On Whose Door Do We Knock? by Displacement Solutions

ON WHOSE DOOR DO WE KNOCK? PREPARING FOR, PREVENTING AND REDUCING CLIMATE DISPLACEMENT IN COASTAL CITIES: A PRACTICAL CHECKLIST FOR MUNICIPAL AND NATIONAL OFFICIALS September 2022

ON WHOSE DOOR DO WE KNOCK? PREPARING FOR, PREVENTING AND REDUCING CLIMATE DISPLACEMENT IN COASTAL CITIES: A PRACTICAL CHECKLIST FOR MUNICIPAL AND NATIONAL OFFICIALS September 2022 Cover image: Jakarta, Indonesia. All images by Kadir van Lohuizen / NOOR.

Images: Bangladesh

5TABLE OF CONTENTS EXECUTIVE SUMMARY 6 I. INTRODUCTION 10 II. COASTAL CITY AND COMMUNITY CHALLENGES AND CLIMATE CHANGE 34 III. HUMAN RIGHTS IMPACTS 49 IV. A CHECKLIST FOR MUNICIPAL AND NATIONAL OFFICIALS 53 ; 1. Climate Displacement Office/Official(s) 56 ; 2. Diagnostic Work on All Climate Displacement Threats 58 ; 3. HLP Rights Laws and Policies 60 ; 4. Coastal Management, Erosion Control and Geo-engineering 61 ; 5. Climate Displacement Insurance 63 ; 6. Financing 65 ; 7. The Key Role of Community Organisations 67 ; 8. Neighbourhood Displacement Prevention Strategies 69 ; 9. Climate Magnet Towns 70 ; 10. Climate Displacement Havens 72 ; 11. Climate Land Banks 73 ; 12. Housing Buy-Back Schemes 74 ; 13. Planned Relocation and Managed Retreat 76 ; 14. Fitting Relocation Within Broader Environmental Policy 79 ; 15. National Immigration Policies 80 V. CONCLUSIONS 81 ANNEX 1 - THE PENINSULA PRINCIPLES ON CLIMATE DISPLACEMENT WITHIN STATES 82 SELECTED SOURCES 96

While few coastal cities will cease to exist in their entirety due to rising sea levels over time - though some will effectively be lost forever - a very considerable number of cities will face climate change-induced crises involving the movement of entire neighbourhoods to safer ground.

EXECUTIVE

If the past three years are anything to go by, it is abundantly clear that the world is finally coming to terms with the fact that climate displacement is far more ubiquitous, growing and already larger in scale than most previous estimates had projected. Climate displacement has traditionally played the proverbial second fiddle to other impacts of climate change, however, recent years have witnessed a considerable shift in attention to these very real and observable human impacts on the climate caused by humans. As a result, countless reports, mass media articles, films, television series and social media posts have addressed this crisis, and in the past few years there has been marked increase in coverage of some of the more dramatic instances of climate displacement, that of city-wide and community-level relocation from areas which are no longer suitable for healthy human habitation.

1 UNHCR, ‘Unlocking Solutions for the Internally Displaced: Additional Submission to the High-Level Panel on Internal Displacement’, September 2020, p. 1.

In a world already struggling to care for more than 100 million refugees and IDPs, and up to a billion slum dwellers, everyone has a role to play in minimising climate displacement to the maximum possible extent. The UN’s refugee agency, UNHCR, shockingly reminds us that internal displacement in all of its forms has ‘increased seven-fold in only 15 years’.1 Clearly, the world needs to be ready for this, and at present, it most certainly is not.

Although calculations of the numbers of those affected still vary widely, the projected number of people who will have to move from their homes and neighbourhoods because of the effects of climate change continues to grow with mid-range estimates ranging from 216 million to over 750 million people who will need to move, find a new place to live and begin life anew.

SUMMARY

Beyond basic climate adaptation measures, a number of countries including Indonesia, the US, India, Bangladesh, Vanuatu, Fiji and others are already actively engaged in planned relocation measures to assist communities and even whole cities and coastal towns threatened by climate displacement. Policies are under development in a range of countries, but their effectiveness ranges from the barely acceptable to highly problematic. Perhaps most dramatically, the decision by the government of Indonesia to move its national capital city Jakarta and re-establish it on another island in this archipelago nation has huge implications on numerous fronts. As a city home to more 11 million people, this decision - seen by many analysts as the first decision of many more to come for large coastal cities around the world - is of high significance. But countless questions remain: Will the entire population be moved or just civil servants and the wealthy? Will people receive compensation for looming property losses? How will people be able to participate in decisions linked to the relocation of the capital? What guarantees are there that they will not end up worse off or even suffer violations of their basic rights?

Beyond countless villages and small towns, as well as Jakarta, major global cities as diverse

7as Venice, Lagos, Boston, Houston, Dhaka, Virginia Beach, Bangkok, Mumbai, Shanghai, New Orleans, Rotterdam, Alexandria, Miami and many others are already facing existential crises due to rising sea levels and other climate and related threats. These overwhelming challenges are increasingly recognised by a growing number of local governments and planning is underway as to how best to grapple with these previously unimaginable challenges that have already become ever so Importantreal.organisations have been established, meetings held and documents approved in the past several years to assist cities in grappling with these new challenges, but much remains to be done. While cities are, of course, a magnet for migrants from rural areas and still seen as the best or only chance for many people to improve their lives, the growth in slums and inadequate housing conditions - despite decades of efforts to improve housing conditions in informal settlements in all regions - continues to vastly outpace governmental and other measures designed to ensure that everyone, everywhere can have access to adequate homes and services as promised to them under human rights laws. Countless cities thus face the dual challenge of growing climate threats including displacement, combined with increased urbanisation, in-migration and ever-growing and virtually always ever-worsening living conditions in both the established slums as well as in new informal settlements established ever-further on the periphery of cities and towns. On top of these challenges tax bases are shrinking, central government fiscal transfers to local authorities are declining precisely at the time when they are needed more than ever, and land prices in urban centres are increasing as affordable land becomes more scarce with the net effect of making housing more expensive for those who can least afford it. Overlay the effects of climate change on top of all this, and we have a slow-motion disaster in the making for all to see.

The report concludes with a list of 15 practical steps city governments can take to place them - and their citizens - in a far better position to prevent, reduce and if necessary resolve climate displacement no matter how it affects them and when.

While we will list dozens of particular actions, policies and laws that local governments can implement to address climate displacement in all of its manifestations, imagine the world today in terms of climate displacement and a world in the not so distant future where one could simply type their address into a search engine online and receive 100 years worth of sea level rise and street and neighbourhood specific data on what to expect to occur where they live today, as is now the case in the Netherlands with the ‘Will I Flood’ App (www.overstroomik.nl) which allows everyone living in this low-lying country to do just that. This one step alone will help prevent and reduce the worst consequences of climate displacement, and while it may not stop the seas from rising and the streets from flooding it will allow ordinary people, ordinary urban dwellers (and rural, as well), to plan far more effectively for the future, assisting them in determining when to move, where to move and how to prevent what could be catastrophic financial and other losses

Clearly, the coming years will challenge city governments to their core, in both the global South and global North, and this report will address the particular climate change and climate displacement challenges facing the coastal urban world and how municipal authorities can work to better address them based on actions that are proven to have worked in practice and grounded in the best possible legal principles. The report will provide an overview of where urban climate displacement in coastal areas is occurring and will occur, the human rights implications of urban climate displacement, and most importantly what coastal cities can practically do to better address these challenges.

over that

2 See, www.displacementsolutions.org for a

Scott Leckie Founder and Director full collection of all DS publications and overviews of its work on these issues past

16 years.

the purpose of this document is to provide real-life, actionable, tools for city officials, policy-makers, mayors and others within coastal governments about what they can do to better tackle the human consequences of climate change in their towns based on best practices across the world in the form of a user-friendly checklist that will allow city officials a step-by-step process of ensuring that everything they could do to address these challenges is actually at least known about if not implemented in full. This report aims to be as practical and user-friendly as possible, based on a wide range of innovative practices, to enable coastal cities to be better prepared to prevent climate displacement where possible, reduce its scale when it is inevitable and to protect the rights of everyone affected throughout the process of any planned relocation that occurs, whether concerning parts of a city or the entire urban agglomeration in extreme Citiesinstances.everywhere will be increasingly overwhelmed by rising sea levels, changes in the weather, more frequent and worsening disasters, droughts and many more difficult scenarios, but all cities can do more starting today to better prepare for, prevent and reduce the negative consequences of the ravages of climate change upon their irreplaceable towns and cities. It is our sincere hope at Displacement Solutions that this report will help find better and more affordable and creative ways forward.

Displacement Solutions (DS) has worked on the question of climate displacement and developed a series of concrete solutions to it since it was founded in 2006. 2 DS has produced numerous books and other reports on the full spectrum of issues, and has consistently sought to raise the profile of climate displacement on the global agenda. The aim of this latest report is most decidedly not to provide a comprehensive overview of every city in every country that will be affected by climate change, as not only would this require a tour of the world simply because every city of the world will be affected, but also to do so would sadly require many thousands of Rather,pages.

We are extremely grateful to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Principality of Liechtenstein for their support in making this report possible.

8 if they choose to ‘ride it out’. This App is just one of countless things cities everywhere can put in place showing their concern and commitment to their people and in the process greatly ameliorating the worst effects of climate displacement.

9LIST OF BOXES Box 1 - A climate displacement levy on billionaires Box 2 - Sea levels are rising and coastlines are under increasing threats Box 3 - UN Secretary-General’s High Level Panel on Internal Displacement B ox 4 - The World Bank’s Groundswell report Box 5 - The Peninsula Principles on Climate Displacement Within States Box 6 - Land solutions to climate displacement: how much land is needed? Box 7 - Climate land banks Box 8 - The One House, One Family at a time project (OHOF) Box 9 - The canary in the climate coalmine - Jakarta Box 10 - A brief comment on new inland capitals Box 11 - Lagos grapples with climate change Box 12 - Visit Miami while you can Box 13 - New Zealand takes the lead Box 14 - Can the courts help? Box 15 - Global Mayors Task Force - C-40 and the Mayors Migration Council

3 Jeff Goodell, The Water Will Come - Rising Seas, Sinking Cities, and the Remaking of the Civilized World, Black Inc, 2018, p. 8. 4 Id. “According to NASA, Greenland is losing three times as much ice each year as it did in the 1990s. Between 2012 and 2016 alone, a trillion tons of ice vanished - enough to make a giant ice cube that is six miles on each side (that’s taller than Mount Everest), p. 55.

5 Robin Bronen, ‘Rights, Resilience and Community-Led Relocation: Creating a National Governance Framework’ in The Harbinger Vol. 26, 2021, pp. 25-45, 29.

For example, a study shows that during Hurricane Sandy in 2012, as many as 100,000 extra people were at risk of flooding for every foot of water in New York. More than half

Sea-level rise is one of the central facts of our time, as real as gravity. It will reshape our world in ways most of us can only dimly imagine.

5 As is clear in the US and across the world, without appropriate, well-targeted and adequately funded action, millions upon millions of people – all of whom are rights-holders - run the risk of becoming both homeless and landless, and in the process suffering losses of rights, livelihoods and the ordinary attributes of a full and dignified life. The problem and the data surrounding it is anything but new. Nearly a decade ago the BBC worryingly noted: More than 3 billion people live in coastal areas at risk of global warming impacts such as rising sea levels – a number expected to rise to 6 billion by 2025. Sea-level rise due to climate change has already doubled the risk of extreme flood events in coastal cities, and the greater population of Anthropocene cities only puts more lives at risk.

10 I.

INTRODUCTION

1. Climate displacement is a real and growing reality across much the world, but in many instances it can be prevented, reduced in severity and properly remedied if the right steps are taken by governments to protect their people against this dramatic result of climate change and rising sea levels. After decades of relative denial and inaction, the world now largely accepts and understands that climate change has caused and will cause largescale loss of housing, land and property resources, public infrastructure and other assets and migration, displacement and planned relocation due to the effects of rising sea levels, erosion, severe storms and other extreme and slow onset disasters and other resultant changes to the climate. As Antarctica, the Arctic and Greenland melt at an alarming rate, coastal areas across the world face a fearful wait wondering just how bad it will eventually be.4 As renowned climate activist Robin Bronen has noted in reference to climate displacement in the United States: “Currently, sea level rise is causing a significant increase - anywhere from 300% to more than 900% since 1970 - in the number of days when these communities are inundated with ‘sunny day’ flooding caused by high tides, nor storm surges. This type of flooding disrupts and damages coastal infrastructure, including homes, important transportation links, and storm and wastewater systems. As a result, without protective measures, as many as 13 million people could face permanent inundation and displacement (in the US).”

2. During the past decade, the phenomenon of climate displacement has received increasing coverage by the world’s media, international and national NGOs and community groups, and by the UN and a growing number of governments. Hundreds of reports, articles, books and films have been published delving ever deeper into what is now seen as one of the most severe global challenges. Diagnostic work determining where climate displacement will take place, when and affecting how many people has become ever more accurate. Typical of these, a recent news report by CNN graphically notes that: “And by 2050, land that is currently home to about 300 million people will fall below the elevation of the average annual coastal flood -- meaning they could face severe floods at least once a year. By 2100, land that is home to 200 million people could sit permanently below the high tide line, rendering those coastal areas all but unlivable....Entire coastal cities could be wiped out if there aren’t enough sea defenses in place. Some 70% of the people at risk of yearly floods and permanent inundation are in eight Asian countries: China, Bangladesh, India, Vietnam, Indonesia, Thailand, the Philippines and Japan.”

10 See: Kadir van Lohuizen, After Us the Deluge , Lannoo, 2021. One author in this exquisite book, Henk Ovink, in his chapter entitled ‘Water’ notes that ‘Between 2001 and 2018, droughts, floods, landslides and storms caused over US$ 1.7 trillion in damage worldwide, according to the UN, impacting over 3.4 billion people, the majority of them in Asia’, (p. 9) and ‘For this we need a new approach, one that is rigorously inclusive, innovative and comprehensive, with everything and everyone working together from beginning to end’, p. 12.

Even when people are not necessarily permanently displaced, billions of people have already been affected to varying degrees by the effects of climate change over the past two decades alone at a financial cost approaching two trillion US dollars.10 And of those areas most under threat, beyond small island nations, in particular atoll nations, it is coastal cities around the world where the challenges are the greatest. As Jeff Goodell reminds us: “In the twentieth century, the oceans rose about six inches. But that was before the heat from burning fossil 6 http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20130613-the-rising-threat-to-our-cities/2

7 To say all of this is going to be costly would be an understatement of the highest order, with cost projections indicating that in the US state of Florida alone, one in eight houses will be lost with overall real estate losses in the US set to surpass $1 trillion US dollars. 8 Trillions more will be lost in the rest of the world.

7 Jessie Yeung, Rising sea levels threaten hundreds of millions - and it’s much worse than we thought’, CNN, 30 Oct 2019.

8 Supra, Goodell, 13. 9 https://www.internal-displacement.org/global-report/grid2022/

3. Whether we like it or not, we are already living in a world of growing climate displacement. Globally, three times as many people are now displaced annually because of extreme weather events and the effects of climate change than those displaced due to armed conflict and violence, and all data indicates this trend will increase over time.9 The vast majority of those displaced live in developing countries. At the same time, no country is immune to climate change including wealthy nations, and all of these nations need to also have in place the plans and mechanisms required to prepare for these crises, without which hundreds of millions are likely to face the loss of their homes, lands and properties in coming decades.

11of the population of America’s coastal cities live below the high-tide mark.....What’s the solution? Some cities are investing in new sea walls, dykes and polders, or high-tide gates – like London’s Thames Barrier – to hold back high waters. In poorer places, people simply endure the problem until they are forced to abandon their homes. 6

The influential Swiss Re insurance company has become increasingly involved in

4. The world has long known that climate change would have a particularly unforgiving impact along the coastlines of the world, in particular those coastal regions hosting large urban areas. An often-cited academic article from nearly three decades ago in 1995, in fact, notes that “All coastal locations, including megacities, are at risk to the impacts of accelerated global sea-level rise and other coastal implications of climate change, such as changing storm frequency....At least eight of the projected 20 coastal megacities have experienced a local or relative rise in sea level which often greatly exceeds any likely global sea-level rise scenario for the next century. The implications of climate change for each coastal megacity vary significantly, so each city requires independent assessment. In contrast to historical precedent, a proactive perspective towards coastal hazards and changing levels of risk with time is recommended”.13

11 Supra, Goodell, The Water Will Come - Rising Seas, Sinking Cities, and the Remaking of the Civilized World, Black Inc, 2018, p. 10.

12 See, for instance, https://www.csis.org/analysis/white-house-report-climate-migration-explained Nicholls, Robert J. “Coastal Megacities and Climate Change.” GeoJournal , vol. 37, no. 3, Springer, 1995, pp. 369–79, http://www.jstor.org/stable/41146638 https://www.commondreams.org/news/2007/03/28/climate-change-coastal-mega-cities-bumpy-ride See, for instance: Nicholls, R.J., Lincke, D., Hinkel, J. et al. A global analysis of subsidence, relative sea-level change and coastal flood exposure. Nat. Clim. Chang. 11, 338–342 (2021), https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-021-00993-z. “Clim ate-induced sea-level rise and vertical land movements, including natural and human-induced subsidence in sedimentary coastal lowlands, combine to change relative sea levels around the world’s coasts. Although this affects local rates of sea-level rise, assessments of the coastal impacts of subsidence are lacking on a global scale. Here, we quantify global-mean relative sea-level rise to be 2.6 mm yr−1 over the past two decades. However, as coastal inhabitants are preferentially located in subsiding locations, they experience an average relative sea-level rise up to four times faster at 7.8 to 9.9 mm yr−1. These results indicate that the impacts and adaptation needs are much higher than reported global sea-level rise measurements suggest. In particular, human-induced subsidence in and surrounding coastal cities can be rapidly reduced with appropriate policy for groundwater utilization and drainage. Such policy would offer substantial and rapid benefits to reduce growth of coastal flood exposure due to relative sea-level rise. See: The PLOS ONE Staff (2015) Correction: Future Coastal Population Growth and Exposure to Sea-Level Rise and

More recent models, for instance, indicate that “countries and regions with a high degree of exposure to coastal flooding and help identifying regions where policies and adaptive planning for building resilient coastal communities are not only desirable but essential”, and that while all regions of the world will be affected it will be particularly comparatively poor countries in Asia and Africa where large urban centres will be most affected.16

In late 2021, in a major shift from the climate-denialism of the Trump years, the new Biden Administration published a first-ever report by the US government on the impact of climate change on migration, signaling at least a tacit acknowledgement of the obvious links between displacement and climate change.12

Research 12 years later noted that 643 million people, or one-tenth of the world’s population, who live in low-lying coastal areas are at great risk of oceansrelated impacts of climate change.14 Over the past fifteen years the de facto situation along coastlines has only worsened both in scale and speed, with sea-level rise and other climate factors turning out to have far more impact than was envisaged in the early years of climate modeling.15

12 fuels had much impact on Greenland and Antarctica (about half of the recorded sea-level rise in the twentieth century came from the expansion of the warming oceans). Today seas are rising at more than twice the rate they did in the last century... A 2017 report by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association, the United States’ top climate science agency, says global sea-level rise could range from about one foot to eight feet by 2100.”

17 Swiss Re, Mind the risk: A global ranking of cities under threat from natural disasters , 2014. This report also notes that: “While natural catastrophes caused average economic losses of USD 60–100 billion annually, a single large-scale disaster in the heart of a big metropolitan centre can surpass this figure significantly. Recent events showed how real the risk is in some of the world’s most populated regions. With an estimated USD 210 to 300 billion in total economic losses, the 2011 Tohoku earthquake along the northeastern seaboard of Japan was the costliest catastrophe ever. Flooding around Bangkok, Thailand, in the same year broke a new record for being the most expensive freshwater flood in history, causing USD 47 billion in economic losses.” See: The Economist, A lot of Arctic infrastructure is threatened by rising temperatures: Russia will be particularly badly hit , 15th January 2022 edition. “Of the 120,000 buildings, 40,000km of roads and 9,500km of pipelines currently built on permafrost, up to half are expected to be high risk by 2060. By then...the bill for maintenance could exceed $35bn dollars a year. Russia is the country most threatened by such changes. Almost 65% of Russian soil is permafrost, and it is here that 60% of the Arctic’s human settlements and almost 90% of its population can be found”. https://news.un.org/en/story/2022/02/1112852 Id. Robert Muggah, The world’s coastal cities are going under, Here’s how some are fighting back, World Economic Forum , 16 Jan 2019.

5. The most recent IPCC assessment report issued in February 2022 speaks of over three billion people facing climate change threats, and according to the report, human-induced climate change is causing dangerous and widespread disruption in nature and affecting billions of lives all over the world, despite efforts to reduce the risks, with people and ecosystems least able to cope being hardest hit”.19 This most up to date and latest research on the effects of climate change outlines an extremely worrying future, recently described the UN Secretary-General as an “atlas of human suffering and a damning indictment of failed climate leadership.” 20 It is now almost certain, at a minimum, that global sea-level rise will increase by 3.2 feet (one metre) by 2100, and in all likelihood it will be far more than that. All told, more than 570 cities and some 800 million people will be exposed to rising sea levels and storm surges. 21 According to one analysis: Asian cities will be particularly badly affected. About four out of every five people impacted by sea-level rise by 2050 will live in East or South East Asia. US cities, especially those on the East and Gulf coasts, are similarly vulnerable. More than 90 US coastal cities are already experiencing chronic flooding – a number that is expected to double by 2030. Meanwhile, about three-quarters of all European cities will be affected by rising sea levels, especially in the Netherlands, Spain and Italy. Africa is also highly threatened, due to rapid urbanization in coastal cities and the crowding of poor populations in informal settlements along the coast. The coming decades will be marked by the rise of ex-cities and climate migrants.

13climate change issues, and just under a decade ago began listing cities and their populations that were particularly vulnerable to climate effects including: Tokyo-Yokohama (JPN) 57.1m, Manila (PHL) 34.6m, Pearl-River Delta (CHN) 34.5m, Osaka-Kobe (JPN) 32.1m, Jakarta (IND) 27.7m, Nagoya (JPN) 22.9m, Kolkata (IND) 17.9m, Shanghai (CHN) 16.7m, Los Angeles (USA) 16.4m, Tehran (IRN) 15.6m and others.17 These regions are not alone, of course, with all continents affected to varying degrees, including, in particular, the Arctic where the population may be small, but where the effects will be substantial.18

Coastal Flooding - A Global Assessment. PLOS ONE 10(06): e0131375. www.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0131375

7. These questions and others are derived from the increasingly accurate climate predictions made by and backed by scientists across the globe, with the work of Climate Central being of particularly high quality, especially in its work monitoring likely sea level rise along coastal areas. Climate Central believes that at least 275 million people currently live in areas that will flood, and that about 50 major cities around the world will need to mount globally unprecedented defenses or lose most of their populated areas to unremitting sea level rise lasting hundreds of years but set in motion by pollution this century and earlier. According to their predictions: We have the opportunity now to change this future. Meeting the most ambitious goals of the Paris Climate Agreement will likely reduce exposure by roughly half, allowing nations to avoid building untested defenses or abandoning many coastal megacities.

So-called “delta cities” are already bearing the brunt of rising seas. More than 340 million people live in deltas like Dhaka, Guangzhou, Ho Chi Minh City, Hong Kong, Manila, Melbourne, Miami, New Orleans, New York, Rotterdam, Tokyo and Venice. What a difference a few centuries makes. Over the past few thousand years, the 48 major coastal deltas in the Americas, Europe and Asia formed ideal sites for cities to thrive, owing to their access to the sea and fertile farmland. This explains why the Nile, Indus, Ganges, Brahmaputra and Yangtze served as cradles of major civilizations. But coastal living is becoming a liability: the costs of sea-level rise could rise to trillions of dollars a year in damages by 2100. 22

6. These threats are increasingly recognized by a growing number of local governments and planning is underway as to how best to grapple with these previously unimaginable challenges. Governments everywhere need a whole new approach to determine where people live and what people should be able to expect from government to ensure that their housing, land and property rights can be protected. We need now to consider things that have previously been out of the question: Should high-risk communities be actively encouraged to relocate? Should people receive a house for a lost house and land for lost land through housing and land swaps and housing buy-back programs? Should people be legally prevented from building, or re-building in flood zones or likely to become flood zones? Does every local government even know the precise climate, erosion, sea level rise and flood risks in the areas under their jurisdiction or do some simply leave it up to fate? Should real estate agents and property developers be legally required to disclose these flood or sea-level rise risks to potential buyers? Should all local governments develop climate land banks to ensure that a reserve of state land is available for future disaster-affected people? Shouldn’t the government and its ministers have a duty of care for children displaced by climate change?

Climate Central’s scientists examined where populations are most vulnerable within the next 200 to 2000 years and under different scenarios of warming. The results are alarming: The high tide line could encroach above land occupied by roughly 10% of the current global population (over 800 million people) after 3°C of warming (5.4°F); Many small island nations are threatened with near-total loss; Parts of Asia face the greatest overall exposure, both this century and later. Asian countries make up eight of 22 Id.

