequency and impact. They are increasingly attributed, in part, to climate change as explained in Chapter 1. Natural shocks include tsunamis, volcanic eruptions and major environmental changes, such as soil and coastal erosion and soil salinisation. These events, which may be exacerbated by human intervention, all have the potential to displace people. Climate change-sensitive rural food production affects many farmers across the region. Similarly, as will become apparent in this volume, low-income households are particularly vulnerable to disasters and shocks, and to the possibility of displacement, because they have few savings and few options. Shocks can throw marginal households back into poverty. Even the expectation of future shock can contribute to keeping households poorer for longer, as households will lower their ­earnings so as to pursue risk-averse strategies.2 Yet, as Jane Singer and Winifred Bird explain in examining the Fukushima disaster in Chapter 13, disasters are also non-discriminating in their impacts – they can also wreak havoc on middle-class communities in developed countries, such as Japan. This case also demonstrates that human intervention can exacerbate the impact of natural disasters. Urbanisation only adds to competition for land across the developing world from states, communities, conservationists and developers. These pressures raise the risk of displacement through ‘land grabbing’ – that is, the contentious issue of large-scale land acquisitions through means such as purchase or lease in developing countries. Multiple studies and media reports identify the outcomes of land grabbing: lost livelihoods, food insecurity, environmental damage and social disarticulation, especially for customary land users without formal legal title to their land.3 Weak governance over land – its demarcation, titling, transfers, expropriation and management – is widespread. In fact, investors have been shown to be proactive in selecting those states with poor recognition of local land rights for their land-based investments (World Bank 2011). These trends increase the risk that investors gain land ‘for free and in neglect of local rights’ (ibid. 49–55). People displaced from that land may be particularly hard hit because local institutions cannot or will not protect them. Environmental change adds to an already volatile mix of pressures on economies and societies, adding new types of displacement with forms of slow and rapid-onset climate change–forced displacement (CCFD). It may be seen as a ‘threat multiplier which exacerbates pre-existing vulnerabilities’ (McAdam 2010, 287). Climate change will have cumulative impacts, whether slow or rapid in onset, while adaptation and mitigation strategies will compound the effects of displacement in a region in which land is already scarce. As Gemenne et al. contend in Chapter 1 of this volume, the ‘double uncertainty’ of unknown local climate change impacts and the unknown responses from people and governments underlines the need for an evidence-based approach. That displacement, from whatever cause, delivers similar experiences to the people displaced has been known for some time (McDowell and Morrell 2010). We contend that, as the causes or triggers of forced displacement converge, types or categories of internal displacement are becoming increasingly blurred and hard

Introduction  3 to differentiate from one another. There is growing convergence, too, in the strategies for the relocation, rehabilitation and resettlement of people displaced as a search for remedies has begun among researchers, policymakers and practitioners. But solutions are elusive, presenting a challenge to the governance frameworks required to address the escalating scale and severity of forced displacement.

Scope of the book Bakewell (2008, 439) called for new insights through ‘policy-irrelevant research’ that goes beyond the officially defined categories, concepts and priorities of policymakers and practitioners to seek new insights from displaced peoples themselves. Following this lead, we focus on the shared experiences of people displaced: on their despair, their loss of place and identity, their protests and the multiple ways in which they challenge, negotiate and manage the displacement experience. In defining ‘responses to displacement’, we encompass individual, household and community coping strategies – for example, resistance and protest; mobility through temporary or permanent migration from relocation sites, occupational transition and commuting for employment; changing land use, such as intensification or extension of agriculture; and negotiation and collaboration with non-governmental organisations (NGOs) or other external stakeholders. Centralising people affected as key actors, this approach recognises the diversity of their responses to a range of displacement triggers. Examining both the governance strengths and weaknesses of national and international frameworks for addressing displacement and the priorities of displaced communities forms a basis for recommending new approaches. But we also recognise the critical importance of understanding the underlying structural pressures and constraints that create the tipping points beyond which a decision to move out of harm’s way becomes irreversible. Without this knowledge, any assistance provided to the displaced risks being irrelevant, ineffective or even harmful. We highlight, therefore, the shared experiences of displacement, seeking new approaches and solutions that have potential global application. The notion of the shared vulnerability of people displaced is certainly part of this dialogue, but we also note, with McAdam (2014, 73–74), that embracing a vulnerability discourse can be counterproductive. It can entrench inequitable power relations between affected communities and sites of knowledge production, such as international institutions, academia, NGOs and the media. Without, we hope, downplaying the deeply disruptive nature of displacement and its dissonant effects on communities and households, we, therefore, focus on the notion of human agency, coping strategies and even empowered choices. In introducing this volume, we start by defining displacement and attempting to quantify the key trends in the Asia Pacific region. We then canvas the ways in which forms of forced displacement converge and ask what also differentiates them. We review the prospects to adopt and replicate the development-forced displacement and resettlement (DFDR) experience more widely in other forms of displacement. We contextualise and introduce the chapters of this book. Finally,

4  Susanna Price we foreshadow the conclusion, in which we address governance challenges in greater detail and summarise the findings and recommendations.

Who are the displaced? First, who are the displaced? What are the categories for forced displacement and how did they emerge? The United Nations4 defines internally displaced persons as those who have been forced or obliged to flee or to leave their homes or places of habitual residence, in particular as a result of or in order to avoid the effects of armed conflict, situations of generalised violence, violations of human rights or natural or human-made disasters. (United Nations 2004, para 2) These guidelines recognise categories of internal population displacement according to their causal trigger: ethnic cleansing and other forms of civil strife, armed conflict, disasters and any development ‘not justified by compelling and overriding public interest’ (2004, Principle 6 [2]). While we recognise that displacement increasingly crosses international boundaries, we focus here upon people internally displaced within the borders of their own states, to whom may apply state policies, laws and regulations, rather than international refugee law. All such forms of internal displacement are increasing rapidly in the Asia Pacific region. The terminology is important – as we will discuss, some categories become self-fulfilling. There are different conceptualisations at work in these labels – DFDR effects do not always mean displacement as just defined, while new categories pose new challenges. Are people displaced by environmental and climate change to be classified as refugees, internally displaced people, forced migrants or migrants, for example? The label will help to determine what protections to afford them, if any (Bakewell 2011). Drawing on the UN Guiding Principles, recent efforts have been made to craft legal instruments for the protection of people displaced by climate change. ‘Forced displacement’ emphasises the lack of choice in the matter. ‘Relocation’ means the physical process of moving people, either temporarily or permanently, whether forced or with their consent (Ferris 2012), whereas ‘resettlement’ in its fullest form means the replacement of assets lost and the improvement, or at least restoration, of living standards, together with development opportunity (ibid.). The dimensions of forced displacement are staggering in the Asia Pacific region. Between 1950 and 2005, development and large-scale land acquisition reportedly displaced more than 60 million people in India, with the overwhelming majority worse off as a result (Mathur 2013). Felix Padel in Chapter 6 estimates that 40 per cent of the people displaced in India are forest dwellers and tribal people, whose centuries-old way of life is greatly dislocated as a result. The massive spatial transformation accompanying China’s fast growth strategy has seen the urban population share since 1978 rise from 18 to 51 per cent of total

