IN THIS WEEK'S ISSUE
Africa's new kind of refugees
For centuries, Adam Abdi Ebrahim's ancestors herded cattle and goats across an unforgiving landscape in southern Somalia where few others were hearty enough to survive.
- Edmund Sanders
- Published: 00:00 November 20, 2009
- Image Credit: AP
- Somali refugees walk on flooded roads in the Dadaab refugee camp. An aid agency says thousands of them are jammed into camps that are 'barely fit for humans'
This year, Ebrahim became the first in his clan to throw in the towel, abandoning his land and walking for a week to bring his family to the overcrowded refugee camp in Dadaab, Kenya.
He is not fleeing warlords, Islamist insurgents or Somalia's 18-year civil war. He is fleeing the weather.
"I give up," said the father of five as he stood in line recently to register at the camp. After enduring four years of drought and the death of his last 20 animals, Ebrahim, 28, said he has no plans to return.
Africa is home to one-third of the 42 million people worldwide uprooted by ethnic slaughter, despots and war. But experts say climate change is quietly driving Africa's displacement crisis to new heights.
Ebrahim is one of an estimated 10 million people worldwide who have been driven out of their homes by rising seas, failing rain, desertification or other climate-driven factors.
Norman Myers, an Oxford University professor and one of the first scholars to draw attention to the unfolding problem, estimated there will be more than 25 million climate refugees by 2050, replacing war and persecution as the leading cause of global displacement.
Africa will be heaviest hit because so many people's livelihoods are dependent upon farming and livestock. "Climate change is going to set back development and food production in sub-Saharan Africa at least a decade and perhaps two or three," he said.
It is a reminder that behind the science, statistics and debate over global warming, climate change is already having a deep impact on Africa's poverty, security and culture. And a serious global discussion about climate refugees has barely begun, in part over concerns about who will pick up the tab, some experts say.
So far there is no comprehensive strategy for coping with climate refugees, who are not yet legally recognised and receive no direct funding.
As a result, the people fleeing drought, flood and other weather changes usually end up in slums or refugee camps that were set up and funded for other purposes.
"If we were a corporation, climate change is what you might call a ‘growth area'," said Andy Needham, spokesman for the Dadaab office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). The crisis is apparent at the Dadaab refugee camp, which was built for about 90,000 people and now houses three times as many, near the Kenya-Somalia border.
With absolutely no room to expand, graves and human bones are being dug up to make space for new huts and much-needed latrines.
UN officials estimate as much as 10 per cent of Dadaab's residents are climate refugees. For newcomers, the percentage may be even higher.
"Lately the majority we see coming here are because of the drought," said Bile Mohammad Ahmad, a refugee who serves as an elected camp leader.
Rukiya Ali Abdirahman, 35, and her husband lived in a southern Somalia region, tending a small farm, growing food for themselves and selling the excess.
But three years ago, the rainfall began to lessen. Crops failed. So they abandoned their home and came to Dadaab, where he works on odd construction jobs and she makes mud bricks.
"I would have been happy to stay on the farm and die there," she said. "We couldn't cope with not having anything to eat. That's when we left."
Even some Kenyan farmers and herders have been driven into the camp by drought, though technically Kenyans are not supposed to register because they are not Somalis and not fleeing violence. The Kenyan government estimates about 4,600 of its citizens are living in Dadaab. Officials are forcing them to either renounce their citizenship or leave the camp.
Other climate refugees are flooding into Kenya's larger cities. Herders from tribes such as Maasai and Borano are now a common sight in Nairobi's slums, where many are forced to beg for money or take jobs as hairdressers and security guards — something hard to swallow for a people who take pride in being their own bosses.
"It's painful to watch," said John Letai, a coordinator for Oxfam, the British aid agency.
He said climate change is threatening the viability of the herdsmen's lifestyle, which is already struggling to find its place in the modern world. "Climate change is just adding problems to a way of life that is already injured," he said.
By one estimate, a quarter of Kenya's herdsmen have abandoned their livelihoods over the past century.
The migration of climate refugees to the cities is accelerating Kenya's urbanisation, according to Oxfam, which estimates one-quarter of the growth in Nairobi's slums now comes from families fleeing rural areas. That influx is taking a toll on the city's health and education infrastructure.
In a reversal of past trends, children in Nairobi's slums are now less likely to be immunised and less likely to attend high school than their rural counterparts, an Oxfam study found.
Still, the international community has been slow to react or in some cases even acknowledge the existence of climate refugees. That is partly because countries suffering from climate change today are usually poor, underdeveloped and politically marginalised.
There is also a debate in the West about how to distinguish climate refugees from those feeling disasters or poverty.
Bangladesh, which stands to lose up to one-fifth of its land to rising seas, has been at the forefront of pressing industrial nations to update their immigration policies and accept climate refugees.
But the UNHCR doesn't see climate refugees as part of its responsibility. Under the 1951 Geneva Convention, refugees are defined as people fleeing their country because of violence or persecution.
In August, African nations called on richer, developed countries — which are responsible for the bulk of global warming — to give the continent $67 billion a year for climate-mediation projects, including dealing with refugees.
Question of liability
Frank Biermann, a climate expert and professor at the Vrije University in Amsterdam, said the costs could rise to $150 billion.
"It's a politically charged issue because of the question of liability and compensation," Biermann said.
But most agree such large payouts are unlikely in the near future. Meanwhile, many climate refugees are falling through the cracks.
Just outside the Dadaab camp, Ijabo Arab, 37, lives with her husband and five children in a hut made of sticks, burlap sacks and torn plastic.
Until recently, the family raised goats and cows. But the herd died, partly because of the drought and partly because of the influx of refugees at Dadaab.
As the camp population surged, the once fertile village lost nearly all its trees, shrubs and water.
Arab's land became barren and she went from pitying the displaced families to becoming one. But although there is international assistance for Somali refugees, there is little help for people like her.
"We are the natives and they are the guests. But they get more than we do," she said. "Where am I supposed to go?"
-Los Angeles Times-Washington Post News Service
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