23 See: https://www.climatecentral.org

. Written in collaboration with researchers at Princeton University and the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany, Climate Central’s peer-reviewed research paper focuses on the contrast between 4°C and 2°C warming scenarios, and appears in the scientific journal Environmental Research Letters. This summary report instead focuses on the contrast between 3°C and 1.5°C scenarios, which correspond to continuing the current trajectory vs. making deep and immediate cuts to climate pollution, dropping to roughly half of today’s annual emissions by 2030...The peer-reviewed research has enabled Climate Central to develop a number of powerful visual tools to communicate the future risks of warming and to show what we can save.

the top ten most at-risk large nations (with at least 600 million people exposed at 3°C);

8. While there have been numerous studies and reports outlining in increasing detail where coastal areas will be affected by rising seas, it is really only in the last year or two where particular attention has been placed on the difficult to believe proposition that it will not solely villagers and individual families who are likely to be displaced from relatively isolated portions of the world’s coastlines, but entire cities. One 2020 article in a leading US periodical reports, for instance, that: A warmer climate is also melting glaciers and ice sheets and accelerating the rate of sea level rise. Unlike storm flooding, the coastal flooding that comes with rising sea levels occurs everywhere and comes to stay. Globally, sea levels are likely to rise between 1 and 4 feet by 2100 and could rise by as much as 8 feet in a worst-case scenario. And seas will keep rising for several centuries after 2100, with as much as 30 feet possible by 2200. As major coastal protection projects take a larger and larger share of city budgets, other city services, such as schools, transportation and housing may suffer and quality of life decline. The high costs and foregone services that come with these projects will force governments to make hard decisions about which areas to protect. Areas with high property values might look like the best investment, but low-income communities may strongly object to being offered less or no protection. It seems likely that, faced with costs of building ever-higher sea walls to protect everyone, even the wealthiest cities will seek help from the federal government. With requests for major funding from rich and poor communities, the federal government will need to decide where and how to spend limited funds. Given that sea walls are often at best a temporary solution, federal taxpayers may be wary of major investments. Unsatisfactory experiences with structural protection may make the idea of moving look a bit more attractive. Having a good plan for where to relocate might make moving look even better. 9. Even elite-minded travel magazines for the global One Percent are starting to express concern to their readers that climate change may be a lot more serious than the wealthy jet set believes. A July 2020 edition of Conde Nast magazine, for instance, highlights 18 destinations impacted by climate change, neglecting to mention that such ‘destinations’ are home to hundreds of millions of people, including places such as the Great Barrier

24 Jeffery Peterson, It’s Time to Talk About Moving Cities in the Face of Climate Change: The financial costs of moving cities are intimidating although failed sea walls may well be more expensive , US News and World Report, 7 Jan 2020.

In China, after 3°C of warming, roughly 43 million people now live on land expected to be below high tide levels at the end of this century, and 200 million on land at risk over the longer term; China, India, Vietnam, and Indonesia are all in the top five countries most at risk from long-term rise—countries that have added the most new coal-burning capacity from 2015-2019.

25 Displacement Solutions has suggested that this section of society might be best placed to pay for resolving climate displacement. (See Box 1)

Whether we like it or not, the truth is that the money needed to prevent and resolve climate displacement has not been forthcoming and is unlikely to be for a very long time, if ever. The UN’s Green Climate Fund which initially promised to allocate USD 100 billion (100B) annually to tackling climate change, has to date raised only slightly more than 10B in total, thus far falling painfully short of its aims. Of the funds allocated to this initiative, only the tiniest portions have been dedicated to anything linked to solving climate displacement. The world’s governments continue to spend minute proportions of their national budgets on climate displacement, if anything at all. With a few notable exceptions private donors have equally failed thus far to put their money into projects designed to assist what is by far the largest groups of displaced people across the world. Maybe we need to turn to a major cause of the climate displacement crisisthe billionaires - and see what it would take for them to address this massive crisis adequately.

The climate-ravaged planet on which we all depend has never seen climate risks like it is facing today, nor has it ever before been home to more billionaires. In fact, we share this planet with nearly 3,000 billionaires, a group more responsible for climate change than any other, by a very large measure! More than 70% of the world’s emissions come from just 100 companies, most of which are owned and controlled by the world’s wealthiest families. These are given support and almost total leeway by the States in which they operate, which of course include the current and historical worst CO2 emitters. In their daily lives on their mega-yachts, their private planes, and their multiple energy-inefficient homes, on a per capita basis the world’s billionaires are disproportionately responsible for the lion’s share of climate change, releasing factors more CO2 per person than other groups in society. They need to do something to rectify and repair this damage. They need to become part of the solution and pay for the damage that has been done. If billionaires and the companies and governments that support them disproportionately caused climate change shouldn’t they now pay to re-house every climate displaced person? If even just one of these billionaires realised that they could begin to tackle climate displacement by contributing at least some of the money needed to provide new homes to the world’s growing climate displaced populations, they might be surprised at how much human suffering they could assist in alleviating. The numbers are staggering, because if just a single billionaire decided to donate just one billion dollars of his fortune (and we intentionally use the pronoun his bearing in mind that around 90% of the world’s billionaires are men), at the rate of around USD 9,100 per home (the real world cost of building works under the One House, One Family at a time project in Bangladesh supporting climate displaced families) he could build 110,000 homes for some of the world’s most climate vulnerable families. Assuming the average household size of six in the countries most heavily affected, our friend the Earth-destroying billionaire could - at absolutely zero reduction to his own standard of living - build homes for a staggering 660,000 people, which equates to the entire population of a major world city such as Vancouver, Canada. Imagine

25 Tyler Moss and Caitlin Morton, ‘18 Destinations Impacted by Climate Change: From Key West to the Amazon, these destinations are changing fast’ in Conde Nast , July 21, 2020.

16 Reef, Australia, Venice, Glacier National Park, Montana, the Dead Sea, the Amazon, Yamal Peninsula, Russia, the Maldives, Key West, Florida, the Rhône Valley, France and elsewhere.

BOX 1 - DISPLACEMENT LEVY ON BILLIONAIRES

17what could happen if each of the world’s billionaires were to do so? Let’s see what happens if we ratchet those numbers up a bit and take an average between the World Bank’s figures of 216 million people to be displaced due to the effects of climate change and those of Climate Central which uses the figure of 600 million. That brings us to just short of 400 million people needing long-term solutions to their climate displacement predicaments or 5% of the human race. How much would it take, assuming the figure of USD 9,100/house (the real figure would be far less assuming economies of scale, of course), to build new homes on new land for the world’s climate displaced population; all of whom are forced against their will to move because of the human-caused crisis of climate change? The answer: 3.6 trillion US dollars (3.6T), a number that bears a remarkable proximity to the total budget bill being considered by the US Congress at the moment. To the perpetually underfunded ears of the people and organisations working in support of climate displaced families, that might sound like a lot. But to billionaires, is it really all that much? 3.6T amounts to roughly four years of the military budget of just one country, the United States, the country that is historically more responsible for the effects of climate change than any other. 3.6T also represents just 25% of the more than 13 trillion dollars in collective assets owned by the world’s 2,755 billionaires, a group of people which increases by one every 17 hours, even in the midst of the ongoing COVID-19 crisis. And guess what? The 750 billionaires in the United States alone bolstered their pot of gold by 2.1T in 2021 during the middle of the pandemic in a country where more died than any other. Add in the other 2000 billionaires or so who are not from the US, and the total number must be triple that. This is not about a lack of money. If a 1% annual climate displacement levy was placed on the fortunes of the billionaire class for a period of 25 years, magically all the money we would need to solve a big portion of climate displacement problems would suddenly be available. Elon Musk, as the world’s wealthiest person now has a net worth of more than USD 222B, so he alone could come close to providing 25 million homes for climate displaced families. Put him, Zuckerberg, Bezos, Branson, Walton, Slim and a few others together in a consortium and we’d be able to solve the climate-induced HLP crisis many times over. Space can wait, but the world’s climate displaced families should not have to. 10. This report aims to provide an overview of those urban areas, primarily large cities along coastlines, that are already facing the very real prospect of mass relocation, deep adaptation and city-wide redevelopment, and what can be done to reduce the human costs associated with such disruptive plans, many of which are simply inevitable even if sea level rise stays at its current level of annual increase. Beyond briefly describing the particular climate threats facing these cities, this report is grounded in a series of international agreements governing climate change, all of which when combined together create a strong and increasingly clear normative framework justifying, if not requiring, not just national governments to act, but to cities everywhere to do whatever they can to address climate threats as quickly and effectively as possible.

Images:

Miami.

62. Also acknowledges the important role of a broad range of stakeholders at the local, national and regional level, including indigenous peoples and local communities, in averting, minimizing and addressing loss and damage associated with the adverse effects of climate change;

61. Acknowledges that climate change has already caused and will increasingly cause loss and damage and that, as temperatures rise, impacts from climate and weather extremes, as well as slow onset events, will pose an ever-greater social, economic and environmental threat;

12. It is in section VI, however, that some particularly useful language appears concerning the loss and damage consequences of climate change:

1911. The most recent major international climate agreement the Glasgow Climate Pact adopted at COP26 in late 202126 addressed the issues raised in this report in a range of different ways. The Pact , in its preamble, speaks specifically about climate change constituting a ‘common concern of humankind’ and that ‘Parties should, when taking action to address climate change, respect, promote and consider their respective obligations on human rights, the right to health, the rights of indigenous peoples, local communities, migrants, children, persons with disabilities and people in vulnerable situations and the right to development, as well as gender equality, empowerment of women and intergenerational equity’. It also importantly affirms the concept of climate justice. 27 Within the substantive provisions, the Pact also:

26 For the final text of the Pact, see: https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/interactive/2021/glasgowclimate-pact-full-text-cop26/ 27 Preamble: Noting the importance of ensuring the integrity of all ecosystems, including in forests, the ocean and the cryosphere, and the protection of biodiversity, recognized by some cultures as Mother Earth, and also noting the importance for some of the concept of ‘climate justice’, when taking action to address climate change (footnotes omitted).

9. Urges Parties to further integrate adaptation into local, national and regional 14....planning;Notes with concern that the current provision of climate finance for adaptation remains insufficient to respond to worsening climate change impacts in developing country Parties; 18. Urges developed country Parties to at least double their collective provision of climate finance for adaptation to developing country Parties from 2019 levels by 2025, in the context of achieving a balance between mitigation and adaptation in the provision of scaled-up financial resources, recalling Article 9, paragraph 4, of the Paris Agreement...

63. Reiterates the urgency of scaling up action and support, as appropriate, including finance, technology transfer and capacity-building, for implementing approaches for averting, minimizing and addressing loss and damage associated with the adverse effects of climate change in developing country Parties that are particularly vulnerable to these effects;

69. Further decides that the body providing secretarial services to facilitate work under the Santiago network to be determined in accordance with paragraph 10 of decision -/ CMA.3 will administer the funds referred to in paragraph 67 above;

64 Urges developed country Parties, the operating entities of the Financial Mechanism, United Nations entities and intergovernmental organizations and other bilateral and multilateral institutions, including non-governmental organizations and private sources, to provide enhanced and additional support for activities addressing loss and damage associated with the adverse effects of climate change;

71. Acknowledges the importance of coherent action to respond to the scale of needs caused by the adverse impacts of climate change;

72. Resolves to strengthen partnerships between developing and developed countries, funds, technical agencies, civil society and communities to enhance understanding of how approaches to averting, minimizing and addressing loss and damage can be improved; 28 Footnote included within Glasgow Pact: “In 2019, nations agreed to set up a technical assistance program, known as the Santiago Network, to help countries deal with “loss and damage” — unavoidable, irreversible harms caused by climate change. The program was established in name only, without staff or funding. In a statement summarizing the Glasgow conference, Patricia Espinosa, executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, said the agreement’s inclusion of language encouraging countries to build up the Santiago Network was one of the significant accomplishments of the pact.” These additional provisions outline what is envisaged within the context of the Santiago Network: 67. Decides that the Santiago network will be provided with funds to support technical assistance for the implementation of relevant approaches to avert, minimize and address loss and damage associated with the adverse effects of climate change in developing countries in support of the functions set out in paragraph 9 of decision -/CMA.3;

65. Recognizes the importance of demand-driven technical assistance in building capacity to implement approaches to averting, minimizing and addressing loss and damage associated with the adverse effects of climate change;

66. Welcomes the further operationalization of the Santiago network 28 for averting, minimizing and addressing loss and damage associated with the adverse effects of climate change, including the agreement on its functions and process for further developing its institutional arrangements...

68. Also decides that the modalities for the management of funds provided for technical assistance under the Santiago network and the terms for their disbursement shall be determined by the process set out in paragraph 10 of decision -/CMA.3;

70. Urges developed country Parties to provide funds for the operation of the Santiago network and for the provision of technical assistance as set out in paragraph 67 above;

13. In addition to the Glasgow Pact , this report and its recommendations to city governments also bases its analysis on both the sentiments and guidance provided by the important Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration adopted by the UN in 2018 and the Sendai Framework on Disaster Risk Reduction 2015-2030 elaborated by the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR) to prevent new and reduce existing disaster risks. addition, our findings and recommendations for action by city governments take fully into account all of the relevant findings in the various IPCC Assessment reports. While these reports are generally seen as highly cautious in their findings, the 2018 IPCC Assessment importantly noted “much of the key and emerging global climate risks are concentrated in urban areas.” This was followed by the 2021 report that raised the stakes immensely in their recognition of a ‘Code Red’ 29 situation now facing the world’s climate. With regard to the main themes of this report, the IPCC 2021 survey is particularly alarming regarding sea level rise. 30 (See Box 2) 29 https://news.un.org/en/story/2021/08/1097362

BOX 2 - SEA LEVELS ARE RISING AND COASTLINES ARE UNDER INCREASING THREATS

2173. Decides to establish the Glasgow Dialogue between Parties, relevant organizations and stakeholders to discuss the arrangements for the funding of activities to avert, minimize and address loss and damage associated with the adverse impacts of climate change, to take place in the first sessional period of each year of the Subsidiary Body for Implementation, concluding at its sixtieth session (June 2024).

The 2021 IPCC report extensively addresses sea level rise. Some of the key findings of this monumental report include: “A.1.7: Global mean sea level increased by 0.20 [0.15 to 0.25] m between 1901 and 2018. The average rate of sea level rise was 1.3 [0.6 to 2.1] mm yr–1 between 1901 and 1971, increasing to 1.9 [0.8 to 2.9] mm yr–1 between 1971 and 2006, and further increasing to 3.7 [3.2 to 4.2] mm yr–1 between 2006 and 2018 (high confidence). Human influence was very likely the main driver of these increases since at least 1971; A.2.4: Global mean sea level has risen faster since 1900 than over any preceding century in at least the last 3000 years (high confidence). The global ocean has warmed faster over the past century than since the end of the last deglacial transition (around 11,000 years ago) (medium confidence). A long-term increase in surface open ocean pH occurred over the past 50 million years (high confidence), and surface open ocean pH as low as recent decades is unusual in the last 2 million years (medium confidence). B.5.3: It is virtually certain that global mean sea level will continue to rise over the 21st century. Relative to 1995-2014, the likely global mean sea level rise by 2100 is 0.28-0.55 m under the very low GHG emissions scenario (SSP1-1.9), 0.32-0.62 m under the low GHG emissions scenario (SSP1-2.6), 0.44-0.76 m under the intermediate GHG emissions scenario (SSP2-4.5), and 0.63-1.01 m under the very high GHG emissions scenario (SSP5-8.5), and by 2150 is 0.37-0.86 m under the very low scenario (SSP1-1.9), 0.46- 0.99 m under the low scenario (SSP1-2.6), 0.66-1.33m under the intermediate scenario (SSP2-4.5), and 0.98-1.88 m under the very high scenario (SSP5-8.5) (medium confidence)35. Global mean sea level rise

30 IPCC, 2021: Climate Change 2021: The Physical Science Basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [Masson-Delmotte, V., P. Zhai, A. Pirani, S.L. Connors, C. Pean, S. Berger, N. Caud, Y. Chen, L. Goldfarb, M.I. Gomis, M. Huang, K. Leitzell, E. Lonnoy, J.B.R. Matthews, T.K. Maycock, T. Waterfield, O. Yelekci, R. Yu, and B. Zhou (eds.)]. Cambridge University Press.

Due to relative sea level rise, extreme sea level events that occurred once per century in the recent past are projected to occur at least annually at more than half of all tide gauge locations by 2100 (high confidence). Relative sea level rise contributes to increases in the frequency and severity of coastal flooding in low-lying areas and to coastal erosion along most sandy coasts (high confidence).”

22 above the likely range – approaching 2 m by 2100 and 5 m by 2150 under a very high GHG emissions scenario (SSP5-8.5) (low confidence) – cannot be ruled out due to deep uncertainty in ice sheet processes; B.5.4: In the longer term, sea level is committed to rise for centuries to millennia due to continuing deep ocean warming and ice sheet melt, and will remain elevated for thousands of years (high confidence). Over the next 2000 years, global mean sea level will rise by about 2 to 3 m if warming is limited to 1.5°C, 2 to 6 m if limited to 2°C and 19 to 22 m with 5°C of warming, and it will continue to rise over subsequent millennia (low confidence).

Projections of multi-millennial global mean sea level rise are consistent with reconstructed levels during past warm climate periods: likely 5–10 m higher than today around 125,000 years ago, when global temperatures were very likely 0.5°C–1.5°C higher than 1850–1900; and very likely 5–25 m higher roughly 3 million years ago, when global temperatures were 2.5°C–4°C higher (medium confidence); and C.2.5 It is very likely to virtually certain that regional mean relative sea level rise will continue throughout the 21st century, except in a few regions with substantial geologic land uplift rates. Approximately two-thirds of the global coastline has a projected regional relative sea level rise within ±20% of the global mean increase (medium confidence).

14. As we can see, as climate change worsens, there now exist a range of legal and policy texts that address climate displacement and migration in increasingly specific terms, as well as growing recognition of the almost unfathomable estimates of sea level rise. Along with Image: Via Panam, migration in the Americas, Panama.

33 UNFCCC, 2018a, p. 44.

31 The WIM has increasingly influenced the outcomes of recent COP gatherings, though it has not come close to its potential thus far.

15. Increasingly, these important normative frameworks have slowly but surely been embraced by some international agencies and incorporated their sentiments within active programmes addressing the issues arising from climate displacement. For instance, while the UN Secretary-General’s High Level Panel on Internal Displacement was not established in particular to address climate displacement issues, many of its contents do have a direct bearing on this manifestation of internal displacement (See Box 3).

32 Similarly, the Task Force on Displacement formed under its auspices helped sway decisions at COP24 and others wherein a decision at COP24 invited UNFCCC parties to “facilitate orderly, safe, regular and responsible migration and mobility....in the context of climate change, by considering the needs of migrants and displaced persons, communities of origin, transit and destination, and by enhancing opportunities for regular migration pathways, including through labor mobility”.

23these texts has come - at a much slower pace - the emergence of a range of international agencies that are increasingly involved in efforts, at least theoretically, to address the displacement dimensions of climate change. While these are important institutions and their engagement in these matters is to be generally welcomed, to date they have not achieved a great deal in terms of the issues we are addressing in this report, namely planning, preventing and reducing climate displacement in coastal cities. For instance, the Warsaw International Mechanism on Loss and Damage (WIM) has tremendous potential and represented a significant step when it was established.

32 This includes the findings of the report of the Executive Committee of the Warsaw International Mechanism for Loss and Damage associated with Climate Change Impacts on integrated approaches to averting, minimizing and addressing displacement related to the adverse impacts of climate change, adopted in 2018 by the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). Such recommendations stress the respective human rights obligations of countries; invites countries to strengthen preparedness, including [ ] resilience-building strategies and plans, and to develop innovative approaches [ ] to avert, minimize and address displacement; to find durable solutions for internally displaced people; and to facilitate orderly, safe, regular and responsible migration and mobility of people, as appropriate and in accordance with national laws and policies, in the context of climate change, by considering the needs of migrants and displaced persons, communities of origin, transit and destination.

The Loss and Damage Mechanism fulfills the role under the Convention of promoting implementation of approaches to address loss and damage associated with the adverse effects of climate change, pursuant to decision 3/CP.18 and further elaborated in decision 2/CP.19, in a comprehensive, integrated and coherent manner by undertaking, inter alia, the following functions: Enhancing knowledge and understanding of comprehensive risk management approaches to address loss and damage associated with the adverse effects of climate change, including slow onset impacts, by facilitating and promoting: Action to address gaps in the understanding of and expertise in approaches to address loss and damage associated with the adverse effects of climate change, including, inter alia, the areas outlined in decision 3/CP.18, paragraph 7(a); Collection, sharing, management and use of relevant data and information, including gender-disaggregated data; Provision of overviews of best practices, challenges, experiences and lessons learned in undertaking approaches to address loss and damage. Strengthening dialogue, coordination, coherence and synergies among relevant stakeholders by: Providing leadership and coordination and, as and where appropriate, oversight under the Convention, on the assessment and implementation of approaches to address loss and damage associated with the impacts of climate change from extreme events and slow onset events associated with the adverse effects of climate change; Fostering dialogue, coordination, coherence and synergies among all relevant stakeholders, institutions, bodies, processes and initiatives outside the Convention, with a view to promoting cooperation and collaboration across relevant work and activities at all levels. Enhancing action and support, including finance, technology and capacity-building, to address loss and damage associated with the adverse effects of climate change, to enable countries to undertake actions, pursuant to 3/CP.18 (para. 6) including by: Providing technical support and guidance on approaches to address loss and damage associated with climate change impacts, including extreme events and slow onset events; Providing information and recommendations for consideration by the Conference of the Parties when providing guidance relevant to reducing the risks of loss and damage and, where necessary, addressing loss and damage, including to the operating entities of the financial mechanism of the Convention, as appropriate; Facilitating the mobilization and securing of expertise, and enhancement of support, including finance, technology and capacity-building, to strengthen existing approaches and, where necessary, facilitate the development and implementation of additional approaches to address loss and damage associated with climate change impacts, including extreme weather events and slow onset events.

Some of the more salient provisions of this important report, and which are universally relevant to the central role of coastal cities in tackling climate change increase: By redoubling our efforts to support solutions in such contexts, including by recognizing it as core to the global commitment to ‘leave no one behind’, we are convinced that a breakthrough can be achieved for millions of people trapped in protracted displacement. Doing so begins with acknowledging that as citizens and residents of their country, IDPs have a right to decide where to settle. In our consultations with IDPs, we found that while around half of them hoped to return to their former homes to reconnect with their ancestral land, communities and former livelihoods, the other half preferred integration into the local community or settlement in another part of the country.(p. 8) Consistent with global urbanization trends, more and more IDPs are likely to settle in urban areas. Although precise data is limited, we know the vast majority of IDPs already live in non-camp settings in towns and cities, with host communities in rural areas, and in informal settlements. The reality of growing urban internal displacement requires all actors to change their approaches to response.(p. 8) States bear the primary responsibility for supporting their displaced citizens and residents to achieve an end to their displacement. This is not just a legal obligation but also an operational necessity: we have seen that Government leadership is crucial for resolving displacement sustainably and at scale...we have seen that with concerted efforts - including a commitment to resolve the root causes of crises - solutions can and have been achieved.(p. 13) Recognizing that internal displacement is an increasingly urban phenomenon and that many IDPs will permanently settle in urban areas, it is also essential that internal displacement be addressed as part of urban planning. Cities should not be seen as only the backdrop where displacement occurs but as a rich ecosystem that can contribute to the resolution of displacement.(p. 14) In many contexts, general development and urban plans addressing internal displacement may need to be complemented by a more focused national or local solutions strategy and costed plan that provide greater detail on how different ministries and actors will come together to facilitate solutions. States should ensure laws and polices are in place that outline the specific rights and protections afforded to IDPs.(p. 15) The continuous rise in displacement linked to conflicts, violence, disasters and climate change points to the fact that, fundamentally, there has been a failure to sufficiently address the root causes of displacement. (p. 41) Likewise as the Special Rapporteur on the Human Rights of IDPs points out in her report on prevention: “Preventing arbitrary displacement is also in the interest of States as it can be less costly and easier than responding to displacement once it has occurred.(p. 42) Currently, only 5 per cent of climate financing goes into adaptation and, of that, only around 5 per cent goes to the 15 countries most vulnerable to climate change, 10 of which have an ongoing humanitarian response and are affected by internal displacement. We strongly urge greater funding to be directed to displacement-sensitive climate adaptation interventions, particularly in countries at greatest risk and those already experiencing climate-related displacement. Climate-proofing cities can be invaluable, including for building the resilience of individuals and communities.(p. 43) Across all types of internal displacement contexts, we believe there is a need to strengthen investment and support for early warning and community-based prevention mechanisms that enable communities and local and municipal authorities to more effectively prepare for and mitigate future risks....Where no alternatives exist, States should facilitate migration out of areas at high risk or undertaken planned relocation with the consent and participation of affected communities.(p. 44) More attention should also be paid to protecting people’s livelihoods,

24 BOX 3 - UN SECRETARY-GENERAL’S HIGH LEVEL PANEL ON INTERNAL DISPLACEMENT

As the Groundswell report notes: Three years ago, the World Bank’s first Groundswell report projected that, by 2050, climate change could lead 143 million people in three regions of the world (South Asia, Latin America and Sub-Saharan Africa) to migrate within their own countries...

The new Groundswell report builds on the work of the first, modeling three additional regions, namely East Asia and the Pacific, North Africa, and Eastern Europe and Central Asia—to provide a global estimate of up to 216 million climate migrants by 2050 across all six regions. It’s important to note that this projection is not cast in stone. If countries start now to reduce greenhouse gases, close development gaps, restore vital ecosystems, and help people adapt, internal climate migration could be reduced by up to 80 percent—to 44 million people by 2050. (p. xvii).

The IFRC has also produced a Fact Sheet entitled “Climate and Disaster Displacement: The Importance of Disaster Law and Policy” based on the IFRC Disaster Law Checklist on Law and Disaster Preparedness and Response and accompanying Synthesis Report.