Introduction  5 population (Lin et al. 2014), with some estimates as high as 88 million rural dwellers displaced around urban peripheries from 1990 to 2008, and another 50 million likely between 2009 and 2030 (Sargeson 2013, 1,068). This is in addition to numerous other project-related, private and urban displacements, protected area closures and a growing ‘environment-related development programme’, the subject of Chapter 3 in this book by Brooke Wilmsen and Michael Webber and of Chapter 11 by Yinru Lei et al. There is significant large-scale land acquisition in parts of Asia Pacific.5 These figures add to estimates of 200 million people in the Asia Pacific region displaced by environment-linked disasters between 2001 and 2010. Internal displacements from conflicts and disasters are already occurring at a record pace globally (Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre 2014). The Asia Pacific region has for decades experienced more than half of the world’s natural disasters and, in recent years, a disproportionately high share of extreme weather-related disasters, which displaced 19 million people in 2013 alone (ibid.). Such calamities are increasing in both frequency and severity. The small Pacific Island states are disproportionately affected. Representing a tiny 0.1 per cent of the global population, they experienced 2.3 per cent of the world’s reported natural disasters between 1980 and 2009 (ADB 2014). Eight of the top 20 countries by annualised relative losses from natural disasters are Pacific Island states (ibid.). Recent extreme natural catastrophes include large-scale floods in Cambodia, Thailand and the Philippines in 2011; Japan’s 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami; earthquakes in Wenchuan, China, in 2008 and Padang, Indonesia, in 2009; typhoons in Myanmar in 2008, Laos in 2009, the Philippines (2009, 2013, 2014) and Vietnam in 2009 (ADB 2014). Islands in South Asia and the Pacific (especially coral atolls with their fragile freshwater lenses) are particularly vulnerable to sea-level rise, while acidifying seawater threatens food sources. Environmental change can exacerbate displacement through its linkage to sudden disaster, longer-term response to worsening conditions or planned climate change adaptation strategies and mitigation projects. In Chapter 1 of this volume, Gemenne et al. present the latest Asia Pacific displacement projections from climate change modelling, using, for the first time, the higher, likely figure of 6°C warming with its intensified impacts. Current forecasts and projections, based on a 2°C temperature rise, predict that low-lying islands, coastal and deltaic regions will feel the effects. But 4°C or even 6°C warming would represent a threat to the very survival of these areas. This chapter contends that a greater temperature change would affect not only the magnitude of the associated population movements but also – and foremost – the characteristics of these movements and, therefore, the policy responses to address them. Some governments are contemplating or planning measures to address forced displacement caused by activities prompted by the need to cope with environmental change, such as building infrastructure, growing and processing biofuels, protecting biodiversity and removing communities from threatened areas (McDowell 2011). Environmental changes are classified as rapid or slow onset (or cumulative), perhaps with the disappearance of small island states as a special

6  Susanna Price category (de Sherbinin et al., 2011). Stojanov (2008) also recognises the displacement risks of industrial accidents (pollution or accidents at nuclear power plants), development projects (including mining and urbanisation) and conflicts over resources. Significantly, the UN 2004 Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement offer governments and practitioners a range of ways to protect all internally displaced persons, based on the one key defining feature, their displacement, following human rights normative principles, regardless of the cause of their displacement. The categories based on the trigger for displacement are, in any case, blurring and in some ways converging, as discussed in the next section.

Converging causes, converging remedies Recognising such convergences, this volume takes a broad view of displacement within the rapidly developing Asia Pacific region. Identifying strategies with potentially wider global application, this book, therefore, focuses on several themes. Highlighting the shared experiences and perspectives of those displaced, we trace interlinkages between cases of development-forced, environment-related, climate change–related and disaster-related displacement, omitting only conflict-related displacement for detailed treatment. First, the divide between ‘forced displacement’ and ‘voluntary mobility’ is less than clear-cut because multiple triggers may prompt a decision to move. The concept of the migration-displacement nexus (Koser and Martin 2011) aims to capture the complex and dynamic interactions between voluntary and forced migration. Environmental change may come through slow onset (drying, desertification, gradually rising sea levels). Whether people choose to migrate in these circumstances will depend on the structural factors and coping capacity of the affected society. Environmental change may be just one of a complex range of factors that cause people to move. Rather than positing a distinct category of ‘climate-change migrant’ or ‘refugee’, for example, Gemenne et al. in Chapter 1 expect climate change to interplay with other drivers of population mobility. It may be difficult, in these circumstances, to determine not only which driver is dominant but also whether the migration is a desperate response or a voluntarily enacted coping strategy. It may be difficult, in short, to decide whether it is ‘forced’ or ‘voluntary’. Even ‘involuntary’ displacement may still involve some degree of human agency (Turton 2003). Several researchers have proposed a range of categorisations, or typologies, of migration. Discussing several conservation-induced displacement cases erroneously assumed to be ‘voluntary’ negotiated agreements, Schmidt-Soltau and Brockington (2007, 2,185) propose a continuum between ‘voluntary’ and ‘involuntary’ encompassing various forms of pressure and coercion. People displaced may exercise their agency in choosing among alternatives for settlement, housing and livelihood. They may build upon past patterns of mobility to maximise their prospects for survival, negotiating their own solutions to the disruption of displacement in an empowering way, as Jessie Connell

