EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

6 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

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.

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. 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.

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?

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

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

as 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 real.

Important 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.

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. 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

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.

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 pages.

Rather, 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 instances.

Cities 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.

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

Scott Leckie

Founder and Director

2 See, www.displacementsolutions.org for a full collection of all DS publications and overviews of its work on these issues over that past 16 years.

LIST 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

Box 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