37 Clement, Viviane, Kanta Kumari Rigaud, Alex de Sherbinin, Bryan Jones, Susana Adamo, Jacob Schewe, Nian Sadiq, and Elham Shabahat. 2021. Groundswell Part 2: Acting on Internal Climate Migration . Washington, DC: The World Bank. WORLD BANK’S GROUNDSWELL REPORT

BOX 4 - THE

34 United Nations Secretary-General’s High-Level Panel on Internal Displacement, Shining a Light on Internal Displacement: A Vision for the Future , UN, September 2021.

A new compilation of selected good practice case studies and lessons learned entitled “Responding to Disasters and Displacement in a Changing Climate: Asia Pacific National Societies in Action” which focuses on the activities and initiatives of National Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies to address climate and disaster related displacement across the Asia Pacific, including Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Fiji, Vanuatu, Mongolia, Nepal, Philippines and Indonesia. The Asia Pacific case studies address the challenges of COVID-19 on humanitarian response in Vanuatu and Fiji.

35 See, for instance: Joint UNHCR and IOM study: “Bridging A Divide: Internal Displacement, Disaster Risk Reduction and Other Laws, Policies, Institutions and Coordination” through the lens of five case studies in Afghanistan, Colombia, Niger, Philippines and Somalia, 2021.

25promoting community resilience and coping capacities, and drawing on local and indigenous knowledge to inform risk reduction strategies.(p. 45) Donors and Governments should invest in community-based prevention and preparedness initiatives, including early warning mechanisms and interventions that draw on local and indigenous knowledge.(p. 47)34 16. Other agencies including UNHCR35 , IOM, the International Federation of Red Cross Red Crescent Societies (IFRC)36 and the World Bank have all increasingly become involved in climate displacement issues. The Groundswell report37 issued by the World Bank in 2021 has been one of the most insightful to date, and indicative of the growing realisation within inter-governmental agencies of just how severe climate displacement has become (See Box 4).

The World Bank’s Groundswell Report is one of the first by the international financial institutions to address the displacement dimensions of climate change, and the financial consequences that these dramatic changes will have on the global economy. It includes the following important contributions: “It is also crucial to begin planning for orderly and well-managed internal climate migration where appropriate, so it can serve as an effective adaptation strategy with positive development outcomes. Action now at the intersection of climate, development, and migration

Of the six regions examined in the two reports, Sub-Saharan Africa is projected to have the largest number of internal climate migrants. The region is highly vulnerable to climate change impacts, especially in already fragile drylands and along exposed coastlines. Agriculture, which is almost all rainfed in the region, also accounts for a large share of employment. North Africa is projected to have the largest share of internal climate migrants relative to total population. This is due to a great extent to severe water scarcity, as well as the impacts of sea-level rise on densely populated coastal areas and in the Nile Delta. Within regions, there are particularly vulnerable countries that drive up the overall numbers. For example, as shown in the first Groundswell report, Bangladesh, with up to 19.9 million internal climate migrants by 2050, has almost half the projected internal climate migrants for the entire South Asia region. It is important to note that the estimates presented in this report are likely to be conservative for several reasons.(p. xxii) The model results show clear spatial patterns of internal climate in- and out-migration within each country and region—including hotspots that emerge as early as 2030 and are considerably more pronounced by 2050. Climate change impacts are already unfolding and are set to alter the attractiveness of livelihood and resource conditions in rural, coastal, and urban systems across regions. As a result, many countries could see shifts in population distribution, on top of already complex mobility dynamics. Development planning needs to be proactive in preparing in-migration hotspots for inflows of migrants, to ensure they are prepared to fully integrate them, while out-migration hotspots need to plan for options to adapt in place and build resilience for the populations who remain.(p. xxiv) Embed internal climate migration in far-sighted green, resilient, and inclusive development planning - The modeling results show how much the scale of internal climate migration can be reduced by pursuing more inclusive and resilient development pathways. Integrating internal climate migration in development planning is critical to address the poverty factors that make people particularly vulnerable to climate change impacts, such as a lack of viable livelihood options and lower quality assets. This is particularly important as the most vulnerable groups tend to have the fewest opportunities to adapt locally or move away from risk—and when moving they tend to do so in adverse circumstances. Systematic planning at the nexus of climate, development, and migration can help broaden the opportunities for people to adapt where they live, or else enable them to move under better circumstances. (p. xxv) Plan for each phase of migration, so that internal climate migration as an adaptation strategy can result in positive development outcomes....Policy makers will also need to ensure that both sending and receiving areas are adequately prepared to ensure the resilience of those who remain and to integrate additional flows of people. Many of the climate in-migration hotspots identified in the regions covered by this report are major urban areas, such as Algiers,

26 is critical to safeguard the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals over the next 10 years and ensure shared prosperity to mid-century and beyond. (p xix) The combined results of the two Groundswell reports show that by 2050, as many as 216 million people could be internal climate migrants across the six World Bank regions (at the high end of the pessimistic reference scenario), as shown in Figure 2. This represents almost 3 percent of these regions’ total projected population.1 Sub-Saharan Africa could see as many as 85.7 million internal climate migrants (4.2 percent of the total population); East Asia and the Pacific, 48.4 million (2.5 percent of the total population); South Asia, 40.5 million (1.8 percent of the total population); North Africa, 19.3 million (9.0 percent of the total population); Latin America, 17.1 million (2.6 percent of the total population); and Eastern Europe and Central Asia, 5.1 million (2.3 percent of the total population). The scale of internal climate migration will be largest in the poorest and most climate-vulnerable regions, an indication that underlying gaps in the ability of livelihood, social, and economic systems to cope with climate change could undermine development gains.

17. Another large organisation has also issued some remarkably progressive and humancentred guidelines on climate-displaced people, the Catholic Church. In its 2021 Pastoral Guidelines on Climate Displaced People , the Church notes that: Image: Rising tide, Jakarta, Indonesia.

27the Casablanca-Rabat corridor, Tangiers, and Tunis in North Africa; Osh and Jalal-Abad in the Kyrgyz Republic; and Hanoi in Vietnam. These cities will need to provide advanced public service provision, affordable housing programs, and employment opportunities for increasing numbers of people. Fostering integration and social cohesion can also help ensure that destination areas leverage the opportunities that migrants bring to fill labor and demographic gaps, diversify human capital, and bring new skills and knowledge. National and city planning systems will need to account for important changes to existing settlement patterns. These will need to go hand in hand with climate-resilient infrastructure investments and improved connectivity networks, especially as cities continue to grow and draw migrants from rural areas. Even cities projected to be out-migration hotspots and thus see potentially slower population growth, such as Alexandria and Ho Chi Minh City, will still continue to support large numbers of people who may face escalating climate risks. Urban planning and land use management will need to be inclusive and address the needs of the most vulnerable, who often live in areas with inadequate services, including informal settlements, sometimes on marginal land exposed to floods and other hazards. Vulnerable people, including those that are lower-skilled, poorer, and older, may also be unable to move away from areas of high risk. Involuntary immobility in the context of climate change should therefore be equally considered in development planning.(p. xxx)”

18. Various documents have been developed to facilitate the development of measures to reduce such risks. Some have addressed the issue of climate displacement prevention through the process of planned relocation including the 2013 Peninsula Principles on Climate Displacement Within States and the Sydney Declaration of Principles on the Protection of Persons Displaced in the Context of Sea Level Rise . In terms of law-based normative frameworks designed to assist both states to take the rights of climate displaced persons seriously as well as providing a text that can and is used by such persons to make concrete demands on their governments, the Peninsula Principles have proven particularly useful and have been relied upon by many governments, organisations and communities to improve the prospects of climate displaced people, both those facing such displacement and those who already have lost their homes, lands and properties. (See Box 5)

In the case of natural hazards like extreme weather events, it might be possible for displaced victims to return. Displacement, however, will be permanent for most in the case of severe natural disasters and in the face of long-term processes like sea-level rise...The sea level will continue to rise as our climate warms, threatening cities and agricultural and grazing land around the world. Globally about 145 million people live within a meter above the current sea level, and almost two-thirds of the world’s cities with populations of over five million are located in areas at risk of sea-level rise. Almost 40 per cent of the world’s population live within 100 km of a coast...In the midst of these complex realities, the most vulnerable might not be even able to relocate no matter what the circumstances are, due to poverty or other reasons. It is crucial to respond to immobile populations or those unable to move far distances...3. Providing Alternatives to Displacement - The Catholic Church is called to enhance the resilience of people affected by the climate crisis and to assist in the search for alternatives to displacement that uphold the right to life, which includes the possibility of living a dignified life, in peace and security... No one should be forced to flee from his or her homeland.

38 See: Pastoral Guidelines on Climate Displaced People, 30.03.2021, Migrants and Refugees Section - Integral Ecology Sector, Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development. This important document also notes: We are engulfed by news and images of whole peoples uprooted by cataclysmic changes in our climate, forced to migrate. But what effect these stories have on us, and how we respond -- whether they cause fleeting responses or trigger something deeper in us; whether it seems remote or whether we feel it close to home -- depends on our taking the trouble to see the suffering that each story entails in order “to become painfully aware, to dare to turn what is happening into our own personal suffering and thus to discover what each of us can do about it” (Laudato si’ 19) ....The main purpose of these orientations is to provide a series of key considerations that may be useful to Bishops’ Conferences, local churches, religious congregations, Catholic organizations, Catholic pastoral agents and all Catholic faithful in pastoral planning and programme development for the effective assistance of CDP....When people are driven out because their local environment has become uninhabitable, it might look like a process of nature, something inevitable. Yet the deteriorating climate is very often the result of poor choices and destructive activity, of selfishness and neglect, that set humankind at odds with creation, our common home....Unlike the pandemic, which came on us suddenly, without warning, almost everywhere, and impacting everyone at once, the climate crisis has been unfolding since the Industrial Revolution. For a long time it developed so slowly that it remained imperceptible except to a very few clairvoyants. Even now it is uneven in its impact: climate change happens everywhere, but the greatest pain is felt by those who have contributed the least to it....The POCDP highlights ten challenges pertaining to climate change displacement and its victims. These challenges, together with the suggested Catholic Church responses, constitute markers for a roadmap in pastoral planning for CDP, and, with this document, they extend the Pope’s pastoral concern to CDP. This document also has a section that addresses cooperation and teamwork, which are the foundation of successful projects and are key to effective and efficient service delivery for CDP....It is the poor and vulnerable communities around the world who are disproportionately affected by the ecological and climate crises. They are the innocent ones, having contributed least to causing the problem in the first place. This is a profoundly moral issue, one that calls for eco-justice. After all, the earth was destined to be a common home where everyone has the right to live and flourish. Here the prophetic words of Saint John Paul II echoed by Pope Francis in Fratelli Tutti are very pertinent: “God gave the earth to the whole human race for the sustenance of all its members, without excluding or favouring anyone.

The Principles recognise the need for an all-encompassing approach, one that engages all of the actors required for a truly comprehensive approach to the rights of CDPs; an approach that strives first to prevent climate displacement wherever possible by ensuring that measures of adaptation are designed specifically to enable people to stay where they are for as long as they wish and as long as it is viable to do so, and when climate displacement is inevitable (now or in the future) an approach that engages fundamentally with the people affected and ensures that human rights protections are at the core of all responses to climate displacement. The Peninsula Principles , of course, are neither a panacea nor the only standards upon which good and new law and policy can be based, but they are important standards, that all of us who support them hope will be increasingly used as the basis for finding positive ways forward on these very difficult issues. The Peninsula Principles have had a major impact on determining the contents of several national planned relocation guidelines and figure prominently within the Mayors Plan of Action issued by the Mayors Migration Council in 2021. 39 19. Grounded in the contents of the Peninsula Principles and first-hand experiences around the world in many of the world’s climate change hotspots, Displacement Solutions has sought to play a role in finding viable solutions to climate displacement, and negotiated the world’s first large-scale land purchase for climate displaced families. The organisation’s research has found that taking a baseline of 250 million people displaced, the world would need to identify somewhere between 12.5-50 million acres of land (using a range of 1000m 24000m2/ per household) to provide various land-based solutions to the world’s climate displaced population, with this amount of land representing only 0.14 percent of the Earth’s land surface as it exists today. (See Box 6).

39 For a comprehensive overview of the Peninsula Principles, see: www.displacementsolutions.org

The Peninsula Principles on Climate Displacement Within States were adopted on 18 August 2013 by a group of leading international legal and climate change experts, jurists and lawyers.

Since their approval advocacy for the Principles , domestic legal reform efforts in support of climate displaced people in particularly threatened countries such as Bangladesh, Fiji, Kiribati, Panama, Tuvalu, Vanuatu and others, the publication of major academic books on the issues concerned and other measures in support of new laws on climate displacement are all ongoing. The Principles have received extensive and growing attention from climate change experts, lawyers, UN agencies, governments grassroots groups, NGOs and communities that are already enduring climate displacement. The Principles have been taught in some of the world’s leading law schools and shared with hundreds of government officials from more than 50 countries. They have been the subject of reports on climate displacement, and have been cited in an array of publications and websites. Clearly, the Principles have shown themselves to be of growing utility for those engaged in practical right-based efforts to fix climate displacement.

29BOX 5 - THE PENINSULA PRINCIPLES ON CLIMATE DISPLACEMENT WITHIN STATES

30 Image: Climate refugee, Bangladesh.

31BOX 6 - LAND SOLUTIONS TO CLIMATE DISPLACEMENT: HOW MUCH LAND IS NEEDED?

40 See, Land Solutions for Climate Displacement (Scott Leckie, ed), Routledge, 2014. Displacement Solutions has worked for years on the links between land availability and repairing climate displacement, and our experience shows clearly that land supply is not the issue that should concern us. Our research has shown beyond any doubt that there is more than enough land to go around. Our detailed research, using highly conservative estimates of the number of people to be displaced and the amount of land that each household would require to re-establish itself reveal that far less than half of one percent of the world’s land surface could easily re-house everyone displaced by climate change. Using a high-end estimate this would be roughly the size of Uganda, and using the lower end of the estimate scale, this would be the size of Costa Rica or the Australian state of Tasmania. Solutions to climate displacement, therefore, do not in any way depend on land supply, but rather on access to land, land policy and law and equity in terms of land rights. Earth’s total land mass is some 149m km2 which is equivalent to 36.8 billion acres or nearly 15 billion hectares of land. If we consider this sizable amount of land in terms of climate change and, more specifically, likely levels of climate displacement, some interesting figures emerge. Basing our calculations on mid-level estimates of projected climate displacement of 250,000,000, assuming an average household size of five persons and further assuming an average land requirement of one acre per household (understanding fully that some households will need more (rural dwellers) and others less (urban and periurban dwellers), we find that some 50 million acres of land would be a reasonable estimate of the physical amount of land that would be required to provide various land-based solutions to the world’s climate displaced population. Alternatively, if we presume a ratio of four households per acre, instead of just one, our 50 million acre goal quickly declines to 12.5 million acres. Any number of statistical permutations may exist, and while the numbers of people affected may differ, as may the ultimate amount of viable land, combined with the fact that a whole series of additional financial, economic, social, livelihood, infrastructure, transport and many other issues will determine the ultimate viability of any plan to resolve climate displacement in a rights-based manner involving direct access to land resources, we simply want to make the point here that we do have enough land to provide land to those who lose their land or the ability to reside upon their land in a dignified manner. Taking our high estimate of one acre per household reveals that all that is required is the equivalent of 1/736th of the landmass of planet Earth, a mere 0.14% of our planet’s surface, (roughly the same size as Uganda) would facilitate rights-based solutions to climate displacement. If we use our second scenario (one-quarter of an acre per household) we come to the equivalent of 1/2944th of the Earth’s land surface. Surely with the right policies, political will and growing civil society engagement, the world can achieve this objective.40 20. We can state unequivocally that a shortage of land is not the reason why so many climatedisplaced people and communities have already become homeless and landless. Rather, sustainable land-based relocation measures to address climate displacement can be found if the will is apparent to pursue such solutions. Based on these findings DS was the first to formulate the idea of National Climate Land Banks as an institutional tool applicable to all countries wherein land could be set aside for the exclusive use of resolving future climate displacement. (See Box 7)

41 Displacement Solutions, The Urgent Need to Prepare for Climate Displacement in Myanmar: Establishing a Myanmar National Climate Land Bank , May 2018.

DS has found that in terms of preventing and resolving climate displacement, that it has never been a question of land supply, but one of access. This is another rationale behind our longstanding advocacy for climate land banks as a practical and viable policy tool to effectively tackle climate displacement. With our local partners in numerous countries including Bangladesh, Papua New Guinea, Fiji, Solomon Islands, Panama and elsewhere DS has identified specific land parcels that could become appropriate new land sites for communities displaced by climate change, the vast majority of which are currently state land thus requiring no costs in initially acquiring this land. DS also carried out a detailed study in Myanmar during the period of political reforms which were brought to an end in 2021 following the military takeover of the country, in which we articulated what a Myanmar National Climate Land Bank could look like and why such a land bank was needed here as well as in all countries facing climate displacement along coastlines. The report notes that: The establishment of a Myanmar National Climate Land Bank (MNCLB) could act as the central institutional tool in this process. The aim of the MNCLB would be to set up land set-aside programmes of parcels of State land in a bid to prevent land conflict and resolve climate displacement in a rights-based manner throughout the country. The MNCLB would provide a basis for developing concrete policies that tie together four vital policy threads: conflict prevention, climate change, displacement and access to land. The central importance of land for security, stability and economic development is already well recognised by the present government and by all organs of civil society, which has commenced identifying State land resources for eventual distribution to landless rural poor households as part of broader land reform efforts. In this context, the establishment of the MNCLB would be a further element of broader land reform measures, which are already underway in the country albeit limited and in their nascence. Without such an MNCLB in place, the growing numbers of people facing displacement due to the effects of climate change will increasingly have nowhere to go and thus be forced, as climate displaced communities everywhere, into urban slums or new residential options that are wholly inadequate to meet their basic human rights requirements. Arguably, failing to act in policy and legal terms to address this merging crisis would clearly be contrary to a range of pre-exiting legal commitments of the government of Myanmar, both under domestic law as well as under its international obligations generated, inter alia, by its 2017 ratification of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. In practical terms, a MNCLB would act as a central repository or ‘Land Bank’ for State land that has been formally designated and held in trust exclusively for the use of climate displaced persons and communities needing to engage in planned relocation. Once established and placed under the democratic control of the most appropriate government ministry, the MNCLB would be entrusted with identifying viable State land resources in all climate vulnerable areas in the country which would then be earmarked and held in trust as relocation sites for coastal communities that have chosen to engage in planned relocation. The MNCLB would also be the lead agency for ensuring that climate displaced persons are able to obtain new homes and new lands on those plots and maintain government responsibilities in this regard. Once a sufficient land base has been identified and classified, the MNCLB would then begin considering community requests for new land, in accordance with agreed procedures, from communities that require planned relocation because of the direct effects of climate change upon the viability of their present communities. Efforts would also then commence to access larger parcels of State land additional acres of land to be placed under the administration of the MNCLB.41

32 BOX 7 - CLIMATE LAND BANKS

DS also established the One House, One Family at a time project in Bangladesh in 2017, which constructs homes for some of Bangladesh’s coastal dwellers who are most vulnerable to climate displacement. The project is managed by DS and implemented by the Bangladeshi project partner associated with the present proposal, Young Power in Social Action (YPSA)(See Box 8). Together with our efforts with local partners in a wide range of countries these projects have led to the conclusion that resolving climate displacement successfully will always need a multi-level, multi-stakeholder approach, grounded deeply in the rights held by those affected for it to succeed. Hence, numerous cultural, social, political, legal, institutional and economic challenges as well as opportunities will need to be dealt with, and prepared for early on to ensure the success, durability and sustainability of relocation solutions to climate displacements. As such, and building on years of practical work designed to resolve climate displacement, the present report aims at establishing preparedness practices for planned, human rights-based, regenerative and resilient relocation solutions for large-scale population displacement due to the adverse effects of climate change, with a focus on whole city resettlement.

BOX 8 - THE ONE HOUSE, ONE FAMILY AT A TIME PROJECT (OHOF)

The One House, One Family at a time project (OHOF) provides a way to fund the construction of new homes for coastal dwellers in both Bangladesh and is managed by Displacement Solutions in collaboration with local partners in each participating country. Since 2018, OHOF-Bangladesh has built nine houses near Chittagong, Bangladesh providing free, lifelong homes for around 50 people. OHOF is now in Phase 3 and hopes to build a further 11 homes in 2022, thus providing a total of 20 homes under OHOF, giving new starts to more than 120 people. Each home costs USD 9,100, which includes a land plot, a brand new two-bedroom house, kitchen, living room, tube well, drainage and all the other attributes of a good quality home in a safe area. Phase 3 has a budget of USD 100,100. These homes are all made possible by individual contributions by people who are tired of hearing promises go unmet, watching helplessly as CO2 levels increase year on year, and who no longer want to sit idly by and see climate displacement get worse and worse. OHOF is a project for people who want to do something practical, concrete and visible to assist the totally innocent people who have to find new homes because of the impacts of climate change.

3321.

42 See, for instance: Rachel Ramirez, Floods are getting worse, and the number of people exposed is 10 times higher than previously thought, study finds’, CNN, 4 August 2021.

22. The list of cities and communities within those cities under serious threat from the effects of climate change continues to grow with each passing year.42 This heartbreaking list, which seems to expand by the day, now contains scores upon scores of famous city names and are found in all of the world’s regions.43 They include (in alphabetical order): Alexandria, Amsterdam, Atlantic City, Bangkok, Beijing, Boston, Dhaka, Freetown, Guangzhou, Hong Kong, Honolulu, Houston, Jakarta, Kolkata, Lagos, London, Los Angeles, Miami, Mumbai, Nagoya, New Orleans, New York, Osaka, Pacifica, Rio de Janiero, Rotterdam, San Diego, Seattle, Shanghai, Shenzhen, Tampa, Tokyo, Vancouver, Venice, Virginia Beach and many, many others. At a smaller scale, a number of villages and small settlements have become increasingly well-known as climate displacement hotspots that includes the Carteret Islands (Papua New Guinea), Gunayala (Panama), Lau Lagoon (Solomon Islands), Newtok (US), Isle de Jean Charles (US), Vunidogoloa (Fiji), Doune Baba Dieye (Senegal) and many, many others. We all now live in the age of climate displacement. It would take several volumes to give adequate coverage to every coastal city threatened by climate change and the measures these are taking, or when they have yet to act, will need to take, to sufficiently address the human impacts that sea-level rise, worsening and more frequent flooding and erosion will cause. As such, here we will simply point to some of the main urban areas on each populated continent most likely to be affected to provide a broad overview of the types of generic challenges that all coastal cities will eventually fact in the age of climate

43 There are hundreds of publications addressing this worsening issue. These include, for instance: Talia Lakritz, 11 sinking cities that could soon be underwater, in Insider (28 Aug 2019); Kadir van Lohuizen, After Us the Deluge , Lannoo, 2021; Naomi Klein, This Changes Everything , Allen Lane, 2014; Hallegatte, Stephane. “Future flood losses in major coastal cities.” Nature Climate Change 3 , Colin Green, et al., Global Warming: The 9 Most Vulnerable Cities’ in Treehugger, 30 May 2019; Matthew Herberger et al., Potential Impacts of Increased Coastal Flooding in California due to Sea-Level Rise,” in Climatic Change 109, Issue 1 Supplement (2011), 229-249; Asbury H Sallenger Jr., Kara S. Doran, and Peter A. Howd, “Hotspot of Accelerated Sea-Level Rise on the Atlantic Coast of North America in Nature Climate Change 2 (2012), 884-888; Stephane Hallegatte et al., “Future Flood Losses in Major Coastal Cities,” Nature Climate Change 3 (2013), 802-806.

ASIAdisplacement.ANDTHE

34 II.

PACIFIC 23. As noted, of all the world’s regions, Asian cities will be more widely affected than any other, with some four out of five people affected living in Asia. More than 70% of the world’s coastal populations live on Asian coastlines with elevations less than 10 meters.44 Political decisions have already been made to relocate the Indonesian capital Jakarta on the island of Java to another ostensibly safer island due in part because of the consequences of climate

COASTAL CITY AND COMMUNITY CHALLENGES AND CLIMATE CHANGE

44 Jackson Dill and Brandon Miller, Sea level rise is increasing fastest in populous coastal areas, study says , CNN (www.cnn.com), 9 March 2021.