Introduction  7 demonstrates for one strategically located Cambodian ‘borderlands’ displaced and resettled community in Chapter 8. In the context of weak governance, communities may negotiate among themselves solutions to growing environmental and climate-change problems to avoid a potential ‘forced displacement’, perhaps with added compulsion on account of having little confidence in government, as discussed by Rebecca Monson and Daniel Fitzpatrick in a Solomon Islands case in Chapter 14. Second, different causes of displacement may converge, even in one project. In Chapter 2, for example, Kate Hoshour cites the case of a Bangladesh coal-fired power project that, had it proceeded, would have displaced a large group of people through development-forced displacement in its initial construction phase. Once built and operating, its emissions would then have likely contributed to cumulative emissions that would ultimately exacerbate climate change–related sea-level rise in the low-lying parts of Bangladesh. That this double displacement could not be quantified at the outset to inform the project funding approval decision raises grave concerns. As Brooke Wilmsen and Michael Webber point out in Chapter 3, it is difficult to know at the outset the full extent of indirect or follow-on displacement effects on people located downstream of reservoirs, or those experiencing a range of delayed environmental and health impacts or follow-on job losses. Similarly, in Chapter 6, Felix Padel identifies follow-on effects for which developers took no responsibility. These caused difficulties for already marginal Indian communities by polluting or appropriating their scarce and essential ground water. Third, while it may be difficult to determine conclusively whether disasters result specifically from anthropogenic global warming or from other causes, remedies for disaster displacement may merge into remedies for other forms of displacement. Jane Singer and Winifred Bird in Chapter 13 explain the current status of Fukushima evacuees in relation to the official government resettlement policy and investigate the uncertain and difficult decisions facing individual households. Because many of the evacuees may never be allowed to return to their contaminated communities, they may require permanent resettlement, thus blurring the conventional distinctions between disaster and development-forced displacement as concerns residential volition and the right to return. In reviewing the Aceh tsunami case, Daniel Fitzpatrick (Chapter 15) finds that short-term disaster impacts can easily turn into longer-term relocation issues for homeless people, raising questions about the kind of resettlement to be contemplated and feasibly delivered. In the absence of detailed operational guidelines on resettlement caused by rapid-onset natural disasters, Fitzpatrick analyses the potential application of the World Bank’s standards on DFDR to tsunami-affected Indonesia, to highlight those areas where DFDR standards may require adaptation to the urgent circumstances of natural disaster recovery. Despite such differences in context, the World Bank’s policy standard offers a systematic way of approaching the issue of longer-term resettlement – and emphasises that ‘resettlement’ means much more than simply ‘relocation’. Cognizant of Ferris’s (2012) distinction between relocation and resettlement, should such programmes be

8  Susanna Price envisaged as simply ‘relocation’, which provides urgently needed shelter and housing to displaced people, or fully fledged ‘resettlement’, a concept developed over several decades among international organisations to address the problems of development-forced displacement based upon improved, or at least restored, livelihoods and living standards? This question foreshadows a discussion of the experience with DFDR, which follows in the next section. Fourth, DFDR approaches are already converging with environmental change mitigation and management in certain pre-emptive programmes. Taking a Chinese case, for example, Brooke Wilmsen and Michael Webber (Chapter 3) describe how DFDR strategies converge into approaches to environmental management which in turn form part of broader development strategies, by moving people off fragile environments into sedentary farming arrangements. In Chapter 11 Yinru Lei describes a similar Chinese case of ‘resettlement with development’ that is intended to pre-empt a continuing environmental deterioration, and which left certain groups facing challenges.

Why look to the experience of DFDR? The possibility is that climate change resettlement responses will be managed within the existing national and international policy and legal frameworks that currently determine land acquisition and resettlement policies and practices (de Sherbinin et al. 2011). This compels us to ask whether DFDR policy and legal frameworks and their implementation, as revealed through scholarship and evaluation, provide us with appropriate models and strategies. DFDR has been studied through a comprehensive process of policy formulation, research, praxis and policy reformulation since 1980. More recently, human rights principles and guidelines provide additional counsel on avoiding rights violations in forced evictions (UN 2006) and by introducing the concept of Free, Prior Informed Consent (FPIC) (UN 2008). Researchers are exploring this rich seam of experience for models and strategies for replication or adaptation to other forms of displacement. In most cases, DFDR works as a policy supplement to state laws for land acquisition, land transfer and/or biodiversity protection for planned project investments when financed by international financing institutions or, increasingly, private sector signatories to the Equator Principle.6 DFDR policies differ from state laws, typically, by focusing on rehabilitation and development opportunity rather than simply compensation (including for those without legal title), and they include a resettlement planning phase based on a social survey and census conducted with participation of the potentially displaced. Some states have moved their DFDR policy and legal frameworks in these directions. Chiara Mariotti’s Chapter 4 provides an in-depth analysis of India’s innovative new law, the Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Resettlement and Rehabilitation Act (LARR), which the Indian government adopted in September 2013 to replace the colonial-era Land Acquisition Act

Introduction  9 (1894). Mariotti concludes that the importance of this new law cannot be under-estimated. We now examine in more detail the convergence between DFDR and other types of internal displacement to highlight some critical points of difference which remain. We conclude with some ideas about what can be learned from DFDR for other forms of forced displacement. Convergence between DFDR and other forms of displacement CCFD slow onset climate change mitigation and adaptation projects that entail population-forced displacement – and relocation or resettlement projects contemplated as a longer-term solution to disaster displacement – may give enough time for participative resettlement planning. While human rights norms are applicable, however, in neither case is there any significant international protection for those displaced (Maldonado 2012). As the case studies will demonstrate, there are likely to be livelihood impacts in both cases, especially as many if not most of the affected populations are the least powerful in society (Hugo 2011). Conservation closures around protected areas generally fall under DFDR policies, where an international financier is involved, and they frequently affect marginal groups in remote locations. As Lai Ming Lam contends in Chapter 12, the strategies often fail to achieve their own objectives of replacing what has been lost. Disaster management, until quite recently, focused predominantly on emergency management, with occasional, largely ill-fated, resettlement attempts (Hugo 2011). Recently, however, a new disaster displacement and resettlement (DDR) approach is emerging, which focuses on DFDR conceptualisation and resettlement planning (Correa 2011; Oliver-Smith and de Sherbinin 2014). Resettlement in the framework of DDR involves a complex planning process similar, but not identical, to DFDR (Correa 2011). Where no risk mitigation is possible, planning processes similar to DFDR may be deployed. All forms of forced displacement have potential to disrupt spatial settlement patterns and socio-economic networks, housing and services, incomes and livelihoods, resource use and living standards. Underlying structural issues exacerbate the scope of displacement and its impacts. These include the quality of governance at various levels, the level of preparedness, the prevailing poverty trends and rates, and the level of human rights violations. Perceptions differ as to the extent to which these underlying structural issues, rather than clear and unequivocal evidence of environmental change, determine mobility. Barnett and Webber (2010), for example, contend that the social processes that underpin and trigger poverty and marginality are more important than the environmental changes themselves in determining mobility. This foreshadows the important question that underpins the perspective of Brooke Wilmsen and Michael Webber in Chapter 3. To what extent are environmental risk and climate change actually ‘social constructs’ that take on their own momentum and rationale in patterns informed by the dominant development paradigm?