35change, causing serious disruption to millions of people.45 (See Box 9) Shanghai, China is perhaps the most seriously threatened Chinese city, with estimates pointing to as many as 17 million people facing permanent displacement if global average temperatures reach 3C or more.46 In Osaka, Japan more than five million people will face climate-induced flooding, with the commercial areas of downtown Osaka set to vanish entirely if global temperatures rise to 3C above historical averages. Similar problems will face millions of residents in Mumbai (India), Guangzhou (China), Najoya (Japan), Shenzhen (China), Bangkok (Thailand) and many others.47

While the drama of climate change and the relocation and displacement often associated with it is widespread across Asia and the Pacific, this is nowhere more so than in Indonesia where the situation has become so dire that this nation is in the process of moving its capital city Jakarta from the island of Java to the distant island of East Kalimantan, some 2,000 kms away.48 North Jakarta is expected to be almost entirely submerged by 2050.49 To be named Nusantara (or ‘archipeligo’), the new capital will be 40,000 ha in size or some four times larger than Jakarta, raises a series of questions both in terms of the environmental impact in and around the site of the new city, but also about how the actual relocation will take place, who will move, who will stay, who will win and who will lose. This high stakes move is not the first time a capital city has been relocated, but it is certainly the first time that climate factors have played such a key role in this regard. 50 According to one analysis, “Only 180,000 civil servants and 141,000 government vehicles of the city’s 10 million inhabitants and 17 million registered private vehicles are set to leave for Kalimantan in 2024. As outlined succinctly by economists Paul Burke and Martin Siyaranamual, Jakarta isn’t going anywhere – and neither is its pollution, illegal well digging, and traffic. 51 This multi-billion dollar project, estimated to cost well over USD 40billion, has been under consideration for decades, but recent climate impacts on Jakarta have pushed decision-makers over the edge and the relocation is set to begin in 2024. In 2021, the Indonesian government secured 44.6 billion dollars in investment funding from the United Arab Emirates and Masayoshi Son, Japanese billionaire and the founder of Softbank Group Corp. 52

47 Supra, Stephane Hallegatte, Colin Green, Robert J. Nichols & Jan Corfee-Morlot “Future flood losses in major coastal cities.” in Nature Climate Change volume 3, 2013. 48 Rebecca Ratcliffe, ‘Indonesia names new capital Nusantara, replacing sinking Jakarta Government offices will relocate to province of East Kalimantan, easing burden on Java metropolis as it battles environmental problems’ replacing-sinking-city-of-jakarta.https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jan/18/indonesia-names-new-capital-nusantarahttps://www.globalcitizen.org/en/content/indonesia-jakarta-climate-change/#!,Joe McCarthy and Erica Sanchez (May 1, 2019). See also: https://futuresoutheastasia.com/nusantara-new-capital-city-of-indonesia/ James Clark, 2 Feb 2021; https://thediplomat.com/2020/04/why-isnt-indonesia-seeking-chinas-funding-for-its-newcapital/; https://indonesiaexpat.id/news/governement-move-capital/;

;

BOX 9 - THE CANARY IN THE CLIMATE COALMINE - JAKARTA

and Jakarta Globe - https://jakartaglobe.id/ business/indonesia-secures-446b-in-investment-commitment-after-jokowis-trip-to-uae

Alyssa Leng and Roland Rajah, ‘The Indonesian president’s scheme to move the capital won’t fix Jakarta – or the government’, 26 Nov 2019 - https://www.lowyinstitute.org/the-interpreter/jokowis-curious-plan-for-indonesias-capital See also: https://www.wired.co.uk/article/jakarta-sinking https://weather.com/science/environment/news/2019-0430-indonesia-capital-jakarta-city-sinks and https://theaseanpost.com/article/jakarta-relocation-answer

Colette Ashley, Elisa Elliot Alonso and Oriana Romano, Sinking Cities: What economic and governance conditions lead to greater resilience?, paper submitted to the Second International Conference on ‘Water, Megacities and Global Change’, December 2021. See, for instance, www.climatecentral.org

;

54 He continues: “Beyond displacement and migration along the eastern coast, sea-level rise and flooding might also lead to increased relocation in major coastal cities. The floods of 2018, which displaced about 1.4 million people in the state of Kerala, offer a reminder of the kind of likely consequences for future displacement if the impacts of climate change increase. Similarly, mega cities such as Mumbai, Chennai, and Kolkata are at high risk of flooding and sea level rise, with millions living in these urban coastal areas likely to be relocated to safer places in the future. In such circumstances, forced migration and displacement would be inevitable in the absence of well-managed, pre-emptive relocation of populations from high-risk areas.”

53 In India, more than 170 million people live in coastal areas under threat from rising sea levels and coastal erosion, with a growing recognition that, according to Architesh Panda, “Given the challenges of climate change, the relocation of many human settlements as a pre-emptive disaster management strategy will be unavoidable as the intensity and frequency of disaster increase in the future, requiring a future-looking national-level policy on managed retreat in India.”

Bangkok, which faces similar challenges to Jakarta, has also laid out a 2,600km

36 24. Bangladesh, along with China and India, will be the most heavily affected Asian country and will see anywhere between 15-40 million citizens permanently displaced due to the effects of climate change, and is already struggling to assist the more than 700,000 Rohingya refugees who have arrived in the country after fleeing ethnic cleansing in neighbouring Myanmar. The IPCC has predicted that Bangladesh could possibly lose as much as 20% of its landmass due to rising sea levels.

53 Generally, see: global-warminghttps://www.theguardian.com/cities/ng-interactive/2017/nov/03/three-degree-world-cities-drowned-.(JoshHolder , Niko Kommenda and Jonathan Watts).

54 https://reliefweb.int/report/india/climate-change-displacement-and-managed-retreat-coastal-india Image: Bougainville, Papua New Guinea.

56 Annah E. Piggott-McKellar et al, ‘Moving People in a Changing Climate: Lessons from Two Case Studies in Fiji,’ Social Sciences 8 (2019). BOX 10 - A BRIEF COMMENT ON NEW INLAND CAPITALS

The idea that cities can be relocated or magically created from nothing somehow seems both impossible and unwise. And yet, a large number of the world’s capital cities were essentially built from scratch in once natural settings that were transformed in a matter of a few years into the ‘new’ capital cities of countries both rich and poor. Some of the more well-known examples of new capital cities built far from the main population centres of the country concerned include Canberra (Australia), Arusha (Tanzania), Abuja (Nigeria), Brasilia (Brazil), Nay Pyi Taw (Myanmar), Nursultan (Kazakhstan) and others. Beyond these examples, contemporary cases of cities rapidly built ‘out of nothing’, such as Dubai, Doha or various cities in China, as well as planned cities now under consideration by Silicon Valley billionaires each in their own way show that while most cities are organic in their origins, large urban areas can also be constructed based on a plan if the funds to do so are available. There have been at least 53 countries that have moved their capital city, of which some have failed. For instance, Brazil, under President Juscelino Kubitschek, moved the capital city from Rio de Janeiro to Brasilia. Residents from the old capital were reluctant to settle in the city because it did not meet expectations in addition to being mostly occupied by elites. Another case is Myanmar in which the capital was relocated from Yangon to Naypyidaw, where citizens did not want to move due to the high cost of living cost and limited public facilities. 55 25. In terms of the Pacific, all island and atoll countries are under varying degrees of existential threat, with Tuvalu, Kiribati, Marshall Islands and Tokelau among the most vulnerable. Many countries in the Pacific will also be affected, however, will not cease to physically exist as they have many locations at higher and safe elevations. Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, New Caledonia and Fiji fall into this category. Each of these is already facing climate displacement to varying degrees. In Fiji, for instance, some 676 villages will potentially need to be relocated because of the effects of climate change, several of which have already been relocated with mixed results. 56

37canal network and central park with a capacity to drain 4 million litres of floodwater into underground containers, but many fear that managed retreat will be the fate of this iconic city. Even wealthy Singapore, home to more millionaires per capita than any other country, is itself engaged in land reclamation schemes and embankment construction along most of this island country’s coastlines in their own fight against climate change.

55 Generally, on moving capital cities, see: https://www.intheblack.com/articles/2019/10/01/pros-and-cons-of-movingcapital-cities

27. Measures such as the Africa Climate Mobility Initiative are important and laudable, but in the end, improving the prospects of coastal dwellers in or near to Africa’s most threatened coastal urban areas will depend on how local governments decide how to tackle this crisis.

38 AFRICA AND THE MIDDLE EAST 57 https://www.cnn.com/2021/08/01/africa/lagos-sinking-floods-climate-change-intl-cmd/index.html 58 See: https://africamobilityinitiative.com 59 change-nigeria-environment-africa-callinghttps://www.rfi.fr/en/africa/20211204-lagos-coastal-community-scrambles-to-fight-off-encroaching-climate26. Coastal regions in both Africa and the Middle East will also be heavily affected by rising seas, storm-based flooding and permanent erosion. Lagos (Nigeria)57, Freetown (Sierra Leone), Dar es Salaam (Tanzania) and Alexandria (Egypt) will be among the hardest hit coastal cities and require new and urgent measures to prevent and reduce the human impact of these climate consequences. Madagascar, Ghana, Senegal, Mozambique and other countries will be particularly threatened as well. Africa’s population continues to grow and is expected to reach more than 2.5 billion by the middle of the century. Of those, half will reside in cities, many of which are found along coastal areas. While the regional economy is growing at a rapid rate, there are strong doubts that such growth will be sufficient to prevent growing instability and to put into place the measures need to successfully grapple with worsening climate challenges. Internal and external migration will increase, conflicts are likely to also increase and it remains to be seen how African cities, already facing serious resource limitations in most cases, will be able to harness the funds required to protect their populations against climate threats. To begin to more structurally attack these multi-country challenges, a new Africa Climate Mobility Initiative (ACMI) has been jointly launched by the African Union Commission, World Bank, UNDP (United Nations Development Programme), UNFCCC (United Nations Framework for Convention on Climate Change), and the International Organization for Migration (IOM) to bring sharp global focus on climate-forced displacement and migration in the continent by: (i) Developing a cuttingedge Africa Climate-Forced Mobility Model complemented by a standing capacity for modeling, field research and primary data collection in “hot spots” across the continent , in collaboration with African research institutions and centers of excellence; (ii) Establishing a continent-wide network of change agents from academia, policy and practice as a dedicated Community of Practice that brings together and drives cutting-edge research, analysis, policy development and programming; and (iii) Enabling strategic partnerships for climate mobility in Africa through the establishment of an Accelerator for Action that pools resources for driving economic integration and green growth while holistically addressing the adverse consequences of climate-forced mobility. 58

A city like Lagos already faces a plethora of challenges, and despite these, people keep migrating to the biggest city on the continent with no end in sight. (See Box 11) With already more than 20 million residents, the crowded and vibrant commercial and cultural hub of Nigeria is extremely vulnerable to sea level rise. It is already routinely affected by major flooding, extreme weather and the increasingly uninhabitable neighbourhoods in growing portions of this mega-city. 59 Annual floods cost Lagos more than USD 4billion each year and many believe that without drastic interventions by the government this, the largest city in the

39entire continent of Africa, large portions may become uninhabitable.60 Beyond governmental efforts to tackle these challenges, the Nigerian Bar Association’s Sub-Committee on Ocean Surge is working with municipal authorities to streamline law and policy, backed by financial and other resources to protect the Lagos coastline from rising sea levels and other threats. 60 https://www.cnn.com/2021/08/01/africa/lagos-sinking-floods-climate-change-intl-cmd/index.html BOX 11 - LAGOS GRAPPLES WITH CLIMATE CHANGE

Michael Bankole’s job is not an easy one. He is the Head of the Climate Change and Planning Department in the Lagos Government. We spoke to him at length on 22 February 2022, and it is clear that despite his enthusiasm, he definitely has his work cut out for him and future months and years will not be easy. His government has produced a number of important policy and planning documents including the Lagos Master Plan , the Lagos Climate Action Plan in 2021 and others to help guide the city into a less dangerous direction, but it will be an uphill battle. They have most certainly not given up hope, and he proclaimed more than once during our interview that “We are fighting”, but the combination of Lagos’ location, worsening flooding and sea-level rise, all within a context of mass poverty and never-ending in-migration, as well as local politics, a more than challenging feat. Bankole noted that the city of Lagos is neither expecting people to move away from the city, nor that the city itself is planning to engage in planned relocations, but rather that an early warning system and the construction of groins, drainage channels and other water management projects will be able to protect the city and its residents. He dismissed the functionality of policies being tested elsewhere involving inducements to Image: Sea level rise in Fiji.

62 On Freetown, see: https://fcc.gov.sl/transform-freetown/ and https assessment://www.worldbank.org/en/topic/disasterriskmanagement/brief/sierra-leone-multi-city-hazard-review-and-risk63 Interview with Freetown Government advisor, Victoria Gonsior - 24 January 2022. https://interactive.aljazeera.com/aje/2015/drowning_megacities/index.html

40 dwellers to move to smaller and safer urban areas away from the capital saying that they simply won’t work. Earlier efforts to build new towns divert migrants away from Lagos also didn’t work, so fighting is the best chance they have. A floating city is planned near Lagos, but this will only assist a few of the millions of people in Lagos who will eventually be affected by the effects of climate change. Because of annual flooding, the government is currently more pre-occupied with regular problems such as this than on eventual, longer-term sea level rise, despite the fact that planning maps issued by Climate Central show devastating consequences await many of those who will seek to remain in place. Bankole’s next step to carry out a comprehensive climate risk assessment of the entire Lagos metropolitan area and then begin the next phase in saving the people of Africa’s largest urban area. 28. A recent study 61 on the Ajegunle community in Lagos finds that the aspiration to move is common, but movement itself is less so, with just under half of the survey’s participants indicating that they would like to move, but they lack the resources to do so. If people choose to move, the survey suggests that most people would move to another district of Lagos rather than further afield. Those that have moved away due to climate change effects are generally happy that their life chances and living conditions have improved. Overall, of those participating in the survey 45% have considered moving but have no capacity or resources, 22% plans to move and 4.5% have already moved away from this community that is now home to 550,000 people. Lagos is not alone, and Freetown (Sierra Leone) is also grappling with a difficult mix of post-conflict reconstruction, large-scale poverty and slums, limited public financial resources and increased coastal flooding, particularly along the main beach road, which is expected to be inundated by 2050.62 Land availability remains limited with the city expected to reach its full capacity of two million residents very soon, by 2030.

Source: Mixed Migration Centre, Climate and mobility case study, Nov 2021: Beira, Mozambique: Praia Nova (as part of the Africa Climate Mobility Initiative - United Nations Climate Change, African Union, UNDP, The World Bank and IOM UN Migration).

Freetown’s charismatic mayor is pulling out all the stops to address the climate threats to the city, with the Transform Freetown Initiative and Mayor’s Delivery Unit being particularly impressive. There is a Climate Action and Disaster Risk Management Unit in place now that is currently drafting an Urban Climate Plan of Action expected to be completed by October 2022. There are no active programmes to encourage movement to smaller urban areas which are less threatened by climate effects and no plans underway yet to establish a climate land bank, although the Ministry of Land plays a key role in land matters that could assist threatened dwellers.63 Other African cities such as Dar es Salaam (Tanzania) are particularly vulnerable. With 70% of the population already living in slums, many of which are in low-lying areas where land values are the lowest, and with population projects indicating that this city’s population may increase more than fivefold by 2050 – from four million to 21 million people, the climate change threats are massive.64 Mozambique’s

67 https://www.theguardian.com/cities/ng-interactive/2017/nov/03/three-degree-world-cities-drowned-global-warming

66 Source: Mixed Migration Centre, Climate and mobility case study, Nov 2021 Alexandria, Egypt: Al Max (as part of the Africa Climate Mobility Initiative - United Nations Climate Change, African Union, UNDP, The World Bank and IOM UN Migration).

The Impact of Climate Change: Migration and Cities in South America, Climate Bulletin , Vol 63 (2), 2014. 69 Goodell, p. 55. 70

65 Source: Mixed Migration Centre, Climate and mobility case study, Nov 2021, Beira, Mozambique: Praia Nova (as part of the Africa Climate Mobility Initiative - United Nations Climate Change, African Union, UNDP, The World Bank and IOM UN Migration).

41coastline, particularly around Beira are already facing flooding, storms, and sea-level rise, as well as widespread experiences of short-term displacement. As with other cities, there is a common desire to relocate to safer locations but most do not have the resources required to do so. 75% of the city’s 600,000 dwellers live in informal settlements. 60% of those surveyed have considered moving but have no capacity or resources, while 31% have concrete plans to move.65 Moving to the far north of the continent, similar conditions are apparent in the Al Max area of Alexandria (Egypt) but these are not yet deemed serious enough by the local population to induce large-scale migration at this stage. In contrast to many other coastal cities in Africa, only 3% of the residents of Al Max have considered moving because of climate factors, despite the fact that a 50cm rise of local seas would lead to more than two million people being severely affected.66 If no measures are taken by local government to address these threats, and temperature increases are kept under 2C, the IPCC estimates that a staggering 8 million people could be displaced in Alexandria and the Nile Delta. If 3C is reached, the damage will be far worse.67

29.THEhttps://www.businessinsider.com/cities-that-could-become-unlivable-by-2100-climate-change-2019-2?op=1AMERICASWhiletherearecertainlyclimatedisplacementhotspotsalongthelengthycoastlinesofNorthandSouthAmerica,aswell,ofcourse,aroundtheedgesofthemanysmallislandnationsintheCaribbean,withintheAmericasregionasawhole,itisNorthAmerica,farmorethaneitherCentralorSouthAmericaoreventheCaribbeanthatfacesthemostsevereclimatedisplacementrisks.EventhoughmajorSouthAmericancitiessuchasRiodeJaneirowillfacedevastatingconsequencesintheeventofrisingsealevels,thatCanadaisfacingtheworstmeltingoftheArcticeverandthatPanamahostssomeofthefirstclimatedisplacedcommunitiesinLatinAmericaassome30,000ofindigenousGunaplanamovefrommanmadeislandsalongtheeastcoastofthecountrytotheirmainlandterritories,climatedisplacementthreatsarealreadyalltoorealforever-growingnumbersofcommunities,particularlythoselocatedontheUSEastCoastandSoutherncoastalareasalongtheGulfofMexico.6830.Indeed,ofalltheworld’scities,inpurelyfinancialtermsMiami,FloridainthesouthernUnitedStatesfacessomeofthemoststaggeringhousing,landandpropertylosses,potentiallytotalinginthehundredsofbillionsofdollars.(SeeBox12)Goodellremindsusthat“TheOrganisationforEconomicCo-operationandDevelopmentlistsMiamiasthemostvulnerablecityworldwideintermsofpotentialpropertydamage,withmorethanUSD416billioninassetsatriskfromstorm-relatedfloodingandsealevelrise.”69Accordingtoonestudy,almost3.5millionMiamiarearesidentscouldbeforcedtomovebeforetheendofthecentury.70

31. Miami is far from alone, with other nearby cities in Florida such as Tampa, St. Petersburg, Fort Lauderdale and others also under existential threat. Outside of Florida, also on the Gulf of Mexico coastline, New Orleans, Louisiana is also particularly vulnerable to increased flooding. With a population of more than one million, New Orleans - still recovering from Hurricane Katrina - is engaged in a constant struggle against severe flooding.71 One study indicates that Louisiana could be facing some of the worst flooding of any coastal area.72

Another problem: the city of Miami Beach already has about 100km of sea walls on the island. The vast majority of them are on private property. How do you force people to raise them higher? Do you pass a law requiring everyone whose property includes a sea wall to spend US$100,000 or so to upgrade it? Does the city pay for it?....Already, Miami streets flood with every high tide. And it will just get worse. Just 20cm of sea level rise will threaten the viability of the regional drainage system, which keeps Miami from returning to the swamp it once was. Adapting this system is expected to cost some US$7 billion.....the County estimates that it would cost about US$3 billion to build out a sewer system that reaches everyone..The city of Miami Beach has earmarked about US$1 billion to raise roads and install more than 50 storm water pumps to keep the city dry. In addition, the US Army Corps of Engineers has proposed a controversial US$4.6 billion plan to build a barrier in Biscayne Bay to help protect downtown Miami. But there is still no coordinated regional plan, and no real thinking about serious infrastructure problems, such as how to protect access to the airport, which is in a particularly low-lying section of the city.”

Jeff Goodell’s alarming, but excellent, book The Water Will Come: Rising Seas, Sinking Cities, and the Remaking of the Civilized World (Black Inc., 2018, pp. 54-56) outlines a range of terrifying scenarios on Miami’s climate devastated future: “The East Coast of the United States is experiencing rising sea levels at a rate three times the global average. Nearly 40% of the US population lives in coastal zones, most unprotected, with these areas generating half of the US GDP. If nothing is done, the US economy will be affected on a scale never seen before. While New York may survive, Miami is built on porous limestone and likely can’t be saved....Above all, Miami is a triumph of modern engineering, a city that has risen to heights no city should, a place where asphalt and air conditioning have made nature irrelevant. It is a great city built on a swamp, a technological miracle no less remarkable than the first human footprint on the moon or the iPhone in your pocket....With just 1m of sea level rise, more than a third of southern Florida will vanish, displacing more than 800,000 people; at 2m, more than half of region will be submerged. If the seas rise by 3m, the only things in southern Florida that will poke above the water are the tops of buildings and a 60m high pile of garbage on the outskirts of Miami known as Mount Trashmore....

42 BOX 12 - VISIT MIAMI WHILE YOU CAN 71 Stephane Hallegatte, Colin Green, Robert J. Nichols & Jan Corfee-Morlot “Future flood losses in major coastal cities.” in Nature Climate Change volume 3 , 2013. 72 http://www.louisianaweekly.com/louisiana-coast-faces-highest-rate-of-sea-level-rise-worldwide/ 73 http://www.isledejeancharles.com

The small Louisiana village of Isle de Jean Charles is seen as the first US community to comprehensively relocate because of the impacts of climate change.73 The state purchased

32. Few cities in the United States are already grappling with the displacement effects of climate change as oil-town Houston, Texas. Houston is surrounded by a 230 square mile floodplain, but recent flooding resulting from Hurricane Harvey in 2017 actually affected areas far outside of the normal, officially-recognised floodplain. Constant flooding and ever-worsening storms have led the city government to adopt a document entitled Resilient Houston that outlines how this city of three million plans to address the severe climate consequences facing it. According to Ryan Slattery, a Senior Advisor from the Recovery office of the Office of the Mayor of the City of Houston, Houston has 160,000 structures located in the floodplain, with a further 6,000 directly in the floodway many of which will be purchased by the city in a large-scale housing buy-back scheme designed to provide some financial resources to people living in the increasingly dangerous flood zone. Using a combination of compensation payments derived from federal disaster funds, the national flood insurance programme and land swaps, the Houston’s housing buy-back programme is the largest thus far.75

Future Coastal Population Growth and Exposure to Sea-Level Rise and Coastal Flooding - A Global Assessment, Barbara Neumann, Athanasios T. Vafeidis, Juliane; Zimmermann, Robert J. Nicholls; www.commondreams.org/ news/2007/03/28/climate-change-coastal-mega-cities-bumpy-ride ; and Tony Matthews, ‘Climigration’: when communities must move because of climate change, in The Conversation, 16 September 2019. See also: https:// climate.nasa.gov/news/2487/big-coastal-cities-sink-faster-than-seas-rise/, 2016 ‘The California coast is disappearing under the rising sea. Our choices are grim’, https://www.latimes.com/la-biorosanna-xia-staff.html

33. Other large cities in the US located on the eastern seaboard, in particular New York and Boston are facing climate challenges of their own. After enduring the brutal consequences of Hurricane Sandy in 2012, New York has commenced the construction of a seawall around portions of Manhattan and continues to face every worrying climate scenarios.76 Sea levels around New York City could possibly rise as much as 15cm in just the next ten years, with devastating consequences. Boston, as well, faces significant infrastructure and neighbourhood damage due to worsening flooding threats. These cities are not alone, with iconic towns such as Atlantic City (New Jersey), Honolulu (Hawaii), San Diego (California), Los Angeles (including Long Beach, Venice Beach, Santa Monica and elsewhere)(California), Sacramento (California), Charleston (South Carolina), Savannah (Georgia), Virginia Beach (Virginia), Seattle (Washington), Chicago (Illinois) and many, many others severely threatened by the negative effects of climate change.77

34. Finally, the iconic California coastline, too, is under ever increasing threats from rising sea levels.78 The Golden State - as it is often called - is already engaged in various plans for

43new land for the community and the migration commenced thereafter. Since 1955, Isle de Jean Charles has lost 98% of its land, making any option other than relocation impossible. But even in such a dire condition, obtaining the funds needed to make relocation possible was anything but guaranteed, and the relocation was only able to commence after the village won a competition sponsored by the US federal government’s Housing and Urban Development Agency (HUD), resulting in a 48 million dollar grant to pay for the relocation.74

On Isle de Jean Charles, see: https://nehathiranibagri.com/us-relocating-entire-town-climate-change-just-beginning/ 75 Interview with Interview with Ryan Slattery (2 March 2022). https://www.huffpost.com/entry/global-warming-flooding_n_3799019

81 79 Rosanna Xia, How should California confront the rising sea? These lawmakers have some bold ideas in LA Times , August 23, 2021. 80 rise-mitigationhttps://sd39.senate.ca.gov/news/20210923-governor-newsom-signs-senate-leader-atkins’-historic-sb-1-sea-level81 Dani Anguiano, ‘Unhoused and unequal: The town at the center of California’s climate refugee crisis’, in The Guardian , 22 May 2022.

35.EUROPEAlthough small island nations and some developing world cities such as Jakarta and Lagos seem to receive the lion’s share of attention, climate change and coastal urban threats in the world’s richest region of Europe are also very much apparent, and have already required governmental intervention in many ways. According to Dutch climate activist Marjan Minnesma: “The Netherlands could face a sea level rise of 1m to 3m by the end of the century if the world doesn’t meet the agreement to reduce temperatures by 1.5C, preferably 2C. A 2-3m rise could mean that part of the country will need to be given up, and major cities like Amsterdam and Rotterdam might have to relocate. The Dutch know how to protect their low-lying country, but time is running out - and still, the Dutch government doesn’t want to be a ‘front-runner’ in tackling the climate crisis, it seems.” 82 Much can be said of the Dutch people’s roll in addressing these issues, but several stand out in particular.

44 ‘managed retreat’, but this is causing consternation amongst many of the communities slated for relocation, even if it is planned and gradual. More than USD 150 billion of property is at risk of flooding along the California coast by 2100, with as much as 65% of Southern California’s famous beaches facing potential disappearance.79 California’s government is focusing its attention to these challenges with an increasing sense of urgency, with a range of legislative bills now before the state assembly. Senate Bill 1, approved in late 2021, addresses sea level rise adaptation, while another was passed also in late 2021 establishing an extensive housing buy-back programme which will purchase threatened homes and rent them out before they become uninhabitable at which point they will either be demolished with the land restored to its natural state. 80 This programme will save six dollars for every dollar spent. And it is not just coastlines in the Golden State that are facing climate displacement, but cities such as Paradise which was devastated by fires in 2018, and which now, several years on has generated a massive homelessness problem in the area.

82 See: Kadir van Lohuizen, After Us the Deluge , Lannoo, 2021, p. 244. See also: Swiss Re, Mind the risk: A global ranking of cities under threat from natural disasters , 2014, which notes: “The Amsterdam-Rotterdam conurbation in the Netherlands is entirely located within a zone of highest risk and holds a top spot in the storm surge rankings, with 1.8 million people potentially affected. Most sections of these cities are even situated below sea level. However, it is important to point out that these areas are protected extremely well by massive storm surge defenses, so the chance of catastrophic damage is substantially lower than in other lesser protected areas.”

Firstly, the words ‘Dutch’ and ‘water’ have been synonymous with one another for hundreds of years and their management of water, their systems of dykes, drainage, water barriers, the creation of new ‘polder’ land and so many other variations on their mastery of controlling water have put the engineers of this small country at the forefront of a host of activities around the world working to deal with rising seas. The Dutch firm, Deltares, for instance, is

Images: Via Panam, migration in the Americas, Panama.

83 See: Shira Rubin, ‘In Amsterdam, a community of floating homes shows the world how to live alongside nature’ in Washington Post , 17 Dec 2021. “Schoonschip, boasting modern design for modern lifestyles, seeks to serve as a prototype for the more than 600 million people - 10 percent of the world’s population who live on or near the water and are already being affected by climate change...floating communities have been emerging across Amsterdam, Rotterdam and Utrecht. These homes that are converted into boats, rather than the other way around, bill themselves as part of a national, and potentially global, solution for a wetter future...Amsterdam and Rotterdam, the Dutch delta city located 90 percent below sea level, are reporting a sharp uptick in requests for permits to build on the water. The trend is coinciding with a national water awareness campaign for an era in which climate change is already a fact of life”.

46 now famous for its interventions in assisting urban areas to better control increasing water challenges throughout the international community. Secondly, the Dutch have always been world leaders of the ‘living on water’ movement, with the famous house boats of Amsterdam being the most well-known of many parts of the country where people have been living in their floating homes for decades. In recent years a new floating community has been established in a former industrial area of the biggest Dutch city called Schoonschip or ‘clean ship’ comprised of 150 residents all living in ultra-modern cubist-styled floating homes, ready to rise with the waters as they rise, with no need for managed retreat, relocation or displacement; these dwellers will be able to stay put for a very long time. Schoonschip has been touted as a prototype option for coastal dwellers across the world. 83 And third, and highly indicative of the scale of the problem, the government of the Netherlands recently launched an App called Overstroom Ik, (Will I Flood?) allowing residents to check if their neighbourhood is at risk of flooding, something which could be put into effect in many cities around the world, and which will be discussed below.

Interestingly, this small coastal settlement was promised by the local government that it would give every effort to protect the village’s flood defenses, but only until 2054 at which time the presumption is that the people will need to move. The problem is, of course, that the people do not want to leave; not now, not ever. The issues raised by Fairbourne, which is home to 700 people, are indicative of the sort of challenges facing coastal towns and cities everywhere. It’s one thing for local government to recognise the problems, but it is another thing entirely as to what to do when the community resists pre-emptive relocation. Almost ten million US dollars has already been spent on concrete tidal defenses to protect the 400 properties of the area, and proposals are now underway to build 100 tetrapods - fourlegged concrete structures that are used to augment the protective capacities of the seawall.

36. Beyond the obvious challenges facing the ‘low country’ of the Netherlands, a centuries-old name aptly capturing the perpetual elevational issues confronting this country, the United Kingdom, Italy, Spain and a range of other countries will also have to grapple increasingly with rising sea levels and urban disruption. Various communities along the coastlines of the United Kingdom are also already threatened with permanent displacement, with some 1.2 million homes in England alone at risk of annual flooding by the year 2020. 84 Countless coastal areas are in trouble, but none more so than the Welsh village of Fairbourne.

Despite these interventions, however, the residents fully understand the implications of the threat facing them, and are already grappling with plummeting house prices, the inability to obtain mortgages and increased reluctance to move unless there is a compulsory purchase plan in place to compensate those affected, as well as a broader plan to adequately relocate the entire community to new homes on new and safer land.

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20220506-the-uk-climate-refugees-who-wont-leave

As a result, in the state of Victoria a policy entitled Planning for Sea Level Rise Guidelines calculates expected sea level rise benchmarks for each local government council, however this document has been criticised for using low-level sea-level rise calculations as the basis for their instructions, rather than what are seen as more likely scenarios. 85

4785OCEANIASee,forinstance, the guidelines developed by the Melbourne Water Corporation, Planning for Sea Level Rise Guidelines: Port Philip and Westernport Region , March 2017. 86 Scott Leckie, ‘Thoughts from a Drought-Striken, Flooded Australia in Counterpunch , 25 March 2022, www.counterpunch.org

38. Following the severe flooding that took place in New South Wales and Queensland in 2022, the idea of housing buy-backs is now under serious discussion, but concerns about cost are already being used to reduce the potential scale of such plans. 86 According to one recent analysis, “A recent report estimates a $30 billion investment is needed in coastal protection and adaptation projects over the next 50 years. Prepared for the Insurance Council of Australia, the report calls for relatively modest spending that would avoid losses for individuals and communities, through coastal protection infrastructure, better data collection and difficult decisions about the long-term viability of some properties. A survey of 94 coastal councils in 2020 found 90 per cent rate coastal hazards a priority issue, but identified funding issues as critical to deal with the challenge, the Australian Coastal Councils Association said”. 87

39. New Zealand is another key country seeking to find viable solutions to climate displacement. (See Box 13) Already home to hundreds of thousands of Pacific Islanders, with Auckland home to the largest concentration of Diaspora populations from Samoa, Tonga, Tokelau, Tuvalu, Kiribati and elsewhere in the region, it is expected that New Zealand will be central as a place of climate refuge. Moreover, New Zealand courts have been some of the most active to date on adjudicating on climate displacement matters, leading the way with the now famous Teitiota case from Kiribati. As for New Zealand itself and the effects of sea level rise it will face, a recently developed mapping system allows the user to see the entire coastline from the perspective of sea level rise. 88

87 Elizabeth Redman, ‘Coastal properties at highest climate risk could fall in value in 18 months’, Sydney Morning Herald, 11 Jan 2022. 88 See: https://www.searise.nz/maps-2 37. Oceania’s largest country, Australia, has been a climate laggard amongst OECD countries. It is now also known as a country that has created its very own internally displaced persons, a country that will soon need to use coercive powers to stop people building in certain areas and where internal migration may just take on massive proportions. The extreme heat, fires and droughts that will keep worsening across all states and territories will induce more and more people to migrate to cooler parts of the country, which themselves are actually shrinking in size. More and more coastal areas will become severely eroded as sea levels rise faster than anticipated resulting in tens of billions of dollars of property losses.

See: Tess McClure, ‘New Zealand unveils plan to tackle climate crisis by adapting cities to survive rising seas’ in the Guardian , 27 April 2022.

“The New Zealand government has released new plans to try to prepare the country for the catastrophic effects of the climate crisis: sea level rise, floods, massive storms and wildfires.

89 40. Cities are at the frontlines of climate change and climate displacement and need to be ready for these new and growing challenges that will only worsen as the years go by. After having looked generally at how climate displacement is already playing out in various coastal regions across the world, we now turn briefly to the human rights implications of these developments, which will then be followed by practical suggestions to city governments everywhere on how best to protect their citizens from ever worsening climate change.

48 BOX 13 - NEW ZEALAND TAKES THE LEAD 89

The proposals, released for consultation on Wednesday, outline sweeping reforms to institutions, councils and laws to try to stop people building in hazardous areas, preserve cultural treasures, improve disaster responses, protect the financial system from the shocks of future disasters, and reform key industries including tourism, fisheries and farming...At the forefront of the plan is the challenge of how to adapt New Zealand’s cities and housing stock – much of which is coastal – to the risk of rising seas and flood waters. According to the government, the scale of the problem is enormous: 675,000 people – one in seven New Zealanders – live in areas prone to flooding, amounting to nearly $100bn worth of residential buildings. Another 72,065 live in areas projected to be subject to extreme sea level rise...The government’s proposed changes, include updating the building code to make sure new builds account for climate hazards, ensuring the country’s public housing stock is built away from hazards, creating incentives for development away from high-risk areas and making it compulsory to disclose information about climate risks to prospective buyers and builders. Some of those measures are likely to cause unease for homeowners, who are worried that climate risk assessments could tank the value of their homes...Prof Bronwyn Hayward, of University of Canterbury, said via the Science Media Centre that the plan “shows the enormity of the task facing the government after years of inaction”. “We now need to implement climate planning guidelines across a raft of new legislation, and we need to think carefully about how people are exposed to repeated flooding effects – and I’d add fires – in the future. If homeowners, businesses, schools, ports or airports have to move away from a high-risk area for example, who pays?”...Prof Anita Wreford, of Lincoln University, said that the plan was “well overdue” and “an improvement from New Zealand’s current approach to hazards, which has been very reactive and focused on recovery after an event”. But she said the proposals were still very high level, and needed to provide “much more guidance for decision-makers”. “I suspect groups waiting in anticipation for this ... may have hoped for more concrete direction in implementing adaptation to achieve these goals.” The plan will be open for public consultation before the proposals are finalised by the government. “Aotearoa will soon have a plan to bring down our emissions and help prevent the worst effects of climate change,” Shaw said, “But we must also support communities already being hit by more extreme and more frequent weather events.”

41. Human rights form one of the vital cornerstones of the international rules-based legal order. From the UN Charter in 1945 to the Universal Declaration on Human Rights of 1948, the International Covenants from 1966 and by now countless other increasingly specific treaties and other norms, human rights law and the rights derived from this system of law are relevant to every person and every country and government. Though internationally recognised human rights remain still far too easy to violate, and as a result, are far too widely violated by governments that refuse to take them as seriously as they were intended to be, the legal basis and promise of human rights law are vital ingredients in building strong, stable, fair, equitable and prosperous societies.90 Human rights laws balance the power of the State with the rights and entitlements of individual citizens and members of groups of citizens, eg. women, children, people of colour, disability, and others. Because of the everwidening coverage of human rights law, this legal regime has a role to play in virtually every aspect of every society, including climate change and the official state response to this global challenge, including those of local coastal governments.

42. Extensive work has been done in recent years on applying human rights laws and principles to the question of climate change, and we have now reached the stage where the UN appointed a Special Rapporteur on Human Rights and Climate Change, Professor Ian Fry, in 2022. New human rights and climate change standards have been established, law school courses taught, books written, laws and policies adopted and a growing body of case law and jurisprudence has come into being in just the past few years.(See Box 14) There can be no doubting now that any effective climate change policy must by its very nature include reference to and reliance on human rights laws if it is to have the intended effect. If we focus solely on the question of people facing displacement and/or planned relocation, it is clear that anyone who moves or who is displaced within their own country is entitled to certain specific and clearly defined rights. Indeed, international human rights laws provide numerous rights of direct relevance to the hundreds of millions of people currently threatened with climate displacement, including housing, land and property rights, the right to food, clean drinking water and adequate sanitation, the right to education, the right to medical assistance and health services, the right to freedom of movement, the right to relocate, the right to humanitarian assistance and numerous others.

43. For the purposes of this report, the question then becomes, which human rights are most affected by climate change, and thus, which precise measures must be taken by governments, in particular local coastal governments, to ensure that the full spectrum of the freely-accepted obligations held by the State to respect, protect and fulfill human rights for everyone are subject to the fullest possible compliance? Indeed, understanding the complex interaction and numerous inter-relationships between human rights laws and climate change legal and policy responses, both in terms of mitigation and adaptation, will be vital

HUMAN RIGHTS IMPACTS

49III.

90 One of the best brief overviews of human rights can be found in: Andrew Clapham, Human Rights: A Very Short Introduction , Oxford University Press, 2015.

93 See: Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment and the Centre for Climate Change Economics and Policy, Policy brief - National laws and policies on climate change adaptation: a global review, LSE and University of Leeds, December 2019. In their analysis, they find that “91 countries have at least one law (passed by a legislative branch, e.g. parliament) that addresses climate change adaptation. Adaptation is now addressed in the executive policies of at least 170 countries. More than 120 countries have at least one framework document that addresses climate change adaptation (laws or policies that lay down the overarching and cross-sectoral obligations and principles, but often have more detailed subsidiary laws or policies that set out how these goals are achieved)...In general, countries have tended to pass adaptation laws after passing mitigation laws. To date, the most intense period of legislative activity was 2012/13 when 85 countries passed a total of 133 adaptation laws and policies.”, p. 3. 94 Ibid, pp. 4-5.

50 to formulating effective measures that simultaneously confront the effects of climate change while also protecting the maximum possible extent the rights of every person and group affected by both climate change itself and the measures taken to address it. For instance, local governments may wish to relocate coastal communities ostensibly to protect them from rising sea levels or worsening storms, but if relocation is carried out a whole series of often complex and expensive measures will need to be in place before any movement can occur and in a context which ensures that all of the rights of those affected are protected and neither undermined nor violated. While human rights laws widely recognise this, so too, do the Catholic Churches’ Pastoral Guidelines on Climate Displaced People . Indicative of how attention to the rights of climate displaced people are gaining ever-widening attention, the Pastoral Guidelines note, for instance, that “Can we disregard the growing phenomenon of “environmental refugees”, people who are forced by the degradation of their natural habitat to forsake it – and often their possessions as well – in order to face the dangers and uncertainties of forced displacement?

BOX 14 - CAN THE COURTS HELP?

92 UN Environment, ‘The Status of Climate Change Litigation – A Global Review’, 2017, 4.

Recent research indicates that nearly 2,000 climate change-related laws and policies have been adopted by a majority of countries in recent years.93 Of these, almost 700 focused specifically on climate adaptation measures .94 The recent adoption of national climate displacement policies in

Global attention to the question of climate change, including climate displacement, has expanded dramatically over the 16 years since Displacement Solutions initiated our efforts to find concrete, rights-based and land-based solutions to this crisis. One area, in particular, that has seen considerable advancement in recent years is the growing scope of judicial attention to various aspects of the climate change question, spanning international, regional and national judicial institutions. Globally, as of mid-2020 nearly 1,500 cases have been filed addressing various aspects of the climate crisis over the past several years, and as a result, a rapidly growing body of case law is emerging from judicial organs that collectively give a sense of which climate change issues adjudicative bodies are willing to address, as well as the extent to which such judicial (and quasi-judicial) decisions are having a real world impact on the environmental and human impacts of global warming and all of its effects. Over the past decade, laws codifying national and international obligations to climate change have grown in number, specificity and importance.92

The question answers itself: “No, we cannot!”

91 Pastoral Guidelines on Climate Displaced People, 30.03.2021, Migrants and Refugees Section - Integral Ecology Sector, Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development.

Protection of traditional knowledge – Traditional knowledge, relating to land, ecology, agriculture, music and culture are part of Ni-Vanuatu identities and need to be mapped, cherished and protected to minimise the disruptive impacts of displacement. Traditional knowledge can also be a resource to assist communities mitigate and cope with displacementrelated impacts. State’s primary responsibility – As reflected in the People’s Plan 2030, the Government of Vanuatu has the core responsibility to protect and deliver essential services to its population, to enable community resilience to flourish.68 The State also has the primary role to authorize, direct and coordinate the provision of humanitarian and development assistance from local and international partners to communities, p. 17.

97 See: Displacement Solutions and YPSA, Bangladesh Housing, Land and Property (HLP) Rights Initiative Climate Displacement in Bangladesh: Stakeholders, Laws and Policies - Mapping the Existing Institutional Framework , July 2014. Available at: www.displacementsolutions.org

displacementsolutions.org/peninsula-principles/

See the Vanuatu National Policy on Climate Change and Disaster-Induced Displacement , 2018 - “Respect for custom – custom, culture and community are embodied in the Constitution and underpin life, land and spirit in Vanuatu.

Gender equity and responsiveness – planning for durable solutions must be responsive to the different risks and needs all people, including women, men, children. All people must be included in durable solutions planning and have equal opportunities to lead community-driven recovery processes. Environmental and ecological sustainability – Durable solutions planning should safeguard the environment and incorporate elements of conservation and protection of biodiversity for surrounding ecosystems. Freedom of movement – human mobility is an important way of adapting to changing environmental and socioeconomic circumstances and in the context of displacement it can be life-saving.

98 See, inter alia, Scott Leckie and Chris Huggins, Repairing Domestic Climate Displacement - The Peninsula Principles , Routledge, 2015; Khaled Hassine, Handling Climate Displacement , Cambridge University Press, 2019 and https://

51countries such as Fiji95 , Vanuatu96 , Bangladesh97 and others are indicative of the types of political engagement that has also emerged in some countries as global climatic conditions deteriorate. These and other policies, at least in part, have clearly been influenced by the 2013 Peninsula Principles on Climate Displacement Within States, among other standards.98 As these laws and

A Human- Rights Based Approach, that after the adoption of the Paris Agreement in 2015 becomes more present in positioning rights close to the mobility process, and associates inexorably to the climate change discourse. The Paris Agreement, together with the ICCPR and the ICESCR reflects the countries’ rationale to relate climate change triggers to rights belonging to the affected people, ensuring that men, women, elderly and persons with disabilities are meaningfully engaged and participate in the decision-making, planning, and implementation related to the planned relocation. The human rights–based approach is also the main component of the PARTICIPATION and CONSULTATION processes as stipulated by the Paris Agreement together with the TRANSPARENCY CONCEPT, as stated in Article 13 that established an enhanced transparency framework for action and support, with built-in flexibility which considers Parties’ different capacities and builds upon collective experience. The purpose of the framework for transparency of support is to provide clarity on support provided and received by relevant individual Parties in the context of climate change and related displacement actions (as mentioned by Article 8) and, to the extent possible, to provide a full overview of aggregate financial support provided, to inform the global stocktaking under Article 14, p. 8.

95 See Fiji, Planned Relocation Guidelines: A framework to undertake climate change related relocation , 2018. “A HumanCentered Approach that derives from the application of anthropocentric concepts in environmental management, and raises ethical issues when discussing the role of human beings in shaping and accessing environmental resources. This principle is to ensure that the community bottom- up perception is prioritized, that the interests of communities are considered, and the lessons learnt from Fiji’s past experiences with relocation processes -- where community movements have been associated with numerous social, cultural, gender, economic and environmental issues relating to tensions over land, dislocation of communities, inadequate resources and unsuitable sites -- are to be avoided in the future application of these Guidelines. A Livelihood- Based Approach to adaptation (rather than a sectoral approach) is an integral part of many rural livelihood strategies, as opposed to planned relocation being merely a reaction to climate change. This is to ensure that people who have relocated are not negatively affected and contribute to the process of “migration as adaptation”. It is also considered to reflect the fact that the planned relocation process needs to be sensitive to the specific needs of communities and households that may be on the move. Characterizing the communities and households’ profiles associated with climate related relocation will facilitate developing policy and operational options that build livelihood in respect to those climatic stressors.

Respect for law, including the different customs and laws of each island especially as they relate to land dealings, must guide the process of establishing durable solutions. Human rights and dignity – all people have the right to safety, protection, dignity, health and well-being, freedom from discrimination of any kind, and many other rights as reflected in Vanuatu’s People’s Plan 2030. All efforts should be made to ensure these rights are extended to people affected by displacement, including internal migrants and host communities. Voluntary and informed choices – People affected by displacement have the right to make voluntary and informed choices about their future and have the right to participate in the planning and management of durable solutions so that they reflect their self-identified needs and aspirations.

Freedom of movement is protected in the Constitution and efforts should be made to facilitate safe and well-managed mobility as an adaptive response to changing environmental and livelihood pressures. Fostering self-reliance – ensuring that displaced people are respected, empowered and viewed as economically productive members of society and agents of their own recovery, including promoting interventions which aim to strengthen people’s skills, assets, networks and agency. Strengthening resilience and coping capacities – reinforcing individual, household and community-level coping mechanisms, whilst recognizing that affected populations are not homogenous and will have different needs.

The Peninsula Principles very clearly and succinctly include three fundamental principles concerning non-discrimination against people threatened by climate displacement. Principle 3 on Non-discrimination, rights and freedoms notes that: (a) States shall not discriminate against climate displaced persons on the basis of their potential or actual displacement, and should take steps to repeal unjust or arbitrary laws and laws that otherwise discriminate against, or have a discriminatory effect on, climate displaced persons; (b) Climate displaced persons shall enjoy, in full equality, the same rights and freedoms under international and domestic law as do other persons in their country, in particular housing, land and property rights; and (c) States should ensure that climate displaced persons are entitled to and supported in claiming and exercising their rights and are provided with effective remedies as well as unimpeded access to the justice system. In addition, the Peninsula 99 See, for instance: climate-change-litigation/0E35456D7793968F37335429C1163EA1/core-reader#https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/transnational-environmental-law/article/rights-turn-in100 Ibid.

102

52 policies have recognised new rights and created new duties, it is natural that litigation seeking to enforce them or challenge their validity or particular application has followed.99 In particular, so too has strategic litigation aimed at holding governments and corporations to account, and pressing legislators and policymakers to be more ambitious and thorough in their approaches to climate change.100 Affected individuals, environmental groups and organisations have been formative in the growing global trend of the increasing number of climate change related actions being brought before the courts.101 Around the world, these matters have primarily targeted unresponsive governments and corporations for falling short of tackling climate change at a generic level.102 As a relatively new phenomenon, litigants have used various legal avenues to bring climate change cases before the courts, with actions based on the law of torts and administrative law to domestic statutes and international conventions. More broadly, recent matters below demonstrate the increasing prevalence of a rights-based approach to strategic climate litigation. Overall, more than 1,300 climate change cases have thus far been filed in 28 countries, constituting roughly 15% of the world’s states.103 While China is currently the largest emitter of CO2 gases, of the cases recorded, 78% of these were filed in the United States, the country which historically has by far released more CO2 into the atmosphere than any other country. In addition, the next five countries measured by the number of climate change cases includes Australia (94 cases), the United Kingdom (53 cases), New Zealand (17 cases), Spain (13 cases), Brazil (5 cases) and Germany (5 cases).104 (Source: Displacement Solutions, Courtrooms and Climate Change: The Current State of Play , November 2020).

44. And it is not just the human rights issues arising within the context of any planned relocation or resettlement measures, which we will outline further below, but also basic rights that must form the foundation of any response to the effects of climate change that in any way threaten the rights of citizens and residents of every jurisdiction across the world.

101 See, for instance, Cambridge Core, ‘A Rights Turn in Climate Change Litigation?’, derived from a collection of articles growing out of the conference ‘A Rights-Based Approach to Climate Change’, held at QUT Law School, Brisbane (Australia), on 18-19 Feb 2016. Ibid, 14. 103 Sandra Laville, ‘ Governments and firms in 28 countries sued over climate crisis - report ‘ in The Guardian (4 July 2019). 104 Ibid.

Planning for internal climate migration means accounting for all phases of migration— before, during, and after moving. Before migration, adapt-in-place solutions can help communities stay in place where local adaptation options are viable and sensible. During migration, policies and investments can enable mobility for people who need to move away from unavoidable climate risks. After migration, planning can ensure that both sending and receiving areas are well equipped to meet the needs and aspirations of their populations. In places where options to adapt in place have reached their limits, inclusive decision-making processes can help ensure that planned relocation and managed retreat enable movement in a safe and dignified manner. Planned relocation

IV. A CHECKLIST FOR MUNICIPAL

Human rights matter in the context of tackling climate displacement. It is now, therefore, incumbent upon municipal and national officials to make certain that this occurs.

53Principles also address vital human rights themes in the context of climate displacement including, risk management, monitoring, modeling, participation and consent of persons requiring relocation, land identification and acquisition, loss and damage issues, the need for appropriate institutional frameworks, direct state assistance to those climate displaced persons experiencing displacement but who have not been relocated and many others.105

105 Generally on the Peninsula Principles, see: Scott Leckie and Chris Huggins, Repairing Domestic Climate Displacement: The Peninsula Principles , Routledge, 2016 and Khaled Hassine, Handling Climate Displacement , Cambridge University Press, 2019. AND NATIONAL OFFICIALS

45. As the many examples in the sections above so clearly show, we are now living in the early stages of the era of climate displacement. That the theme of the 2021 World Cities Day was Adapting Cities for Climate Resilience reveals the growing recognition of the role of cities and local governments in addressing climate change effectively. This era will challenge all corners of the world, but it will be in the world’s large coastal cities that the challenges will be the greatest. The climate consequences facing dozens and dozens of major coastal urban areas on all continents are already pushing local governments to the brink in attempting to protect their cities and their citizens from the ravages of rising seas, worsening erosion and all of the other impacts that make coastal living increasingly impossible for hundreds of millions of people. Some cities are further ahead than others in structurally attempting to grapple with these realities, others are just beginning to act and still others have yet to do anything to address the inevitable problems these large cities will face far sooner than most people realise. (See Box 15) There is a growing realisation that the movement of people due to climate change falls along a diverse and complex spectrum from trying to stay in place as long as possible all the way to relocating entire cities. As the World Bank’s Groundswell report notes:

106

106 Supra, Groundswell , p. xxx. Image: Bangladesh climate refugees.

46. Our hope at Displacement Solutions is that coastal cities are as prepared as possible to both protect the physical infrastructure and territory of their cities and towns and are at least aware of what other cities are doing, what has been attempted, and most important of all, what has worked to reduce these climate impacts and in the process maximise the protection of the rights of those affected. Having reviewed hundreds of articles, reports, books and films and engaged in interviews and discussions with numerous urban officials from around the world, and based on our many years of experience in the field working with communities facing climate displacement, we have developed the following practical checklist for urban officials dealing with climate change impacts, including possible displacement, to increase city effectiveness in fighting the effects of a changing climate. It includes housing buy-outs and land swaps, land reclamation and replenishment, geo-engineering such as dikes, groins, sponges, pumps and drains, seawalls, offshore mangrove planting, river and tidal flow management structures, augmented disaster management, early warning programs, planned relocation and retreat, raising elevation levels of land and buildings, sewage and waste management, cemetery repositioning, planning and zoning law changes, retracting development approvals, internal climate displacement policies, safer island projects, floating cities and many others.