10  Susanna Price Differences between DFDR and other forms of displacement There are, however, differences between DFDR and other forms of displacement. Whereas DFDR invokes language of ‘risk mitigation’, ‘development opportunity’ and ‘benefit sharing’, humanitarian guidelines, such as the United Nations’ Operational Guidelines on Natural Disasters, invoke the terminology of ‘protection’ (Ferris 2011). Their primary purpose is to ensure that mandatory evacuations do not violate international human rights standards. DFDR involves development actors, rather than humanitarian actors, has generally greater resources and affords more time for planning, especially where projects are directly productive and hold potential for benefit-sharing schemes with those affected. Ironically, however, DFDR in practice is routinely found to lack sufficient resources for proper resettlement (Cernea and Mathur 2008; Scudder 2012). The DFDR policies of international financial institutions, such as the International Financial Corporation (IFC), cover displacements resulting from closures of protected areas, which result in loss of access. In DFDR, the state’s power of eminent domain overrides constitutional and other rights, whereas CCFD typically depends on biodiversity laws and regulations that may differ from the usual state DFDR expropriation laws for developments ‘in the public interest’. The state’s legal basis for DFDR may be far more evolved than it is for other forms of displacement – although generally considered deficient compared with international resettlement standards. Importantly, DFDR policy, as expressed in international policy standards, addresses a range of losses: income and livelihood, housing, resources, services and other assets. To reflect this provision, in some cases, international financial institutions require only an Income and Livelihood Restoration Plan, rather than a full Resettlement Plan. In other words, people affected might not, technically, be ‘displaced’ physically but can still be included in DFDR policy entitlements if they lose income and livelihood, other assets or resources. This means that the UN’s category of ‘displaced person’ and the DFDR category of ‘affected person’ do not necessarily overlap fully. DFDR entitlements cast a wide net – albeit one that is not always implemented in practice. Other forms of displacement, such as CCFD and disaster displacement and resettlement (DDR), focus on loss of housing and may not address the full range of other losses, such as incomes, access to livelihood resources, and social services, which are critical to rehabilitation – a distinction illustrated dramatically in Daniel Fitzpatrick’s Chapter 15, where efforts focused on replacing housing. As Lai Ming Lam explains in Chapter 12, conservation organisations are failing in their response to formulate coherent and systematic guidelines to address the full range of social and cultural losses in displacement caused by conservation closures. Patterns of settlement may also differ. Whereas refugees are settled primarily as families or households rather than as communities, DFDR settlements are often of ‘groups’ or communities. Post-disaster displacees are now more likely to be resettled in communities as well (Oliver-Smith and de Sherbinin 2014). DFDR models (see Cernea 1997; Downing and Garcia-Downing 2009; Scudder 2012)

Introduction  11 were developed in the context of group resettlement, which, to some analysts, does much to explain the low levels of success, as discussed in the next section. Why does DFDR so often fail to prevent impoverishment? There is no systematic global or even country-based monitoring and reporting of DFDR scope or outcomes (Price 2015). Evaluators and researchers have assessed carefully the case study evidence of DFDR and, broadly, found it is difficult to meet the DFDR objectives of improved, or at least restored, livelihoods and living standards (IFC 2012; World Bank 1994, 2011). A full review of DFDR is beyond the scope of this introduction, but we distil a few key points that may help to frame responses. Why does DFDR so often fail to prevent impoverishment of people displaced? There is a range of sometimes overlapping explanations: 1

2

3

4

The ‘limited inputs’ explanation (e.g., Cernea and Mathur 2008; de Wet 2015; McDowell 2013, 678). Failure is explained by limited state policy and legal frameworks, minimal inputs – especially funds – that are reduced further through transaction costs, weaknesses in planning and implementation capacity (World Bank 2004). Scudder (2012), in a survey of 50 reservoirs, found that stronger project authority, staff capacity and funding helped partially explain every one of the few more successful cases found. Lack of political will. This may explain the persistence of input problems, why compensation rates are low, why broader development opportunities may be neglected and why there is a failure to consult the affected people meaningfully and elicit their engagement. It may relate to the overall lack of political clout of responsible agencies (Scudder 2012; World Bank 2004) and to problems right down the chain of responsibility to the level of negotiation with those displaced (Rew et al. 2006). ‘Spatial complexity’ theory (de Wet 2015). This theory posits that the typical DFDR group resettlement schemes are spatially too complex to manage and to guarantee outcomes, given complex interactions that occur in the context of imposed space change. This means that policy goals cannot be assured – but, at the same time, there may be, between the lines of these interactions, unexpected opportunities arising for displaced people (de Wet 2015, 86). Research and model building are not fully incorporated into policy, particularly with respect to social dimensions. Differences between international DFDR policies, state law and practice on the ground remain unresolved, while compelling academic findings remain unincorporated into policy, laws and practice (Satiroglu and Choi 2015). For example, the Impoverishment Risk and Reconstruction (IRR) model was cited in international policies but never fully adopted, except by the Inter-American Development Bank. While economic losses are significant in resettlement, community disarticulation is arguably the most complex part of the displacement and reconstruction process. Downing and Garcia-Downing (2009) contend that insufficient

12  Susanna Price attention has been paid to the risks of psycho-sociocultural impoverishment inflicted by displacement. The unravelling of spatially and culturally based patterns of self-organisation, social interaction and reciprocity represents the loss of valuable social capital that compounds the loss of both natural and man-made capital. Their theory of routine and dissonant culture (ibid.) has yet to be fully addressed in international policy and state law. Oliver-Smith and de Sherbinin termed DFDR a complex, cascading sequence of events and processes most often involving: dislocation, homelessness, unemployment, the dismantling of families and communities, adaptive stresses, loss of privacy, political marginalization, a decrease in mental and physical health status, and the daunting challenge of reconstructing one’s ontological status, family and community. (2014, 354–355) Few projects consider or attempt to mitigate all of these complex risks. 5

6

7

8

9

Too little opportunity for participation or empowerment of people displaced. Xi et al. (2015) finds that people displaced do not participate in risk analysis, while ethicists such as Drydyk (2015) contend that DFDR strategies must consciously opt to be more empowering for people in the way of development projects. Cunning states? Randeria and Grunder (2011) focus on the states’ strategies, rather than their incapacities – their unwillingness, in other words. The politics of power that attach to land are difficult to manage, especially where governance is weak, and are not addressed in market-led, risk-based approaches, which perpetuate the ‘fragmentation’ of responsibility under proliferating, complex forms of financing. Power asymmetries underlying large-scale land transactions mean that the state is not a disinterested, neutral actor that aims at maximising social benefits among its citizens. The creation of resettlement models overshadows the question of avoiding/reducing displacement, which is an essential step in international policies (Choi 2015). Brooke Wilmsen and Michael Webber in Chapter 3 of this volume point out that it is impossible to know if this requirement is being met. This has important implications for the conceptualisation of ‘the public interest’ and the initial selection of development trajectories and of project investments. DFDR as a process of victimisation of those people affected. Chakrabarti and Dhar (2010) label the language of DFDR as victimising – it positions the affected population as vulnerable and susceptible. While vulnerability is important, its dominance in policy and practice blinds planners to the people’s resilience and resourcefulness and justifies top-down, needs-based interventions. Absence or violation of human rights. International guidelines (UN 2004, 2006; United Nations Human Rights Officer of the High Commission 2011) on human rights may be totally or partially ignored.

Introduction  13 Can DFDR continue to attempt, with mixed success, to minimise the adverse consequences of development? Or is DFDR a crisis that requires fundamental rethinking of development? This question becomes urgent as the scale of displacement mounts, without any ready solutions in sight. In short, DFDR needs to be reconceptualised – as will be discussed in the conclusion.

The case studies The displacement cases presented in this volume resonate with many of these themes. Cases confirm the past experience with DFDR demonstrating that resettlement raises complex elements, including psycho-sociocultural risk – elements which underpin the challenge of re-establishing livelihoods and living standards. Where DFDR-type strategies are applied in the name of environmental change, such problems still persist. Because we focus on local responses, we find particular congruence with issues of transparency, empowerment and individual agency in the midst of processes that may threaten, or may actually begin, to unravel beyond control. Responses from people affected vary. Their actions and achievements depend on factors such as the degree of community cohesion, the level of international attention, the exclusivity, power and control of the national elite, the scale of impacts and the polarisation of the local context. These responses include feelings of initial disorientation, cultural dissonance, social disarticulation and lost identity, as well as impoverishment, as the full extent of social ‘unravelling’ becomes apparent (Lam, Chapter 12). Andreas Neef and Siphat Touch (Chapter 7) find that, in Cambodian economic land concessions, responses include local strategies of resistance that have been desperate, sporadic and atomistic vis-à-vis the powerful coalition of government authorities, concessionaires and military players that, cumulatively, provide weak governance, undermining in practical application earlier safeguards built into state laws on land. Conversely, in Chapter 9, Adam McBeth’s case study of an urban development in Phnom Penh, which involved forced eviction and resettlement of the local population, found that the community pursued a wide range of tactics, from the formal avenues of the Cambodian courts to the World Bank’s accountability mechanism. Campaign building made sophisticated use of the Internet to link local sites of contention to informal avenues of protest. The authorities deployed violence and intimidation, including arrest and imprisonment, at various stages. Ultimately many (but not all) of the community members succeeded in gaining title to their land. Similarly, Emel Zerrouk’s Chapter 10 explores the terrain of land-related investment in reforming Myanmar, where there are growing concerns over an increase in land grabs perpetrated by the government, the military and both foreign and domestic investing parties. The highly publicised Monywa Letpadaung Copper Mine case has epitomised the struggle between the disenfranchised, forced to relocate by the project, and investors, placed within the context of a central government in the midst of economic and legal reforms. This chapter

14  Susanna Price investigates the methods used by the affected parties to resist the expansion of the copper mine and the elements that are facilitating land grabs in Myanmar. Felix Padel’s India cases (Chapter 6) document the dissonance, social disarticulation and impoverishment unravelling the fabric of marginal Indian communities. These people have few options to re-establish a routine culture that reconfigures key elements of their centuries-old ways of life. Protests around these and many other such cases, arguably, have shaped the development and strengthened the rationale for the adoption of India’s new act, the aforementioned LARR. In Chapter 4, Chiara Mariotti argues that the LARR’s main strength is its being part of a broader legal framework of rights and guarantees that gives a legal grounding to social policies. Being part of this framework increases the LARR’s legitimacy as a tool to address discrimination and poverty, and the responsibility of the state to protect the affected people. The impact of this new law, and of recent moves to weaken it, is still being evaluated. Several chapters confirm a key theme that emerged from the analysis of DFDR record: that impoverishment is a very real risk of forced displacement, that re-establishing livelihoods constitutes a central resettlement challenge, and that social disarticulation and marginalisation work integrally with psycho-sociocultural disruptions in displacement. These processes are particularly deep-rooted and, crucially, underpin livelihoods and living standards. In Chapter 12, for example, Lai Ming Lam views her field data through the lens of routine and dissonant culture (Downing and Garcia-Downing 2009). She contends that, in a case of displacement caused by the restriction of access to a protected area of biodiversity in Nepal, the failed livelihood restoration programme compounded the effects of inattention to social disarticulation and psycho-sociocultural disruption. The period of dissonance that followed displacement, and the inadequate resettlement programme that failed to meet national ‘principles’, led to fragmentation of spatial settlement patterns, loss of household reciprocal labour exchanges, disrupted forms of traditional social security and disintegration of household formation. These disruptions have had disastrous consequences for the hitherto close-knit Rana groups. John Connell and Gil Tabucanon in Chapter 5 present a fascinating, longitudinal look at a decades-old Pacific case – the resettlement of the Banabans – that ultimately seemed to work. This was not because it was particularly well planned and implemented (it was not) but because the former colonial governments could take sweeping decisions, in this case, providing an entire replacement island, larger than the one the Banaba islanders had lost. Several generations later, however, this kind of interstate decision making is no longer possible and entire uninhabited islands are extremely hard to come by. Unresolved social and cultural issues, even in this long-standing Banaba case, still present unfinished business several generations later. These factors underline the growing case for examining underutilised strategies to avoid displacement altogether, and for challenging the rationale and justification for many projects. Why should a project proceed if it represents the interests of a narrowly defined, powerful elite, and/or is introduced illegally or violently (Chapter 7)? Why should it proceed if it will displace people, both in

Introduction  15 the short term as DFDR and in the longer term through open-ended, cumulative environmental change, including unforeseen disasters (Chapter 2)? Why should it proceed if it involves human rights violations (Chapter 2; Chapter 10)? Kate Hoshour’s Chapter 2 starts at the early stages, before project proposals even take shape, making a compelling case for greater transparency, greater inclusion and wider criteria in formulating the public interest in the first place. This might help to shape better project selection to avoid multiple, cumulative types of displacement.