54 is a complex and multidimensional process to be adopted as a last resort and only when needed. It should involve the participation of affected people, and to be developed in a way that is specific to national and local contexts. Many SIDS, for example, have already taken proactive leadership roles on integrating mobility in the context of climate change in national policy frameworks to anchor the ability of inhabitants to remain where viable, while ensuring continued opportunities to migrate for those who choose to do so.

1. Put people at the center of our climate action by protecting them from climate hazards and by leveraging our green and just recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic to create opportunities for all, especially the most marginalised; 2. Promote inclusive and equitable climate action recognising that the climate crisis disproportionately impacts vulnerable and marginalised groups, including migrants and displaced people; 3. Help people adapt in place or move away from hazard-prone areas in a way that preserves the assets, rights, and dignity of those who move, and is ecologically sustainable; 4. Endeavor to welcome people moving or displaced into our cities, including for climate-related reasons ensuring fundamental rights and equitable access to services, regardless of migration or legal status; 5. Deliver a just transition that provides good quality jobs to migrants and displaced people in our cities, including in the informal sector, and recognises their contributions to greening our local economies and delivering climate action; 6. Partner with migrants, displaced, and diaspora communities listening to and amplifying their voices in our local policy-making and our national and global advocacy on climate and migration; 7. Pursue and share data and information to help our cities and residents assess and reduce climate risks and increase resilience; 8. Advocate for supportive national and international policies and direct funding to cities to meet and exceed the goals set in the Global Compacts for Migration and Refugees, the Paris Agreement, and other global agendas; 9. Engage in multi-stakeholder partnerships to address climate and migration challenges enhancing our efforts to cooperate with national governments, international organisations, civil society, and the private sector; and 10. Model behaviour by investing our own city resources in inclusive climate action leading the way in planning, preparing, and responding to the impact of the climate crisis on migration now. The Task Force has developed six extremely important and practical recommendations designed to improve city responses to climate threats including climate displacement. These are: 1. Significantly increase planning for – and public and private investment in – urban climate adaptation, especially in low-income countries; 2. Recognise migration as a form of adaptation when mitigation or in-place adaptation is no longer viable, incorporate migration-related considerations into national climate action strategies, and vice versa, and include migrants in disaster risk reduction and response; 3. Recognise and address the protection needs of climate migrants and displaced people. 4. Remove barriers and support communities in welcoming migrants and displaced persons; 5. Invest in a green and just transition in cities to create secure and sustainable employment for all, including migrants and displaced people; and 6. Harness the skills and contributions of migrants and displaced people for the green transition.107

107 C40 and Mayors Migration Council, Action Agenda , November 2021.

55BOX 15 - THE GLOBAL MAYORS TASK FORCE C-40 AND THE MAYORS MIGRATION COUNCIL

The Global Mayors Task Force on Climate and Migration is a mayor-led initiative comprised of C40 Cities and the Mayors Migration Council to address the impact of the climate crisis on migration in cities. In 2021 the group issued an Action Agenda on Climate and Migration that addresses city principles for inclusive action on climate and migration, city leadership and inclusive action on climate and migration, city recommendations for national government and the international community. This important document was formally launched at COP26 and begins with a statement of principles asserting: We, as mayors of major cities across the globe, deal with the realities of climate change and migration on a daily basis. This includes protecting residents from extreme heat, flooding, or other hazards; welcoming people displaced by climate impacts domestically or internationally; and promoting climate justice and leaving no one behind in the green transition. To date, our efforts have been delivered with limited resources and fragmented policy and financing regimes. The principles they assert include:

The first action all coastal governments should take, if they have not done so already, is to create a climate displacement office or officials specifically and publicly entrusted with addressing climate displacement matters. This office/official should guide policy-making and project implementation, and also be the first port of call for any person, household, community or organisation requiring assistance in dealing with climate threats. It is - as per the title of this report - on this door everyone, everywhere living along coastlines, must be able to knock.

Consistent with the sentiments of C40 Cities and the Mayors Migration Council, creating such

Yet more intensive and interventionary approaches are also identifiable such as active managed retreat and planned relocation with direct assistance provided to households and communities to move to a safer land parcel. And, finally, some have effectively capitulated, giving up the fight and letting the oceans rule again.

;

Others are building seawalls, planting mangroves and implementing other forms of climate adaptation. Still others are beginning to carry out forms of passively managed retreat by offering inducements and incentives to move to other, safer parts of the same country.

56 47. It is abundantly clear that coastal cities everywhere need to do more - and in many cases much more - to prevent, prepare for and address the climate displacement threats facing all of them. Some cities will surely be more affected than others, and some are beginning to implement policies and programmes designed to tackle these threats, but overall, cities are not yet doing everything needed to confront the unique types of challenges that climate change is posing. Some may wish to carry out such endeavours, but simply do not have the funds to do so. Others may be in the process of implementing projects which at their core are intended to address climate change, but which, in fact, make matters worse, particularly for lower-income groups. There is great diversity in approach, and if one conclusion can be drawn it is simply that much more needs to be done. Principles to guide these processes need to be developed to increase the degree of compatibility of city approaches to climate change based on universally relevant best practices that have been tested and are agreed to be successful in achieving the aims of maximum prevention, maximum engagement with the problem and maximum success in the legal, policy and project approach selected. At present there are immense differences in the manner by which climate threats are being addressed. Some are doing literally nothing, as if the problem did not exist at all, having neither diagnosed the places where the problem will be worst nor even appointed a single official to be responsible for working to ameliorate these problems.

1. CLIMATE DISPLACEMENT OFFICE/OFFICIAL(S)

48. While coastal cities everywhere will need to take quite literally hundreds of decisions in the coming years to deal with increasing climate threats, we have identified fifteen concrete, realistic and practical actions coastal governments that can be acted upon today. We have attempted to keep the analysis surrounding each item on the checklist that follows as short, simple and clear as possible. In each section that follows we identify the action to be taken in the title and then provide a brief overview and five-part checklist that each local government can use to expedite and oversee the implementation of each proposed action. Finally, each section includes a short list of useful resources that can be drawn upon by local government officials to gain further insights and build further networks from which they can gain additional information.

57an office would satisfy their recommendation that cities “Establish a clear institutional lead on climate migration at national, regional, and multilateral levels and ensure coordination across sectors and with local governments.” Put simply, every local government should be able to answer the following question from a person, family or community threatened with climate displacement: On whose door do I knock to get assistance? Most coastal governments cannot yet answer this question, but they should be able to. The Climate Displacement Office/Official will be either a new city or county-level ministry or a focal point within an existing ministry. By way of example, in the United States alone, New York has an Office of Resilience and Recovery that carries out some of these activities, while Miami has appointed a chief resilience officer to manage climate threats. In California, the Coastal Commission provides grants and guidance to local governments and has a track record of urging threatened areas to consider all possible approaches including manage retreat. None of these offices, nor most of the others that other cities have established, however, go far enough in addressing the human dimensions of the problem. Ideally, a climate displacement office should be enabled legally and financially with provide real, sustainable and affordable housing, land and property solutions to everyone requiring one.

Q3 - How, in specific terms, can the office help me and my community?

ACTION CHECKLIST 1. Name of Responsible Government

Q4 - Does the Office have a budget? If so, how much? Is it adequate? Where do the funds come from? Does it issue individual/household grants or only carry out macro-level infrastructure and other projects? Department/Agency

Q1 - Is there a Climate Displacement Office/Official in place? If so, how can I and my community make direct contact with them?

2. Name of Responsible Government Official 3. Address and Contact Details of Government Department/Official 4. Are Plans of Action in Place (Short-, Median- and Long-Term)? 5. Budget Amount and Source

PRELIMINARY QUESTIONS:

Q2 - What are the precise functions of this office? Are they sufficient for purpose? Are they entrenched in law?

58 USEFUL RESOURCES C40 and Mayors Migration Council, Action Agenda , November 2021risk-of-crumbling-into-the-seahttps://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/aug/05/wa-beaches-homes-and-roads-at-what-you-get-runs-cold-20220421-p5af80.htmlhttps://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/this-is-what-you-want-on-climate-action-extreme-climate-than-conflicthttps://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2021/5/25/bbin-2020-more-people-displaced-by-lismore-community-grapples-with-its-futurehttps://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/apr/09/land-swaps-relocations-or-rebuilds-TheCaliforniaorganizations/new-york-city-mayor-s-office-of-recovery-and-resiliency.htmlNewhttps://www.mayorsmigrationcouncil.org/c40-mmc-action-agendaYorkOfficeofResilienceandRecovery-https://www.adaptationclearinghouse.org/CoastalCommission-https://www.coastal.ca.govCityofMiami-https://www.miamidade.gov/global/economy/resilience/home.page ; 2. DIAGNOSTIC WORK ON ALL CLIMATE DISPLACEMENT

Municipalities should ensure that there is mandatory disclosure of flood risk assessments by individuals seeking to sell their homes, lands and properties before selling a property to lower the risk of misinformation for the buyer. Every city should know and be able to show to whoever asks how many people are threatened with climate displacement. Where do these people live? What are the laws, policies and projects put in place to assist them? And where will they go?

PRELIMINARY QUESTIONS:

Q1 - How many people are likely to be displaced in my town, village or community?

Q2 - Where are they located on a map?

A growing number of coastal cities have carried out diagnostic work determining the time frame, scale, locations and effects of rising sea levels and other climate-related threats. The global work of groups such as Climate Central that has carried out coastal threat mapping have assisted this process greatly, however, most of the work carried out thus far remains either too general in nature, inadequately funded and lacking viable strategies for the communities affected. This work is vital and something every local government can and should do all across the world. Every coastal city should carry out comprehensive planning on climate adaptation, preparations for climate vulnerability and flood mapping assessments in current and planned housing development sites, developing flood risk prevention planning, create early warning systems, contingency planning and disaster management plans.

THREATS

59Q3 - By which date will they be threatened? Q4 - Are these neighbourhoods organised? Q5 - Are they recipients of public services? Q6 - Will they be assisted to move as a last resort? Q7 - Most importantly of all, where can they go if they need to move? ACTION CHECKLIST 1. Name of Responsible Government Department/Agency 2. Name of Responsible Government Official 3. Address and Contact Details of Government Department/Official 4. Are Plans of Action in Place (Short-, Median- and Long-Term)? 5. Budget Amount and Source USEFUL RESOURCES For coastal and general flooding threat maps: (1) Global - https://www.climatecentral.org and (2)and-casualty/solutions/property-specialty-solutions/catnet.htmlhttps://www.swissre.com/reinsurance/propertyNetherlands - https://overstroomik.nl (3) New Zealand - https://www.searise.nz (4) Australia - https://mapshare.vic.gov.au/coastkit/ (5) Europe - https://drmkc.jrc.ec.europa.eu/inform-index Clement, Viviane, Kanta Kumari Rigaud, Alex de Sherbinin, Bryan Jones, Susana Adamo, Jacob Schewe, Nian Sadiq, and Elham Shabahat. Groundswell Part 2: Acting on Internal Climate Migration . 2021. Washington, DC: The World Bank). Pastoral Guidelines on Climate Displaced People , 30.03.2021, Migrants and Refugees SectionIntegral Ecology Sector, Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development. Projections of global-scale extreme sea levels and resulting episodic coastal flooding over the 21st Century - https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-67736-6

PRELIMINARY QUESTIONS

Q3 - Are there any programmes in place to assist those who have lost assets due to climate change impacts? If so, which ones and how do residents access these?

Specific measures should be undertaken to address any housing value depreciation that will occur as coastal conditions deteriorate, as well as developing financial mechanisms to compensate those unable to sell their homes due to extreme value depreciation. Similarly, every measure needs to be taken to protect potential buyers against fraudulent housing and land sales by requiring any seller to disclose all climate-related threats. Insurance mechanisms should be woven into these processes and broader flood management planning.

Q2 - Are specific measures and policies in place to assist dwellers to retrofit or raise their homes to enable them to remain in place?

60 ; 3.

HLP RIGHTS LAWS AND POLICIES

Other measures that should be taken to protect HLP rights include amending zoning laws as motivations to leave or retreat to safer areas, amending building codes and standards to reflect new flooding threats, developing tax incentives designed to protect owners, tenants and slum dwellers/squatters equitably and that reward the development of new housing in areas less affected by climate threats. In addition, specific policies should be developed that provide support to dwellers in threatened areas enabling them to affordably (preferably through direct provision or subsidies) retrofit their homes to make them more capable of withstanding climate threats. For instance, where possible, coastal dwellers should be both encouraged to raise the ground floor levels of homes through the use of stilts and other techniques that would secure their homes in the event of acute and temporary flooding. Similarly, when residential building continues to be allowed or tolerated by the authorities in threatened coastal areas or flood zones, every effort should to incentivise people to build on the highest sites possible using methods that take full into account the likelihood of future threats.

Housing, land and property rights should be a central part of all policies and projects at the local level addressing climate displacement. Each municipality should familiarise itself with all relevant HLP laws binding on the national government and understand how these relate to the legal obligations incumbent on local government. Similarly, all municipalities should understand the rights possessed by local residents and have precise measures in place to ensure compliance with these rights. As needed, and reiterated by C-40, municipalities should “adopt and implement national laws and policies on internal displacement that address climate hazards and disasters as drivers of displacement, that are in line with human rights standards, the UN Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement, and the Peninsula Principles on Climate Displacement Within States.”

Q1 - What housing, land and property rights do my community and I have under international, national and local law and how do I go about enforcing these?

Q4 - Is the local government doing enough to both prevent people from moving into high-risk areas as well as assisting those threatened with climate displacement from their present homes?

61ACTION CHECKLIST 1. Name of Responsible Government Department/Agency 2. Name of Responsible Government Official 3. Address and Contact Details of Government Department/Official 4. Are Plans of Action in Place (Short-, Median- and Long-Term)? 5. Budget Amount and Source USEFUL RESOURCES Displacement Solutions, The Rights of Climate Displaced Persons: A Quick Guide , April 2015 Scottcopies-now-available/https://displacementsolutions.org/pocket-guide-on-rights-of-climate-displaced-persons-hard--Leckie(ed), Land Solutions for Climate Displacement , Routledge, 2014. UN Office of the High Commissioner on Human Rights and work on climate changeUNhttps://www.ohchr.org/en/climate-changeSpecialRapporteuronthePromotionand Protection of Human Rights in the Context of Climate Change - email: hrc-sr-climatechange@un.org ; 4. COASTAL MANAGEMENT, EROSION CONTROL AND GEO-ENGINEERING Effective coastal management can be indispensable in preparing coastal communities for rising sea levels and other threats and may be vital in preventing and reducing eventual climate displacement. Every municipality, in particular coastal or riverside municipalities should have coastal management, erosion control and geo-engineering plans in place for every neighbourhood covering the full length of the coastline, all riverbanks and any current or future flood plains. These would include, for instance, dikes, dams, seawalls, water drains, offshore tetrapods, groins, jetties, mangrove planting and living shorelines involving natural methods of water control, and a series of other measures including large-scale projects in those municipalities that can afford it such as the Maesland Barrier in the Netherlands, the MOSE barrier in Venice, Italy or the Thames flood barrier outside of London in the United Kingdom, as well as the ‘urban sponge’ strategies in places such as Shanghai (China), Hyderabad (India)

ACTION CHECKLIST 1. Name of Responsible

62 and (Vinh) Vietnam where city authorities collect storm-water to offset water demand during planting season, with the net result of reducing seasonal flooding. In addition, land reclamation or extension measures as well as high ground mound construction methods should be considered, as appropriate. Overall, each municipality should have the legal powers required to implement such projects and be supported in their implementation by the national government and potentially international funding sources. In addition, studies should be undertaken to determine if permanent floating homes and/villages may be possible in areas near to or adjacent to threatened coastlines, as has been shown to work in the Netherlands, the Maldives and elsewhere. QUESTIONS: - Has the municipality done everything possible to reduce the impacts of rising sea levels, flooding and coastal erosion? Could a government-wide meeting be convened to discuss these issues? - Have particular projects been undertaken designed to protect the human settlement concerned, and if so, have these been adequate? - Which other methods might be possible and affordable that have not yet been tried?

Q4 - Are floating homes possible within the municipality concerned? If so, where? Which legal rights would those living in floating homes have and which legal responsibilities would governments have in terms of their regulation and protection, provision of public services, etc? Government Department/Agency

PRELIMINARY

Guardian , 23 May

63USEFUL RESOURCES 108 Goodell, p. 94.

generally - https://www.fudotetra.co.jp/en/solution/block/tetrapod/ Venice (Italy) - On river barriers generally - MOSE Water Control ProjectOnhttps://www.mosevenezia.eu/project/?lang=enSeawallsgenerally-https://greencoast.org/sea-wall-advantages-and-disadvantages ; DISPLACEMENT INSURANCE

html ;

In principle, every local government area should have accessible, affordable and effective forms of climate displacement insurance in place and ensure that both the government itself and individual households have sustainable and equitable access to such insurance should it become needed to replace losses and damages incurred because of climate change impacts. In reality, however, this will emerge in only a handful of countries and be accessible to only a small number of the hundreds of millions of potential beneficiaries who will need assistance. Although insurance companies are increasingly of the view, in the words of Swiss Re , that ‘weather-related risks remain insurable’, they also realise that risk transfer mechanisms do have their limits, and without substantial state support, insurance coverage will be limited to the declining number of people and households with the ability to pay increasingly high annual policies. Even in the wealthy United States, almost all current flood insurance is provided through a government supported programme, the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) which was created in 1968 as private insurers became increasingly reluctant to offer insurance policies to inhabitants of areas subject to regular flooding. While an extremely progressive idea at the time and reflective of what was politically possible at the time, the scale of current and future climate-related losses places immense pressure on insurance-related mechanisms to deal with these impacts. As Goodell notes in reference to just one of the fifty US states, Florida, where 1.7 million people have flood insurance already covering real estate with a total value of more than USD 400 billion: “According to a report by the Risky Business Project, a group founded by billionaires Michael Bloomberg, Tom Steyer, and Henry Paulson, between $15 billion and $23 billion worth of Florida real estate will likely be underwater by 2050: by 2100 the value of the drowned property could go as high as $680 billion”.108 While many households may have benefitted from these types of insurance arrangements, unfortunately its very existence has conversely exacerbated housing construction within flood zones by giving residents a false sense of security and often pressures

Netherlands (floating homes) - https://schoonschipamsterdam.org/en/; https://www.deltares.nl/ Japanen/about-us/-Ontetrapods

Senayfor-tourism-could-choke-the-ecosystemhttps://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/may/23/maldives-plan-to-reclaim-land-Boztas,SinkingMaldivesplanstoreclaimlandfromtheoceanin 2022.

5. CLIMATE

Maldives (floating city) - https://www.cnn.com/style/article/maldives-floating-city-spc-intl/index.

64 local officials to remove certain neighbourhoods from high to low risk areas to keep real estate values from crashing.109 Moreover, limits on maximum allowable coverage of USD 250,000 means that many with homes above that limit will suffer detriment. Worst of all, the NFIP is heavily in debt and this may threaten its existence all together. At a broader level, Swiss Re has developed a natural hazard and mapping system called CatNet® which, in a manner similar to the Overstroom Ik? App in the Netherlands, allows users to zoom in on individual regions and produce tailor-made maps of direct relevance to the user. Similarly, the government of the state of Victoria in Australia has developed a tool which allows users to see likely sea level rises along the coastlines of the state and other environmental impacts called Coastkit.110 109 Id., pp. 107-108. 110 https://mapshare.vic.gov.au/coastkit/ PRELIMINARY QUESTIONS: Q1 - Is climate/flood insurance available to threatened households within the local government area? Q2 - If so, is this affordable to median- or lower-income households? Q3 - Are public assistance measures in place designed to expand access to such insurance? Q4 - Could new forms of insurance be developed that broadened protection to ever-greater numbers of households? Q5 - Could the local government seek to access the Warsaw International Mechanism as a means of funding loss and damage associated with the local effects of climate change? ACTION CHECKLIST 1. Name of Responsible Government Department/Agency 2. Name of Responsible Government Official 3. Address and Contact Details of Government Department/Official 4. Are Plans of Action in Place (Short-, Median- and Long-Term)? 5. Budget Amount and Source

Mind the Risk: A global ranking of cities under threat from climate change , USexpertise-publication-economics-of-climate-change.pdfhttps://www.swissre.com/dam/jcr:e73ee7c3-7f83-4c17-a2b8-8ef23a8d3312/swiss-re-institute-2014.NationalFloodInsuranceProgram-https://nfipservices.floodsmart.gov

112 Saleemul Haq and Mohamed Adow, Climate change is devastating the Global South, Al Jazeera , 11 May 2022. CatNet®Swissspecialty-solutions/catnet.htmlhttps://www.swissre.com/reinsurance/property-and-casualty/solutions/property-ReInsuranceCompany,

There is no getting around the fundamental fact that the financial costs of preventing, addressing, reducing and repairing climate displacement will be massive, and that most coastal cities, in fact, every coastal city in the world, will find paying for these measures immensely difficult. A footnote within the Glasgow Climate Pact footnote confirms this by indicating that “As climate disasters intensify and the prospects for avoiding even more catastrophic warming grow dim, U.N. experts say the world must spend five to 10 times more helping vulnerable people adapt to inevitable environmental upheaval.” As we noted above in Box 1, the global costs associated with re-housing the world’s climate displaced populations could cost as much as the staggering sum of USD 3.6 trillion. Even some of the world’s richest cities such as New York, Shanghai and Miami will face multi-billion dollar costs in addressing every aspect of the climate threats facing coastal cities everywhere. Protecting just the lower part of Manhattan in New York City with a barrier is likely to cost over 3 billion US dollars, a cost prohibitive even there. However, given that New York City is likely to lose more than 130 billion dollars worth of real estate, the costs of a barrier seem more reasonable. For the vast majority of cities elsewhere the financial challenges facing them already are hard enough to handle, but when climate threats are thrown into the mix the challenges worsen. Nonetheless, there is no way to get around the fact that coastal cities everywhere will need to find the resources needed to adequately address the climate displacement crisis and ensure that their obligations as governments and the rights of their citizens are complied with in full. Problematically, funding promises made by the international community have fallen far short of expectations and even when made available, most tend to be in the form of loans that will need to be paid back by already heavily indebted cities.111 As Saleemul Haq and Mohammed Adow have pointed out “The UN IPCC’s estimate is that $1.6 trillion - $3.8 trillion is required annually to avoid warming exceeding 1.5C. Frustratingly, fossil fuels are still being subsidized, receiving some $554 billion per year between 2017 and 2019, by one estimate. And in 2020, annual global military spending reached $2 trillion.” 112 To make matters even more challenging, the vast majority of the funds now available to tackle climate issues has gone to and continues

65USEFUL RESOURCES

;

The Paris Agreement aimed for a balance between these ‘mitigation’ projects and those that help people adapt to the effects of climate change. But just $20 billion went to adaptation projects in 2019, less than half of the funds for mitigation projects, the OECD found. The UN estimates that developing countries already need $70 billion per year to cover adaptation costs, and will need $140 billion-$300 billion in 2030.”

111 See, for instance, Jocelyn Timperley, The broken $100-billion promise of climate finance - and how to fix it, Nature 598 , pp. 400-402 (20 October 2021). “Most of the climate finance has gone to project to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions.

6. FINANCING

In the first instance, cities will need to do everything possible that does not require financing. This would include (even though this is particularly challenging in many developing coastal cities), most notably, preventing people from moving to or developing highly vulnerable land susceptible to flooding or perpetual inundation. This is obviously easier said than done in most of the developing world, but measures can be taken towards this objective by cities everywhere. At the same time, policies can be developed to dissuade people from settling and which encourage them to relocate to other safer urban or peri-urban areas. Tax and other incentives may assist in such measures working in practice. Public information campaigns, affordable forms of coastal management such as mangrove planting and groin and breakwater construction and other measures can also have a major impact in reducing eventual climate displacement. These measures will assist, but massive infusions of funds will be required to prevent, reduce and repair climate displacement. Every city, even the poorest, should have a line item within its budget to fund actions designed to address coastal management issues. Every effort should be made to draw on funds from every available international source such as the Green Climate Fund, the EU Lives with Dignity Grant Facility and so forth. New funding facilities for climate displacement modelled on current funding facilities for refugees should be developed to provide rapid grants to cities wishing to structurally address climate displacement concerns.

Q4 - Could a targeted or one-time/temporary climate displacement levy be imposed on the wealthiest one percent of citizens to pay for appropriate climate displacement measures?