Structure of the book Part I of the book, entitled Escalating displacements: convergences, rationales and the search for alternatives, addresses some of these broader themes, including demographic impacts, project selection, defining the public interest and a new initiative in state-based policymaking for DFDR. Part II, entitled Pressures on land: global issues, country strategies and local responses, takes up country case studies of responses to DFDR. Part III, Environment, climate change and disasters, presents case studies of environmental adaptation and of disasters. The conclusion confirms the wisdom of learning from evidence-based case studies. It identifies links between case study findings and governance issues in framing new directions that may have application beyond Asia Pacific.

Notes 1 Asia Pacific is a relatively loosely defined geographic region. Most definitions include the Pacific countries of Oceania; south-east Asia; south Asia (including Afghanistan and Iran); north-east Asia (including Mongolia and the two Koreas); and most of the Central Asian Republics, together with the easternmost parts of the Russian Federation. 2 ADB 2014 recently confirmed its view of the interrelatedness of rising food insecurity, climate change, calamities, disasters and shocks to recalculate the poverty rate for Asia Pacific, more than doubling the rate of extreme poverty. This means that continued regional poverty reduction requires major efforts to reduce these risk factors. 3 For example, see reports from Oxfam (2011), Land Matrix Partnership (2014), White et al. (2012); Hall, Hirsch and Li (2011) and numerous other research and media reports. 4 United Nations (2004). 5 Two of the top 10 countries for land acquisitions globally are Indonesia (Asia) and Papua New Guinea (Pacific) (Land Matrix Partnership 2014). 6 With nearly 80 members, the Equator Principles for private banks and financial institutions – financiers of major development projects around the world – use IFC’s Performance Standards. These, and a very few other industry-wide voluntary codes, primarily in the resources sector, have developed industry-specific codes that take advantage of the ‘ready-made’ DFDR policies of the World Bank Group.

References Asian Development Bank 2014 Key indicators for Asia and the Pacific 2014 ADB, Manila Bakewell O 2008 ‘Research beyond the categories: the importance of policy research into forced migration’ Journal of Refugee Studies 21(4) 432–53

16  Susanna Price Bakewell O 2011 ‘Conceptualising displacement and migration: processes, conditions and categories’ in Koser K and Martin S eds The migration-displacement nexus: patterns, processes and policies Berghahn Books, Oxford 14–28 Barnett J and Webber M 2010 ‘Accommodating migration to promote adaptation to climate change’ World Bank Policy Research Working Paper (no WPS 5270), April Cernea M 1997 ‘The risks and reconstruction model for resettling displaced populations’ World Development 25(10) 1569–1588 Cernea M and Mathur H M eds 2008 Can compensation prevent impoverishment? Reforming resettlement through investments and benefit-sharing Oxford University Press, New Delhi Chakrabarti A and Dhar A 2010 Dislocation and resettlement in development – from third world to world of the third Routledge, Oxford Choi N 2015 ‘Reinvigorating a critical discussion on “development” in developmentinduced displacement and resettlement (DIDR): a study of non-displacement impacts’ in Satiroglu I and Choi N eds Development-induced displacement and resettlement: new perspective perspectives on persisting problems Routledge, Oxon Correa E ed 2011 Preventive resettlement of populations at risk of disaster: experiences from Latin America World Bank, Washington DC De Sherbinin et al. 2011 ‘Preparing for resettlement associated with climate change, policy forum’ Science 334 456–457 (www.sciencemag.org) Accessed 27 October 2011 De Wet C 2015 ‘Spatial- and complexity-based perspectives on the ethics of developmentinduced displacement and resettlement’ in Satiroglu I and Choi N eds Developmentinduced displacement and resettlement: new perspectives on persisting problems Routledge, Oxford 85–96 Downing T E and Garcia-Downing C 2009 ‘Routine and dissonant cultures: a theory about the psycho-socio-cultural disruptions of involuntary displacement and ways to mitigate them without inflicting even more damage’ in Oliver-Smith A ed Development and dispossession: the anthropology of displacement and resettlement School for Advanced Research Press, Santa Fe 225–253 Drydyk J 2015 ‘The centrality of empowerment in DIDR: an ethical perspective’ in Satiroglu I and Choi N eds Development-induced displacement and resettlement: new perspectives on persisting problems Routledge, Oxford 97–110 Ferris E 2011 ‘Planned relocations, disasters and climate change’, prepared for Conference on Climate Change and Migration in the Asia-Pacific: Legal and Policy Responses 10–11 November, Sydney Ferris E 2012 Protection and planned relocations in the context of climate change Legal and Policy Protection Series, Brookings-LSE Project on Internal Displacement, Division of International Protection, Washington DC Hall D, Hirsch P and Li T 2011 Powers of exclusion: land dilemmas in Southeast Asia NUS Press and University of Hawaii Press, Singapore and Manoa Hugo G 2011 ‘Lessons from past forced resettlement for climate change migration’ in Piguet E, Pécoud A and De Guchteneire P eds Migration and climate change Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 260–288 International Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC) 2014 Global overview 2014: people internally displaced by conflict and violence IDMC, Geneva International Finance Corporation 2012 ‘Performance standard 5 on land acquisition and involuntary resettlement’ Washington DC (http://www.ifc.org/wps/wcm/connect/ 4b976700498008d3a417f6336b93d75f/Updated_GN5-2012.pdf?MOD=AJPERES) Accessed 7 January 2015 Koser K and Martin S 2011 The migration-displacement nexus: patterns, processes and policies Berghahn Books, Oxford.

Introduction  17 Land Matrix Partnership 2014 ‘Land Matrix newsletter’ October (http://www.land matrix.org/media/filer_public/b2/48/b24869d1-ff17-4cb2-8bc3-5c55ef6a3e0c/ lm_newsletter_3-4.pdf) Accessed 4 February 2015. Lin G S et al. 2014 ‘Strategizing urbanism in the era of neoliberalization: state power reshuffling, land development and municipal finance in urbanizing’ China Urban Studies 2014 DOI:10.1177/0042098013513644 Maldonado J K 2012 ‘A new path forward: researching and reflecting on forced displacement and resettlement’ Journal of Refugee Studies 25(2) 193–220 Mathur H M 2013 Displacement and resettlement in India: the human cost of development Routledge, New Delhi McAdam J 2010 Climate change and displacement: multidisciplinary perspectives Bloomsbury, London McAdam J 2014 ‘Conceptualizing crisis migration’ in Martin S F, Weerasinghe S and Taylor A eds Migration and humanitarian crises: causes, consequences and responses Routledge, London 28–49 McDowell C A 2011 Climate change adaptation and mitigation: implications for land acquisition and population relocation (report no WP3) Department for Business, Innovation and Skills/Government Office for Science, London McDowell C A 2013 ‘Development policy review 2013’ 31(6), Overseas Development Institute, London 677–695 McDowell C and Morrell G 2010 Displacement beyond conflict: challenges for the 21st century Berghahn Books, Oxford Oliver-Smith A and de Sherbinin A 2014 Something old and something new: resettlement in the 21st century in Martin S, Veerasinghe S and Taylor A eds Migration and humanitarian crises: causes, consequences and responses Routledge, Oxford 243–263 Oxfam 2011 Land and power: the growing scandal surrounding the new wave of investments in land Oxfam Briefing Paper 151 (http://www.oxfam.org/sites/www.oxfam.org/files/ bp151-land-power-rights-acquisitions-220911-en.pdf) Accessed 15 July 2014 Price S 2015 ‘Is there an international safeguard for development-induced displacement and resettlement?’ in Satiroglu I and Choi N eds Development-induced displacement and resettlement: new perspectives on persisting problems Routledge, Oxford 127–141 Randeria S and Grunder C 2011 ‘The (un)making of policy in the shadow of the World Bank: infrastructure development, urban resettlement and the cunning state in India’ in Shore C, Wright S and Pero D eds Policy worlds Berghahn Books, New York 187–203 Rew A, Fisher E and Pandey B 2006 ‘Policy practices in development-induced displacement and resettlement’ in de Wet C ed Development-induced displacement: problems, policies and people Berghahn Books, Oxford 38–69 Sargeson S 2013 ‘Violence as development: land expropriation and China’s urbanization’ Journal of Peasant Studies Special Issue: Rural Politics in Contemporary China 40(6) 1063–1085 Satiroglu I and Choi N 2015 Development-induced displacement and resettlement: new perspective perspectives on persisting problems Routledge, Oxon Schmidt-Soltau K and Brockington D 2007 ‘Protected areas and resettlement: what scope for voluntary relocation?’ World Development 35(12) 2182–2202 Scudder T 2012 ‘Resettlement outcomes of large dams’ in Tortajada C, Altinbilek D and Biswa A K eds in Impacts of large dams: a global assessment Springer-Verlag, Berlin 37–67 Stojanov R 2008 ‘The environmentally-induced migration in China’ in Stojanov R and Novosák J eds Migration, development and environment: migration processes from the perspective of environmental change and development approach at the beginning of the 21st century Cambridge Scholars, Newcastle upon Tyne 117–152

18  Susanna Price Turton D 2003 Refugees, forced resettlers and ‘other forced migrants’: towards a unitary study of forced migration UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Geneva United Nations 2004 ‘Guiding principles on internal displacement’, Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs (http://www.unhcr.org/43ce1cff2.html) Accessed 14 November 2012 United Nations 2006 ‘Statement by Mr Miloon Kothari, Special Rapporteur on adequate housing as a component of the right to an adequate standard of living’, World Urban Forum III, 20 June, Vancouver United Nations 2008 ‘Declaration on the rights of indigenous peoples’ (http://www.un.org/ esa/socdev/unpfii/documents/DRIPS_en.pdf) Accessed 26 March 2013 United Nations Human Rights Officer of the High Commission 2011 ‘Guiding principles on business and human rights: implementing the United Nations protect, respect and remedy framework’ approved as Resolution 17/4, New York White B, Borras Jr S M, Hall R, Scoones I and Wolford W 2012 ‘The new enclosures: critical perspectives on corporate land deals’ Journal of Peasant Studies 39(3–4) 619–647 World Bank 1994 Resettlement and development: Bankwide review of projects involving involuntary resettlement 1986–1993 (report no 12971), Washington DC World Bank 2004 Involuntary resettlement sourcebook World Bank, Washington DC World Bank 2011 Rising global interest in farmland: can it yield sustainable and equitable benefits? World Bank, Washington DC Xi J, Hwang S-S and Cao Y 2015 ‘Risk information sharing: an empirical study on risk perception and depressive symptoms among those displaced by the Three Gorges Project’ in Satiroglu I and Choi N eds Development-induced displacement and resettlement: new perspectives on persisting problems Routledge, Oxford 56–68

Part I

Escalating displacements: convergences, rationales and the search for alternatives