66 to towards mitigation projects, with adaptation and displacement issues funded to a far lesser degree. There have been important suggestions by C-40 and others that 50 per cent of all climate finance should be allocated for adaptation, including concessional finance that supports cities in attracting resilience investments should be channelled directly to the benefit of frontline, vulnerable, or marginalised communities and that debt relief and incentives for investments in urban adaptation should be offered, including shock responsive social safety nets, through debtswaps or by reimbursing external debt service for lower-income groups and countries that are vulnerable to climate change.113

Q3 - Are taxation, incentives and other measures in place to access greater funding to prevent, reduce and address climate displacement?

So, how will coastal cities find the funds needed to adequately address climate displacement?

Q1 - Is there a budget item in the local (and national) government dedicated to climate displacement matters? If so, how much is available and how is it intended to be allocated?

113 Supra, C40 and Mayors Migration Council, Action Agenda , November 2021.

Q5 - Has the local government formally sought to obtain financing from the Green Climate Fund and other international funding sources?

Q2 - If there is no such budget, what measures are in place to pressure relevant governments to include such expenditures within the next budget?

PRELIMINARY QUESTIONS:

67ACTION CHECKLIST 1. Name of Responsible Government Department/Agency 2. Name of Responsible Government Official 3. Address and Contact Details of Government Department/Official 4. Are Plans of Action in Place (Short-, Median- and Long-Term)? 5. Budget Amount and Source USEFUL RESOURCES Scott Leckie, Jocelynfamilies-everywhere/https://www.counterpunch.org/2022/05/04/lets-re-house-climate-displaced-(proposingaclimatedisplacementlevyonbillionaires).Timperley,Thebroken$100-billionpromiseofclimatefinance-andhowtofixit,Nature 598 , pp. 400-402 (20 October 2021). Saleemul Haq and Mohamed Adow, Climate change is devastating the Global South, Al Jazeera , 11 May 2022. Global Cities Fund - https://www.mayorsmigrationcouncil.org/gcf International Municipal Investment Fund - https://www.uncdf.org/mif/imif Green Climate Fund - https://www.greenclimate.fund UN Migration Multi-Partner Trust Fund - https://migrationnetwork.un.org/mptf EU Lives in Dignity Grant Facility - https://ec.europa.eu/international-partnerships/programmes/ lives-dignity-grant-facility_en ; 7. THE KEY ROLE OF COMMUNITY ORGANISATIONS

Cities everywhere will be best served and equipped to deal with climate challenges when communities are free to organise and operate without hindrance. Communities know their needs, know where the problems are and know what they want. Measures to address climate displacement simply cannot succeed without large-scale public engagement and participation in the development of policies and demands to prepare their coastlines for rising sea levels and to manage these and more intrusive measures such as planned relocation to increase the likelihood that such initiatives will actually work in practice. Communities that are able to create

The pioneering work by the inhabitants of the Carteret Islands in Papua New Guinea in forming their own community-based organisation called Tulele Peise is a great inspiration of what is possible under extremely difficult circumstances. Realising that no government programs were in place to help the 3000 islanders to deal with their looming displacement, the islanders set up an organisation to help those affected move to the safety of the mainland, and to support them to start new lives there. Tulele Peise sought financial assistance from local government funding sources, as well as international NGOs and donors for its work, and as a result, it has been able to assist a number of families to move to the mainland, including through finding them new housing and land, as well as helping them with access to economic opportunities, livelihood skills training, and health and education services on the mainland. Local groups such as Tulele Peisa, as well as Young Power in Social Action in Bangladesh, the Guna People’s Assembly in Panama, and others play vital roles in articulating and demanding adequate performance from local governments and officials. They can ask simple questions and demand answers: Who is responsible for helping climate displaced persons in my area? What programmes and services does the government have to support the rights of climate displaced persons, such as access to housing, health and education services? How can I apply for support to receive services such as new housing, land or livelihood skills training? If I have problems with receiving support as a climate displaced person, who can I discuss my situation with? QUESTIONS:

Q4 - If in place, are local CBOs in direct contact with other CBOs of a similar nature to gain ideas and learn of innovative practices that have been tried already and that may be capable of replication locally? CHECKLIST Government Government

ACTION

PRELIMINARY

Department/Agency 2. Name of Responsible

68 organisations will be in a far better position to articulate their problems such as flooding threats, water supply, drainage and so forth, formulate plans and ideas for tackling these challenges, determine if relocation or migration is a desired or realistic option, and then identify relocation sites, preferred community lay-out and other measures designed to assist them with a new start.

Official

Q3 - If in place, have relevant CBOs developed plans and assessments concerning the future of their communities in terms of climate threats?

Q2 - Are there any laws or regulations in place that restrict the formation of CBOs? If so, how can these be promptly repealed?

1. Name of Responsible

Q1 - Are community-based organisations (CBOs) already in place within communities at threat of displacement due to the effects of climate change? If so, which ones and how can they be approached as partners?

Q2. Are there digital applications (Apps) in place such as the Overstroom Ik? or Will I Flood? App in the Netherlands which allows residents to check if their village, neighbourhood or town is at risk of flooding, inundation or other threats resulting from climate change? If these do not yet exist, who can be entrusted with developing them?

693. Address and Contact Details of Government Department/Official 4. Are Plans of Action in Place (Short-, Median- and Long-Term)? 5. Budget Amount and Source USEFUL RESOURCES Young Power in Social Action (YPSA), Bangladesh - Housing, Land and Property Rights InitiativeDisplacementhttps://www.climatestrike.netwww.ypsa.orgSolutions, Courtrooms and Climate Change: The Current State of Play , (2020, Displacement Solutions)Miaand_climate_displacement_v4_1https://issuu.com/displacementsolutions/docs/dis6357_courtrooms_Swart,‘Innovativesolutionstotheplightofclimatemigrants’in Al Jazeera , 5 July 2019. ; 8. NEIGHBOURHOOD DISPLACEMENT PREVENTION STRATEGIES

We have now outlined seven key measures that local governments can do to be better prepared for preventing, reducing and addressing climate displacement. Together these steps lead to our eighth point, that of developing neighbourhood displacement prevention strategies in every city and municipality along coastlines, rivers or located in floodplains in the country concerned. Every community must be recognised as a distinct neighbourhood and have a clear place within such plans and have these plans subjected to community inputs and suggestions. In effect, every citizen and resident within each municipality located anywhere in areas threatened by the effects of climate change, in particular coastal or riverside municipalities, should be able to ask the following questions and receive adequate answers from the local officials responsible for preventing, reducing and repairing climate displacement: PRELIMINARY QUESTIONS:

Q1. Has climate modelling taken place? If so, what does this reveal?

Q3. What precise measures have been put into place to protect the coastline? Have geo-engineering projects such as groins, sea walls, surge barriers, water pumps or overflow chambers put into place? If not, why not? Where are new projects needed?

70 Q4. Has any process of planting of mangroves or recovery of degraded land been carried out? If not, why not? Could floating homes be a viable option anywhere within the local community? If so, where and how many people could be accommodated. Could land or damaged marine areas be reclaimed for new floating home communities? Q5. Have all other measures been undertaken with a view to reducing the need for planned relocation or managed retreat? Have all measures been undertaken in terms of planning, zoning, urban design, building retrofitting and other options been seriously considered and implemented? If not, why not? ACTION CHECKLIST 1. Name of Responsible Government Department/Agency 2. Name of Responsible Government Official 3. Address and Contact Details of Government Department/Official 4. Are Plans of Action in Place (Short-, Median- and Long-Term)? 5. Budget Amount and Source USEFUL RESOURCES Scott Leckie and Chris Huggins (eds), Repairing Domestic Climate Displacement: The Peninsula Principles , Routledge, 2015. Khaled Hassine, Handling Climate Displacement , Cambridge University Press, 2019. ; 9. CLIMATE MAGNET TOWNS Bangladesh, one of the most climate change threatened countries, has developed the idea of climate magnet towns. The Dhaka-based International Centre for Climate Change and Development has proposed the creation of climate-resilient, migrant-friendly towns to draw people away from the slums of the big city. It has identified a dozen inland towns that are located far from low-lying coastal areas and have populations of about 500,000 that can be increased to about 1,500,000 and transformed into climate-resilient towns. For instance, it is working to promote Mongla as a migrant-friendly town, located in southwest Bangladesh, with

71initiatives to provide quality education, health care, and housing for migrants.114 Through urban planning that integrates climate-resilient infrastructure, coupled with economic opportunities and public services, the project aims to make Mongla an attractive alternative to Dhaka. The government of Bangladesh has developed a Perspective Plan 2021–2041 which proposes what it calls a ‘growth pole’ strategy designed to encourage people to move to smaller urban areas by seeking to transform the economies of the mid-sized cities to attract new talent and thus taking pressure off the already overcrowded larger cities in the country. The Plan identifies Cox’s Bazaar and the coastline as having growth potential for technological innovation in the marine industry, aquaculture, and wind energy, and in supporting this, the idea of to discourage people from moving to Dhaka or Chittagong and thus bolstering smaller cities such as Cox’s Bazaar.115

Every country can implement similar measures and should undertake assessments of all possible mid-sized urban areas that could play this magnet role. Such processes can solve many problems simultaneously by assisting in bolstering populations in areas which may be suffering out migration and consequent declines in the economic base. See, for instance, https://archive.dhakatribune.com/climate-change/2020/06/25/mongla-town-an-escape-forclimate-migrants (Qader, Anwar, and Fuad). Supra, World Bank, Groundswell Report. QUESTIONS:

114

Q1 - Have climate magnet cities been identified? If not, can a selection of potential cities be identified?

ACTION CHECKLIST 1. Name of Responsible Government Department/Agency 2. Name of Responsible Government Official 3. Address and Contact Details of Government Department/Official 4. Are Plans of Action in Place (Short-, Median- and Long-Term)?

115

Q2 - Once identified, can discussions begin between heavily threatened coastal and other areas and the magnet cities to develop measures designed to induce voluntarily migration and relocation to these cities? - Can government adopt specific policies to promote climate magnet cities and develop tax, investment and other incentives to improve the prospects of such plans?

PRELIMINARY

Q1 - Have any communities already expressed a willingness to act as climate displacement havens for people threatened by climate displacement?

If local conditions so permit, local governments everywhere should also consider declaring themselves ‘Climate Displacement Havens’, indicating their willingness to welcome climate displaced persons to settle there. This can be beneficial in numerous ways, most notably to those small towns in rural areas that are losing population. Climate displacement havens, which will often be located in non-coastal areas, will be able to offer relocation opportunities to a chosen number of climate displaced persons. In general terms, once appropriate land sites and host communities are identified, it is envisaged that climate displacement havens will be voluntarily established by host communities willing to engage in win-win critical preparedness efforts to address the needs of climate displaced populations. Some of the initial efforts of such an initiative could include the development of targeted subsidy programmes to benefit both new residents and current residents willing to provide jobs or homes to new arrivals, the establishment of quotas within existing immigration and refugee policies to specifically assist climate displaced families, tax exemption policies designed to benefit the local population and new arrivals, carrying out provincial and local economic needs assessment plans with specific target groups, and providing legal advice to climate displaced populations.

Q2 - Is a programme in place to promote climate displacement havens?

PRELIMINARY QUESTIONS:

72 5. Budget Amount and Source USEFUL RESOURCES International Centre for Climate Change and Development - https://www.icccad.net Adapting to Climate Change: Lessons from BangladeshSchewe,Clement,newspaper-and-magazine-articles/adapting-to-climate-change-lessons-from-bangladesh/https://www.icccad.net/publications/Viviane,KantaKumariRigaud,AlexdeSherbinin,BryanJones,SusanaAdamo,JacobNianSadiq,andElhamShabahat.2021. Groundswell Part 2: Acting on Internal Climate Migration . Washington, DC: The World Bank. ; 10. CLIMATE DISPLACEMENT HAVENS

Q3 - Can government give incentives, rewards or preferential treatment to communities that choose to become climate displacement havens?

73ACTION CHECKLIST 116 Displacement Solutions, The Urgent Need to Prepare for Climate Displacement in Myanmar: Establishing a Myanmar National Climate Land Bank , Displacement Solutions, May 2018. 1. Name of Responsible Government Department/Agency 2. Name of Responsible Government Official 3. Address and Contact Details of Government Department/Official 4. Are Plans of Action in Place (Short-, Median- and Long-Term)? 5. Budget Amount and Source USEFUL RESOURCES https://highlandadapts.scot/climate-action-towns/ ; 11. CLIMATE LAND BANKS

Every national and local government should consider establishing a climate land bank that could hold public land in trust, remove it from the market and commercial pressures, and then allocate it to climate displaced communities in need when the time comes. In 2018, DS issued a detailed report on this idea proposing the possibility of setting up a National Climate Land Bank in Myanmar, well before the military coup that cancelled the 2020 election results and returned the country to authoritarian military rule.116 Climate land banks would hold public land in trust for eventual allocation to communities vulnerable to climate displacement, and would be an important element in any national policy designed to protect the rights of those displaced because of climate change. The climate land bank would be mandated to diagnose the scale and location of internal climate displacements; and to establish a mechanism to prevent potential land conflicts. It would showcase a model for securing the full spectrum of human rights for populations displaced as a result of adverse climate change impacts. Because such a huge proportion of the world’s land mass is now considered ‘degraded land’ with little economic potential or possible agricultural use, efforts should be made by local governments to restore such land parcels through their inclusion into a climate land bank, and in the process facilitate the restoration of this land once the land bank begins allocating land parcels to households in need.

74 PRELIMINARY QUESTIONS: Q1 - Can the local government identify ten potential land plots, already owned by the state, that could form the initial deposit into a climate land bank? Q2 - Once such land is identified, can the government establish a climate land bank office and officials to implement the functions of the climate land bank? Q3 - Can the climate land bank begin to identify communities that are under particularly serious threats of climate displacement that may become beneficiaries of a climate land bank? ACTION CHECKLIST 1. Name of Responsible Government Department/Agency 2. Name of Responsible Government Official 3. Address and Contact Details of Government Department/Official 4. Are Plans of Action in Place (Short-, Median- and Long-Term)? 5. Budget Amount and Source USEFUL RESOURCES Displacement Solutions, The Urgent Need to Prepare for Climate Displacement in Myanmar: Establishing a Myanmar National Climate Land Bank , Displacement Solutions, May 2018. ; 12. HOUSING BUY-BACK SCHEMES In recognition of the impossibility of implementing measures to protect households from frequent and worsening flooding and the inevitability of rising sea levels, a number of countries including the United States, Australia and others have instigated housing buy-back schemes. Because housing values fall quickly in areas designated as flood-prone and that most people in most places have the majority of their savings vested in their land and/or homes, some governments have developed policies to buy homes from threatened owners to provide a form of compensation that enables them to move with some assets intact instead of losing everything as remains all too often the case

Q3 -

ACTION CHECKLIST 1. Name of Responsible Government Department/Agency 2. Name of Responsible Government Official

118

Q4 -

PRELIMINARY QUESTIONS: Q1 -

Q2 -

75in such circumstances. Various cities in California117 have considered this idea, and it has already commenced in New York, Texas and elsewhere. This may seem a desirable strategy, but it has major limits. In New York, for instance, 610 homes were purchased on Staten Island, for the sum of USD 240 million, a cost well out of reach for most coastal cities around the world. Even in wealthy Florida, where 12% or more of all homes are threatened with permanent inundation by 2100, with a collective value today of over USD 400 billion, there is no possible way that the funds will be made available to adequately buyout everyone affected. Similarly, in the US state of Louisiana the community of Isle St. Jean Charles was assisted to relocate at the cost of USD 48 million, but to buy out all of the homes likely to be impacted along one river in this one US state according to the 2017 Coastal Master Plan for Louisiana, a total of 24,000 homes, would be well beyond local governmental capacity to pay, with or without federal government assistance. One 2018 report on climate displacement threats in the US notes that “Accelerating sea level rise, primarily driven by climate change, is projected to worsen tidal flooding in the U.S., putting as many as 311,000 coastal homes in the lower 48 states with a collective market value of about $117.5 billion in today’s dollars at risk of chronic flooding within the next 30 years.” 118 Housing buy-back programmes may work in some countries, but even where this is viable, it will rarely be possible to find the funds needed to implement this equitably and comprehensively. In lower-income nations, outright housing buy-backs are unlikely to have more than a marginal impact and other measures will need to be devised that may aim to have the same result but which do not require the scale of financial interventions required.

117 Rosanna Xia, The California coast is disappearing under the rising sea. Our choices are grim, LA Times, https://www.latimes.com/la-bio-rosanna-xia-staff.html https://www.ucsusa.org/about/news/24000-delaware-homes-risk-tidal-flooding Is a housing buy-back programme already in place? If so, which government agency runs this and from where does it draw its budget? What budget will be required to adequately finance a housing buy-back programme? What happens to homes purchased under any buy-back programme? Can these be used in the near-term as state-owned/social rental housing for families requiring accommodation?

USEFUL RESOURCES

;

Relocating anyone, even if it is voluntary, planned and the last of many options is a high-risk enterprise in any setting and can all too easily go wrong.119 It may be necessary and agreed by those to be relocated to be the only option available, but it should always be placed at the end of long list of other alternatives designed to protect the rights of climate-displaced people. As climate conditions worsen, the number of communities that have already engaged in planned relocation continues to grow at an alarming rate. The people of the Carteret Islands in Papua New Guinea, Vunidogoloa in Fiji120 , Newtok in the US state of Alaska, Idle St Jean Charles in the US state of Louisiana, Fairbourne in the United Kingdom, Gardi Sugdup Island in Gunayala territory in Panama and increasing numbers of similarly affected climate relocated communities are slowly but surely becoming well-known in climate change circles as some of the first forced to move because of the effects of climate change. A recent study121 examines ‘planned relocation’ cases and creates a global dataset of these cases, however, this survey unfortunately neither indicates the precise circumstances leading to the planned relocation nor the number of people affected, whether they were organised, whether the relocation was entirely subject to the consent of the population concerned or whether the communities concerned were formally organised to speak with one unified voice.122

120 https://blog.geographydirections.com/2019/07/23/planned-relocation-in-low-lying-coastal-villages-in-fiji/ 121 Bower, E. & Weerasinghe, S. (2021). Leaving Place, Restoring Home: Enhancing the Evidence Base on Planned Relocation Cases in the Context of Hazards, Disasters, and Climate Change. Platform on Disaster Displacement (PDD) and Andrew & Renata Kaldor Centre for International Refugee Law.

76 3. Address and Contact Details of Government Department/Official 4. Are Plans of Action in Place (Short-, Median- and Long-Term)? 5. Budget Amount and Source

122 It does outline findings from the 308 cases identified in the English-language global dataset include including the clear finding that planned relocation is a global phenomenon, not isolated to a particular region of the world, even though

Houston - Harvey Buyout Program - https://recovery.houstontx.gov/buyout/ Northern Rivers Reconstruction Corporation (Australia) - https://www.regional.nsw.gov.au/ our-work/NRRC

119 Robin Bronen warns us that “For centuries, governments have been relocating people for geopolitical and economic purposes, causing tremendous harm to the populations relocated. In particular, development displacement, the forcible relocation of people to take land for infrastructure projects, has a grim and longstanding track record of harm. These government-mandated relocations weaken social, cultural, and political institutions, disrupt subsistence and economic systems, and impact the cultural identity and traditional kinship ties within a community.” See: Robin Bronen, ‘Rights, Resilience and Community-Led Relocation: Creating a National Governance Framework’ in The Harbinger Vol. 26, 2021, pp. 25-45, p. 27.

13. PLANNED RELOCATION AND MANAGED RETREAT

In addition to the various international standards now in place to assist governments and communities to protect the HLP rights of communities threatened by climate displacement, a growing number of countries have adopted their own national polices managing and regulating these matters.

123

Executive Order No. 14013, 86 Fed. Reg. 8839 (Feb 4, 2021) - on Rebuilding and Enhancing Programs to Resettle Refugees and Planning for the Impact of Climate Change on Migration. See: Robin Bronen, ‘Rights, Resilience and Community-Led Relocation: Creating a National Governance Framework’ in The Harbinger Vol. 26, 2021, pp. 25-45. This important article makes the following points: “While the United States has governance systems to respond to disasters, there is no such system to facilitate and fund a large-scale population and infrastructure relocation process prior to a disaster that displaces people.”(p. 27); “Community relocation will therefore be required to protect people and the infrastructure upon which they depend. Yet the United States has no institutional framework to facilitate this type of population movement...In a December 2013 report, the U.S. Congress Bicameral Task Force on Climate Change recommended ‘that the Administration devote special attention to the problems of communities that decide they have little choice but to relocate in the face of impacts of climate change. Because the relocation of entire communities due to climate change is such an unprecedented need, there is no institutional framework with the U.S. to relocate communities, and agencies lack technical, organizational and financial means to do so.’ (U.S. Cong Bicameral Task Force on Climate Change, Implement the President’s Climate Action Plan: US Department of the Interior, 18 (2013).”(p. 30); “The Community Resilience Working Group, a component of the Arctic Executive Steering Committee chaired by the Department of Housing and Urban Development and the Department of the Interior, was established to improve federal actions addressing the imminent threat of coastal erosion and flooding in Alaskan Arctic coastal communities.”(p. 31); and “A federal relocation governance framework must outline the roles and responsibilities of federal agencies so they can dynamically respond to climate-induced environmental changes and shift their efforts from protection in place to managed retreat and community relocation. The framework needs to be iterative to incorporate different planning horizons. The relocation decision-making process is central to this framework and must answer the following questions:

In terms of general findings, this study found that many planned relocation cases occur in multi-hazard contexts, most planned relocation cases involve a single origin to a single destination site and that many planned relocation cases are ongoing. The highest number of planned relocation cases are found in the following countries, listed in descending order: The United States of America (36), the Philippines (29), India (22), Sri Lanka (19), China (17), Indonesia (17), Vietnam (17), Fiji (15), Japan (15) and Colombia (8). With the exception of the United States of America, Colombia and Fiji, all the countries with the highest numbers of identified planned relocation cases are in Asia, Id, p. 29.

Vanuatu’s National Policy on Climate Change and DisasterInduced Displacement is comprehensive, addressing not only physical displacement, but also displacement experienced by those who remain in the same location, through loss of access to natural resources and agriculture critical to sustaining livelihoods, while Bangladesh’s national policy on internal displacement relies heavily on the approach taken by the 2013 Peninsula Principles on Climate Displacement Within States. In the United States, a process which could lead to a new policy commenced once the Biden Administration took power in early 2021. According to Bronen, “President Biden directed the Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs to prepare a report on climate change and its impact on migration, including forced migration, internal displacement and planned relocation.” 123 These policies need to be developed in all countries, and alternative theories of compensation should also be explored to ensure access to funds for those forced to move from their homes. One of these alternatives has been called the theory of inverse condemnation, which would protect people who lose their homes and lands as if the land had been compulsorily acquired by the state, thus making it liable for compensation claims.124

Asia is disproportionately affected by climate displacement threats. Identified cases span all inhabited regions and occur in 60 countries and territories. The United States of America, the Philippines, India, Sri Lanka, China, Indonesia, Vietnam, Fiji, Japan and Colombia have the highest numbers of identified cases. About one half of identified cases are in Asia.

124 Id, citing: Alex Horning, Overview of a City’s Tort Liability Duties to Maintain and Protect Local Government Services from Sea Level Rise Poquoson Case Study, in Wm & Mary L. Sch. 7-8 (2013), pp. 36-37.

1) who has the authority to decide that relocation is warranted; 2) what is the basis for making the decision; 3) when does the decision need to be made to protect the life and well-being of community residents? In addition, the governance framework need to identify: 1) the steps governmental and nongovernmental agencies must take to implement a relocation process; 2) the organizational arrangements between multi-disciplinary and multi-level governmental and nongovernmental agencies; 3) a relocation site selection process which includes community approval of the site chosen and engagement with the host community; and 4) the funding mechanism for relocation.”(p. 33).

Fiji’s 2018 Planned Relocation Guidelines – A Framework to Undertake Climate Change Related Relocation take a human-centred, human rights and livelihood-based approach to the permanent relocation of communities at risk, and identify detailed stages for the relocation process and guidelines for stakeholders, but relies on the assistance of non-state actors which cannot always be depended upon.

78 PRELIMINARY QUESTIONS: Q1 - Is a national and/or local policy on climate change and planned relocation in place? Q2 - If so, is this policy fully consistent with internationally recognised human rights laws and proven good practices in other countries? Q3 - Are assurances in place to ensure that any planned relocation is fully approved by the community moving, adequately financed and managed and overseen by the community and its representatives? ACTION CHECKLIST 1. Name of Responsible Government Department/Agency 2. Name of Responsible Government Official 3. Address and Contact Details of Government Department/Official 4. Are Plans of Action in Place (Short-, Median- and Long-Term)? 5. Budget Amount and Source USEFUL RESOURCES Robin Bronen, ‘Rights, Resilience and Community-Led Relocation: Creating a National Governance Framework’ in The Harbinger Vol. 26, 2021, pp. 25-45. Fiji RelocationBower,org/portfolio-item/background-paper-to-the-san-remo-consultationPreparingUNHCR,lying-coastal-villages-in-fiji/https://blog.geographydirections.com/2019/07/23/planned-relocation-in-low-PlannedRelocations,DisastersandClimateChange:ConsolidatingGoodPracticesandfortheFuture:BackgroundDocument,2014.Availableat:https://disasterdisplacement.E.&Weerasinghe,S.(2021). Leaving Place, Restoring Home: Enhancing the Evidence Base on Planned Relocation Cases in the Context of Hazards, Disasters, and Climate Change Platform on Disaster Displacement (PDD) and Andrew & Renate Kaldor Centre for International Refugee Law.