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1 How climate extremes are affecting the movement of populations in the Asia Pacific region François Gemenne, Julia Blocher, Florence de Longueville, Nathalie Perrin, Sara Vigil, Caroline Zickgraf and Pierre Ozer Introduction The impact of a changing climate on human mobility, including population displacement or migration, is regularly cast among the most important and dramatic consequences of climate change for societies in the 21st century. Climate change as a contributor to, and accelerator of, migration drivers has become a regular feature of public and policy discourse in recent years, due in no small part to concern over large-scale, climate-induced disasters and doomsayer predictions of mass displacement of tens or even hundreds of millions of vulnerable people (Myers 1997, International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies 2001, Christian Aid 2007). Globally, millions of people are displaced by natural disasters every year. In 2013 alone, natural hazards displaced approximately 21.9 million people worldwide, nearly three times more than the number reported to be newly displaced by conflict and violence that year (Yonetani 2014). Asia Pacific1 is disproportionately affected by disaster-induced displacement, being the region most affected by natural disasters over the past decade. In 2013, it was estimated that more than 19 million people were displaced by extreme environmental events in Asia Pacific, 87 per cent of the global total (Ferris 2014, Yonetani 2014). That same year, the five largest disaster-induced displacement events, each of which forced more than 1 million people to flee their homes, were all weather-related events in Asia: typhoons Haiyan and Trami in the Philippines, floods in China and India and tropical cyclone Mahasen in Bangladesh (Godoy 2014, Yonetani 2014). Current projections suggest that the areas most affected by climate change will be low-lying islands, deltaic and coastal regions, and other areas prone to extreme weather events, such as droughts and storms. These impacts are likely to have serious implications for livelihoods, communities and cultures throughout Asia Pacific (cf. Najam 2003, Badjeck et al. 2010, Adger et al. 2011). However, the amplitude of these migratory movements remains difficult to forecast because of their complex and multi-causal nature. Forecasts of mass flows of ‘climate refugees’ have been widely criticised by scholars and practitioners alike for being overly alarmist and of questionable methodological validity (Black 2001, Castles 2002, Gemenne 2011a). These estimations tend to be rooted in a deterministic

22  François Gemenne et al. perspective that considers population movements to be a logical result of environmental stress, neglecting to take into account differential vulnerability patterns, demographic trends and the implementation of possible adaptation strategies (Gemenne 2011b). Many are based on the number of people who live in areas exposed to natural hazards, as if displacement from these areas is inevitable or possible. Several empirical studies show, however, that the relationship is far more complex and compounded by a wide range of social, economic and political factors (Jäger et al. 2009, Foresight 2011). Forecasts of the magnitude and characteristics of population movements related to these impacts are hindered by a double uncertainty, which concerns both the local impacts of climate change and the ways people and governments will respond to these changes. Moreover, many of the future scenarios used for the projections described earlier are predicated upon the limit of 2°C in global temperature rise agreed upon at the Copenhagen Climate Conference in 2009, even though global average temperatures could reach or surpass 4°C by the end of the century. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) AR5 Report (2014a) uses a number of scenarios or Representative Concentration Pathways (RCPs) to forecast global warming in the near and long term. In most IPCC AR5 scenarios without additional mitigation efforts, warming is more likely than not to exceed 4°C by 2100.2 In the worst-case scenario (RCP8.5), with high emissions and in which little to no mitigation action is taken, by 2100 the global temperature rise will be between 2.6 and 4.8°C.3 In this same scenario on a regional scale, temperature increases will range from +3°C in south and south-east Asia to +6°C over the high latitudes (IPCC 2014). Consideration of the migratory impacts of more extreme climate change in future scenarios is, therefore, a global necessity and one that is particularly important to Asia Pacific. For the aforementioned reasons, rather than forecasting the numbers of people who will be displaced in the future, this chapter aims to identify what could be the key impacts of +4°C climate change on migratory patterns in the Asia Pacific region. This chapter contends that a significant global temperature increase would affect not only the magnitude of population movements associated with climate change but also – and foremost – the characteristics of these movements and, therefore, the policy responses that can address them. In Asia Pacific, the key policy responses to contemplate relate to social protection, disaster risk reduction, urban and peri-urban planning and poverty reduction strategies. These responses seek to frame climate-induced migration in a development agenda. They include the provision of migration opportunities for the poor, or the improvement of living conditions for urban migrants, so that they are less exposed to environmental hazards. Though much progress has been made in recent years regarding national policies, with some innovative programmes such as the Mahatma Gandhi Rural Employment Scheme in India, which seeks to guarantee a replacement income for local farmers, much remains to be done with regard to regional cooperation. Regional cooperation on migration issues remains very limited in the region, despite the huge challenges of migrants’ protection and the significant mutual gains that could be achieved through bilateral and regional cooperation.

The movement of populations  23 Migration induced by extreme weather events and slow-onset environmental degradation is conceived as part of the broader framework of migration dynamics. As such, we do not consider in this chapter that climate change induces a distinct category of migrants but rather interplays with other drivers of migration, which may be environmental, political, social, demographic or economic (Black et al. 2011). Similarly, we consider that migration is just one of a number of possible responses to climate change likely to be observed. However, as we will see, in a world of +4°C warming, unprecedented changes in the world’s climate may overwhelm people’s capacity to cope and may alter both the magnitude and the very nature of these movements.

Projected impacts of climate change on the Asia Pacific region in a +4°C world Asia Pacific will be among the global regions most affected by the impacts of climate change, be they slow-onset changes or sudden, catastrophic events. Asia Pacific is particularly vulnerable to these changes because of its already high degree of exposure to environmental risks, its high population density – particularly along the coasts and deltas and in the megacities – and the high vulnerability of particular social and economic groups. In this chapter, we shall focus on two impacts that are expected to be exacerbated in the event of a +4°C change in climate: extreme weather events and sea-level rise. Recent climatic trends and extreme weather events in Asia Pacific A literature review of climatic trends in the Asia Pacific region4 shows a statistically significant increase in all yearly mean (see Figure 1.1), minimum and maximum temperatures measured over the past five decades of nearly 0.25°C per decade, which is higher than the warming recorded at the global scale. These important temperature increases have a negative impact on agricultural production. These temperature trends are large enough in some Asian countries, such as India, to offset a significant portion of the increases in average yields that have arisen as a result of the use of technology, carbon dioxide fertilisation and other factors (Lobell et al. 2011). Warm days, characterised by a daily maximum temperature exceeding the 90th percentile, have significantly increased (see Figure 1.2), while cool nights, characterised by a daily minimum temperature below the 10th percentile, have significantly decreased all over the region. As a result, most of the areas have experienced a serious increase in both the frequency and intensity of heat waves (Perkins and Alexander 2013, Ye et al. 2014). Such extreme temperature events exacerbate health ailments (Chung et al. 2009, Son et al. 2012, Yang et al. 2013) and affect the growth and development of major cereal crops, which makes an impact on food security, especially in central and south Asia (Lobell et al. 2012, Gourdji et al. 2013, Sanchez et al. 2014). Regarding rainfall, the situation is less clear and rarely statistically significant, which is consistent with the conclusions of the IPCC (2013) on the global scale. Results show a spatial heterogeneity of trends in annual rainfall, with almost half

24  François Gemenne et al.

Figure 1.1  Yearly mean temperatures Legend: NN: very significant negative trend; N: significant negative trend; S: stable; P: significant positive trend (p