79; 14. FITTING RELOCATION WITHIN BROADER ENVIRONMENTAL POLICY

PRELIMINARY QUESTIONS: Q1 - Have all relocation plans of any size been assessed for their

impacts? Q2 - Which government bodies are responsible for such surveys and

The movement of people because of climate change is already well underway and will expand in coming years. All of those relocated, whether in a planned manner or not, will need to move to new locations which are safe and unlikely to face the same climate effects that forced them to move from their original homes. Moving hundreds of millions of people, thus, will require extensive new land resources, other infrastructure, new housing and community amenities if the relocation is to succeed. As such, all relocation must always be green and as ecologically designed as is possible. Concerns have already been expressed regarding the negative environmental consequences of the relocation of Jakarta to a neighbhouring island and similar concerns will arise anywhere such large-scale relocation takes place. Commitments by governments to find viable land, ensure that no deforestation takes place and that whenever possible currently degraded land is repaired through the establishment of new and green communities, including mass tree planting programmes can all facilitate win-win outcomes during relocation processes. environmental how are these overseen by development such

independent agencies? Q3 - How is citizen input maximized in the

plans? ACTION CHECKLIST 1. Name of Responsible Government Department/Agency 2. Name of Responsible Government Official 3. Address and Contact Details of Government Department/Official 4. Are Plans of Action in Place (Short-, Median- and Long-Term)? 5. Budget Amount and Source

80 USEFUL RESOURCES Fiji’s Planned Relocation Guidelinesnet/files/46449_vanuatuccdrrpolicy2015.pdfVanuatu’srelocation-guidelines-a-framework-to-undertake-climate-change-related-relocation/https://fijiclimatechangeportal.gov.fj/ppss/planned-ClimateChangeandRiskReductionPolicy2016-2030-https://www.preventionweb. ; 15. NATIONAL IMMIGRATION POLICIES Finally, governments should be encouraged to review existing immigration laws and rules with a view to including a new category of immigrant groups focusing on people who have been displaced by climate change. Many countries have working visas, immigration visas, investment visas, and others, and the time has surely arrived for countries to begin adding climate displacement as a visa criterian. PRELIMINARY QUESTIONS: Q1 - Can a new sub-set of refugee/asylum seeker be created within national immigration laws taking into account the climate realities facing this distinct group of persons? Q2 - Can the government develop both criteria and an annual minimum quota of those seeking either asylum or immigration status based on climate circumstances in the place of origin of the person’s) concerned? ACTION CHECKLIST 1. Name of Responsible Government Department/Agency 2. Name of Responsible Government Official 3. Address and Contact Details of Government Department/Official 4. Are Plans of Action in Place (Short-, Median- and Long-Term)? 5. Budget Amount and Source USEFUL RESOURCES https://refugeerights.org/issue-areas/climate-displacementmigrant-rights/https://nnirr.org/programs/international-migrant-rights-global-justice/climate-justice-and-

81V. CONCLUSIONS

49. Coastal cities across the world will face increasingly difficult challenges because of the effects of climate change, and to date, it is clear that these cities are not ready to adequately address these new and daunting prospects. The cities that have already undertaken substantial measures should be assisted further and the majority of which have yet to do so, need to act now to prepare for what is to come. The residents of these cities and non-urban coastal areas are universally rights holders, each of whom possess specific housing, land and property rights, as well as other rights and these need to form the basis for actions taken by coastal governments to protect their territories and their people against the ravages of rising sea levels, worsening coastal erosion, mass out migration and a range of additional problems, and it is time that these rights are taken seriously. We have outlined 15 concrete measures that coastal cities everywhere can undertake to address these challenges, and it is our hope at Displacement Solutions that more and more coastal governments will embrace these practical ways of improving the prospects of their towns and communities. DS stands ready to assist any coastal cities to incorporate these and other practical tools into their policy and legal frameworks and to work with communities everywhere to assist them in getting the best possible deal for them.

50. Beyond the numerous policy tools we have recommended above to place coastal municipalities in a far better position than at present to address climate displacement challenges within their jurisdictions, cities and their residents will be stronger if they form bigger alliances than already exist, and formulate collective demands for greater action and ultimately create a Global Alliance of Communities Affected by Climate Change. Some important work is already being done along these lines by groups such as the Mayor’s Migration Council and others, but they need to be expanded and augmented to cover coastlines everywhere in a way whereby governments and communities work hand in hand in assessing the local climate circumstances, formulating demands, offering assistance and ultimately planning for an increasingly warm and wet world. In doing that, the hundreds of millions of people living along the world’s coastlines will be in a far better position to expect a better future than they are today.

82 THE PENINSULA PRINCIPLES ON CLIMATE DISPLACEMENT WITHIN STATES 18 AUGUST 2013 TABLE OF CONTENTS PREAMBLE 89 I. INTRODUCTION 91 Principle 1 Scope and purpose Principle 2 Definitions Principle 3 Non-discrimination, rights and freedoms Principle 4 Interpretation II. GENERAL OBLIGATIONS 94 Principle 5 Prevention and avoidance Principle 6 Provision of adaptation assistance, protection and other measures Principle 7 National implementation measures Principle 8 International cooperation and assistance III. CLIMATE DISPLACEMENT PREPARATION AND PLANNING 95 Principle 9 Climate displacement risk management Principle 10 Participation and consent Principle 11 Land identification, habitability and use Principle 12 Loss and damage Principle 13 Institutional frameworks to support and facilitate the provision of assistance and protection IV. DISPLACEMENT 101 Principle 14 State assistance to those climate displaced persons experiencing displacement but who have not been relocated Principle 15 Housing and livelihood Principle 16 Remedies and compensation V. POST-DISPLACEMENT AND RETURN 102 Principle 17 Framework for return VI. IMPLEMENTATION 103 Principle 18 Implementation and dissemination

UNDERSTANDING that when an activity raises threats of harm to human health, life or the environment, precautionary measures should be taken; COGNISANT that the vast majority of climate displaced persons are not responsible for the processes driving climate change; NOTING that while climate displacement can involve both internal and cross-border displacement, most climate displacement will likely occur within State borders;

REAFFIRMING further the right of those who may be displaced to move safely and to relocate within their national borders over time;

PREAMBLE CONCERNED that events and processes caused or exacerbated by climate change have and will continue to contribute to displacement of populations resulting in the erosion of the rights of those affected, in particular vulnerable and marginalized groups, the loss of assets, housing, land, property and livelihoods, and the further loss of cultural, customary and/or spiritual identity;

ACKNOWLEDGING that States bear the primary responsibility for their citizens and others living within their jurisdiction, but recognising that, for many States, addressing the issue of and responding to climate displacement presents financial, logistical, political, resource and other difficulties; CONVINCED, however, that as climate change is a global problem, States should, on request by affected States, provide adequate and appropriate support for mitigation, adaptation, relocation and protection measures, and to provide assistance to climate displaced persons;

NOTING that these Peninsula Principles build on and contextualize the United Nations Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement to climate displacement within States;

GUIDED by the Charter of the United Nations, and REAFFIRMING the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights as well as the Vienna Declaration and Program of Action;

RECOGNISING that voluntary and involuntary relocation often result in the violation of human rights, impoverishment, social fragmentation and other negative consequences, and recognizing the imperative to avoid such outcomes;

NOTING further that climate displacement if not properly planned for and managed may give rise to tensions and instability within States;

REAFFIRMING the right of climate displaced persons to remain in their homes and retain connections to the land on which they live for as long as possible, and the need for States to prioritise appropriate mitigation, adaptation and other preventative measures to give effect to that right;

84 REALISING that the international community has humanitarian, social, cultural, financial and security interests in addressing the problem of climate displacement in a timely, coordinated and targeted manner;

ACKNOWLEDGING the IASC Operational Guidelines on the Protection of Persons in Situations of Natural Disasters, the Hyogo Framework for Action, the UN Principles on Housing and Property Restitution for Refugees and Displaced Persons and others, the incorporation of a number of their principles within these Peninsula Principles, and their application to climate displaced persons;

NOTING further that UNFCCC COP18 in Doha decided to establish, at UNFCCC COP19, institutional arrangements to address loss and damage associated with climate change impacts in developing countries that are particularly vulnerable to the adverse effects of climate change as part of the Cancun Adaptation Framework;

NOTING, however, that paragraph 14(f) of the UNFCCC 16th session of the Convention of the Parties (COP16) Cancun Adaptation Framework refers to enhanced action on adaptation, including ‘[m]easures to enhance understanding, coordination and cooperation with regard to climate change induced displacement, migration and planned relocation ...’;

NOTING that these Peninsula Principles, addressing climate displacement within States, necessarily complement other efforts to address cross-border displacement; and RECOGNISING judicial decisions and the writings of eminent jurists and experts as a source of international law, and acknowledging their importance and contribution to formulating the present Peninsula Principles, these Peninsula Principles on Climate Displacement (‘Peninsula Principles’) provide as follows:

REALISING the need for a globally applicable normative framework to provide a coherent and principled approach for the collaborative provision of pre-emptive assistance to those who may be displaced by the effects of climate change, as well as effective remedial assistance to those who have been so displaced, and legal protections for both;

ACKNOWLEDGING also regional initiatives addressing internal displacement such as the African Union Convention for the Protection and Assistance of Internally Displaced Persons in Africa; NOTING the work of the Nansen Initiative on disaster-induced cross-border displacement;

REALISING further that there has been no significant coordinated response by States to address climate displacement, whether temporary or permanent in nature; RECOGNISING that the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and its Kyoto Protocol neither contemplate nor address the issue of climate displacement, and that conferences and meetings of the parties to these instruments have not substantively addressed climate displacement other than in the most general of terms;

RECOGNISING the work being undertaken by the United Nations and other inter-governmental and non-governmental agencies to address climate displacement and related factors;

(b) ‘Climate displacement’ means the movement of people within a State due to the effects of climate change, including sudden and slow-onset environmental events and processes, occurring either alone or in combination with other factors.

PRINCIPLE 3: NON-DISCRIMINATION, RIGHTS AND FREEDOMS

85I.

PRINCIPLE 2: DEFINITIONS For the purposes of these Peninsula Principles:

(a)ThesePRINCIPLEINTRODUCTION1:SCOPEANDPURPOSEPeninsulaPrinciples:Provideacomprehensivenormativeframework, based on principles of international law, human rights obligations and good practice, within which the rights of climate displaced persons can be addressed;

(a) States shall not discriminate against climate displaced persons on the basis of their potential or actual displacement, and should take steps to repeal unjust or arbitrary laws and laws that otherwise discriminate against, or have a discriminatory effect on, climate displaced persons.

(c) ‘Climate displaced persons’ means individuals, households or communities who are facing or experiencing climate displacement.

(b) Address climate displacement within a State and not cross-border climate displacement; and (c) Set out protection and assistance principles, consistent with the UN Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement, to be applied to climate displaced persons.

(a) ‘Climate change’ means the alteration in the composition of the global atmosphere that is in addition to natural variability over comparable time periods (as defined by the IPCC).

(b) Climate displaced persons shall enjoy, in full equality, the same rights and freedoms under international and domestic law as do other persons in their country, in particular housing, land and property rights.

(d) ‘Relocation’ means the voluntary, planned and coordinated movement of climate displaced persons within States to suitable locations, away from risk-prone areas, where they can enjoy the full spectrum of rights including housing, land and property rights and all other livelihood and related rights.

PRINCIPLE 4: INTERPRETATION

(a) These Peninsula Principles shall not be interpreted as limiting, altering or otherwise prejudicing rights recognized in international law, including human rights, humanitarian law and related standards, or rights consistent with those laws and standards as recognized under domestic law.

(b) States should interpret these Peninsula Principles broadly, be guided by their humanitarian purpose, and display fairness, reasonableness, generosity and flexibility in their interpretation.

II. GENERAL OBLIGATIONS

States should, in all circumstances, comply in full with their obligations under international law so as to prevent and avoid conditions that might lead to climate displacement.

86 (c) States should ensure that climate displaced persons are entitled to and supported in claiming and exercising their rights and are provided with effective remedies as well as unimpeded access to the justice system.

PRINCIPLE 6: PROVISION OF ADAPTATION ASSISTANCE, PROTECTION AND OTHER MEASURES

(a) States should provide adaptation assistance, protection and other measures to ensure that individuals, households and communities can remain in their homes or places of habitual residence for as long as possible in a manner fully consistent with their rights.

PRINCIPLE 7: NATIONAL IMPLEMENTATION MEASURES

(b) States should immediately establish and provide adequate resources for equitable, timely, independent and transparent procedures, institutions and mechanisms – at all levels of

(b) States should, in particular, ensure protection against climate displacement and demonstrate sensitivity to those individuals, households and communities within their territory who are particularly dependent on and/or attached to their land, including indigenous people and those reliant on customary rules relating to the use and allocation of land.

PRINCIPLE 5: PREVENTION AND AVOIDANCE

(a) States should incorporate climate displacement prevention, assistance and protection provisions as set out in these Peninsula Principles into domestic law and policies, prioritising the prevention of displacement.

(e) All relevant legislation must be fully consistent with human rights laws and must in particular explicitly protect the rights of indigenous peoples, women, the elderly, minorities, persons with disabilities, children, those living in poverty, and marginalized groups and people.

(d) States that are otherwise unable to adequately prevent and respond to climate displacement should accept appropriate assistance and support from other States and relevant international agencies, whether made individually or collectively.

(c) States and relevant international agencies, either separately or together, should provide such cooperation and assistance to requesting States, in particular where the requesting State is unable to adequately prevent and respond to climate displacement.

87government (local, state and national) – to implement these Peninsula Principles and give effect to their provisions through specially earmarked budgetary allocations and other resources to facilitate that implementation.

(c) States should ensure that durable solutions to climate displacement are adequately addressed by legislation and other administrative measures.

(d) States should ensure the right of all individuals, households and communities to adequate, timely and effective participation in all stages of policy development and implementation of these Peninsula Principles, ensuring in particular such participation by indigenous peoples, women, the elderly, minorities, persons with disabilities, children, those living in poverty, and marginalized groups and people.

(a) Climate displacement is a matter of global responsibility, and States should cooperate in the provision of adaptation assistance (to the maximum of their available resources) and protection for climate displaced persons.

PRINCIPLE 8: INTERNATIONAL COOPERATION AND ASSISTANCE

(b) In fulfilling their obligations to prevent and respond to climate displacement within their territory, States have the right to seek cooperation and assistance from other States and relevant international agencies.

PRINCIPLE 10: PARTICIPATION AND CONSENT

(d) model likely climate displacement scenarios (including timeframes and financial implications), locations threatened by climate change, and possible relocation sites for climate displaced persons; integrate relocation rights, procedures and mechanisms, as defined in these Peninsula Principles, within national laws and policies; and

(a) identify, design and implement risk management strategies, including risk reduction, risk transfer and risk sharing mechanisms, in relation to climate displacement; (b) undertake systematic observation and monitoring of, and disaggregated data collection at the household, local, regional and national levels on, current and anticipated climate displacement; (c) enhance sharing, access to and the use of such data at the household, local, regional and national levels, mindful of the need for data protection and predetermined use of data, facilitate the assessment and management of climate displacement;

(f) develop institutional frameworks, procedures and mechanisms with the participation of individuals, households and communities that: (i) identify indicators that will, with as much precision as possible, classify where, at what point in time, and relevant to whom, relocation will be required as a means of providing durable solutions to those affected; (ii) require and facilitate governmental technical assistance and funding; and (iii) outline steps individuals, households and communities can take prior to climate displacement in order to receive such technical assistance and financial support.

(a) ensure that priority consideration is given to requests from individuals, households and communities for relocation;

States,PRINCIPLEPLANNINGPREPARATIONDISPLACEMENTAND9:CLIMATEDISPLACEMENTRISKMANAGEMENTintermsofclimatedisplacementriskmanagement,monitoringandmodeling, using a rights-based approach, should:

To enable successful preparation and planning for climate displacement, States should:

88 III. CLIMATE

(c) only require relocation to take place without such consent in exceptional circumstances when necessary to protect public health and safety or when individuals, households and communities face imminent loss of life or limb;

89(b) ensure that no relocation shall take place unless individuals, households and communities (both displaced and host) provide full and informed consent for such relocation;

(d) adopt measures that promote livelihoods, acquisition of new skills, and economic prosperity for both displaced and host communities; (e) make certain that: (i) affected individuals, households and communities (both displaced and host) are fully informed and can actively participate in relevant decisions and the implementation of those decisions, including the planning and implementation of laws, policies and programs designed to ensure respect for and protection of housing, land and property rights; (ii) basic services, adequate and affordable housing, education and access to livelihoods (without discrimination) will be available for climate displaced persons in the host community at a standard ensuring equity between the host and relocating communities, and consistent with the basic human rights of each; (iii) adequate mechanisms, safeguards and remedies are in place to prevent and resolve conflicts over land and resources; and (iv) the rights of individuals, households and communities are protected at all stages of the relocation process; (f) prior to any relocation, prepare a master relocation plan that addresses critical matters including: (i) land acquisition; (ii) community preferences; (iii) transitional shelter and permanent housing; (iv) the preservation of existing social and cultural institutions and places of climate displaced persons; (v) access to public services; support needed during the transitional period; (vii) family and community cohesion; (viii) concerns of the host community; (ix) monitoring mechanisms; and (x) grievance procedures and effective remedies.

90 PRINCIPLE 11: LAND IDENTIFICATION, HABITABILITY AND USE

(b) In order to determine the habitability and feasibility of any relocation site, and to ensure that climate displaced persons being relocated and the relevant jurisdictional authority are in agreement as to the habitability of any such site, States should create and make publicly available specific, geographically appropriate, standard criteria including: (i) current and future land use; (ii) restrictions (including those of a customary nature or not otherwise formally codified) associated with the land and its use; (iii) habitability of the land, including issues such as accessibility, availability of water, vulnerability to climate or other natural or human hazards, and use; and (iv) feasibility of subsistence/agricultural use, together with mechanisms for climate displaced persons to decide to where they wish to voluntarily relocate.

(a) Recognising the importance of land in the resolution of climate displacement, States should: (i) identify, acquire and reserve sufficient, suitable, habitable and appropriate public and other land to provide viable and affordable land-based solutions to climate displacement, including through a National Climate Land Bank; (ii) develop fair and just land acquisition and compensation processes and appropriate land allocation programmes, with priority given to those most in need; and (iii) plan for and develop relocation sites including new human settlements on land not at risk from the effects of climate change or other natural or human hazards and, in so planning, consider the safety and environmental integrity of the new site(s), and ensure that the rights of both those relocated and the communities that host them are upheld.

(c) States should provide easily accessible information to individuals, households and communities concerning: (i) the nature and extent of the actual and potential changes to the habitability of their homes, lands and places of habitual residence on which they dwell or subsist, resulting from climate change, including the evidence on which such assessments are made; (ii) evidence that all viable alternatives to relocation have been considered, including mitigation and adaptation measures that could be taken to enable people to remain in their homes and places of habitual residence; (iii) planned efforts to assist climate displaced persons in relocation; (iv) available compensation and alternative relocation options if the relocation site offered is unacceptable to climate displaced persons; and (v) rights under international and domestic law, in particular housing, land and property rights.

91 Image: Guna Yala, Panama.

92 (d) States should include in relocation planning: (i) measures to compensate climate displaced persons for lost housing, land and property; (ii) assurances that housing, land, property and livelihood rights will be met for all climate displaced persons, including those who have informal land rights, customary land rights, occupancy rights or rights of customary usage, and assurances that such rights are ongoing; and (iii) assurances that rights to access traditional lands and waters (for example, for hunting, grazing, fishing and religious purposes) are maintained or similarly replicated.

PRINCIPLE 12: LOSS AND DAMAGE

(a) States should strengthen national capacities and capabilities to identify and address the protection and assistance needs of climate displaced persons through the establishment of effective institutional frameworks and the inclusion of climate displacement in National Adaptation Programmes of Action as appropriate.

(b) States should take all appropriate administrative, legislative and judicial measures, including the creation of adequately funded Ministries, departments, offices and/or agencies at the local (in particular), regional and national levels empowered to develop, establish and implement an institutional framework to: (i) enable government technical assistance and funding to prevent, prepare for and respond to climate displacement; (ii) support and facilitate the provision of assistance and protection to climate displaced persons; (iii) exchange information and cooperate with indigenous peoples, women, the elderly, minorities, persons with disabilities, children, those living in poverty, and marginalized groups. (iv) represent the needs of climate displaced persons.

(c) Responsibility for establishing Ministries, departments, offices and/or agencies should lie with national governments, and such governments should consult and collaborate with regional and local authorities, and integrate such Ministries, departments, offices and/or agencies in relevant institutional frameworks.

PRINCIPLE 13: INSTITUTIONAL FRAMEWORKS TO SUPPORT AND FACILITATE THE PROVISION OF ASSISTANCE AND PROTECTION

States should develop appropriate laws and policies for loss suffered and damage incurred in the context of climate displacement.

PERSONS EXPERIENCING DISPLACEMENT BUT WHO HAVE NOT BEEN

PRINCIPLEDISPLACEMENT14:STATEASSISTANCETOTHOSE

CLIMATE DISPLACED

(b) Protection and assistance activities undertaken by States should be carried out in a manner that respects both the cultural sensitivities prevailing in the affected area and the principles of maintaining family and community cohesion.

StatesRELOCATEDhavetheprimary obligation to provide all necessary legal, economic, social and other forms of protection and assistance to those climate displaced persons experiencing displacement but who have not been relocated.

(c) States should provide climate displaced persons experiencing displacement but who have not been relocated with a practicable level of age and gender-sensitive humanitarian assistance including, without limitation, as the context requires: (i) emergency humanitarian services; (ii) evacuation and temporary and effective permanent relocation; (iii) medical assistance and other health services; (iv) shelter; (v) food; (vi) potable water; (vii) sanitation; (viii) measures necessary for social and economic inclusion including, without limitation, anti-poverty measures, free and compulsory education, training and skills development, and work and livelihood options, and issuance and replacement of lost personal documentation; and (ix) facilitation of family reunion.

93(d) States should ensure the provision of adequate resources (including points of contact and assistance) at all levels of government that directly address the concerns of climate displaced persons. IV.

(a)PRINCIPLEV.compensation.POST-DISPLACEMENTANDRETURN17:FRAMEWORKFORRETURNStatesshoulddevelopaframeworkfortheprocessofreturnintheevent that displacement is temporary and return to homes, lands or places of habitual residence is possible and agreed to by those affected.

PRINCIPLE 15: HOUSING AND LIVELIHOOD

(b) States should allow climate displaced persons experiencing displacement to voluntarily return to their former homes, lands or places of habitual residence, and should facilitate their effective return in safety and with dignity, in circumstances where such homes, lands or places of habitual residence are habitable and where return does not pose significant risk to life or livelihood.

Climate displaced persons experiencing displacement but who have not been relocated and whose rights have been violated shall have fair and equitable access to appropriate remedies and

(a) States should respect, protect and fulfill the right to adequate housing of climate displaced persons experiencing displacement but who have not been relocated, which includes accessibility, affordability, habitability, security of tenure, cultural adequacy, suitability of location, and non-discriminatory access to basic services (for example, health and education).

(c) States should enable climate displaced persons to decide on whether to return to their homes, lands or places of habitual residence, and provide such persons with complete, objective, up-to-date and accurate information (including on physical, material and legal safety issues) necessary to exercise their right to freedom of movement and to choose their residence.

(d) States should provide transitional assistance to individuals, households and communities during the process of return until livelihoods and access to services are restored.

(b) Where climate displacement results in the inability of climate displaced persons to return to previous sources of livelihood, appropriate measures should be taken to ensure such livelihoods can be continued in a sustainable manner and will not result in further displacement, and opportunities created by such measures should be available without discrimination of any kind.

PRINCIPLE 16: REMEDIES AND COMPENSATION

95VI. States,PRINCIPLEIMPLEMENTATION18:IMPLEMENTATIONANDDISSEMINATIONwhohavetheprimaryobligationtoensurethefullenjoymentofthe rights of all climate displaced persons within their territory, should implement and disseminate these Peninsula Principles without delay and cooperate closely with inter-governmental organisations, non-government organisations, practitioners, civil society, and community-based groups toward this end. Adopted by a group of eminent jurists, text writers, legal scholars and climate change experts in Red Hill on the Mornington Peninsula, Victoria, Australia on 18 August 2013. Image: Bougainville, Papua New Guinea.

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Frederic Beaudry, ‘Global Warming: The 9 Most Vulnerable Cities’ in Treehugger, 30 May 2019.

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Papua

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While few cities will cease to exist in their entirety due to rising sea levels over time - though some will effectively be lost forever - a very considerable number of cities will face climate change-induced crises involving the movement of entire neighbourhoods to safer ground. Cities as diverse as Jakarta, Venice, Lagos, Boston, Houston, Dhaka, Virginia Beach, Bangkok, Mumbai, Shanghai, New Orleans, Rotterdam, Alexandria, Miami and many others are already facing existential threats due to rising sea levels and other climate and related threats. These threats are increasingly recognised by a growing number of local governments and planning is underway as to how best to grapple with these previously unimaginable challenges that have already become ever so real.

In this latest solutions-oriented report by Displacement Solutions, a series of 15 practical measures that can be taken today by local coastal governments are presented as a practical checklist that can be used immediately by all of the world’s coastal governments seeking to better prepare for the effects of climate change. Any and all comments or requests should be directed to: www.displacementsolutions.orginfo@displacementsolutions.org.

On Whose Door Do We Knock?

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