CLIMATE INDUCED MIGRATION IN PAKISTAN: GLOBAL DISCOURSE, LOCAL REALITIES AND GOVERNANCE 2021
DIFFICULT DECISIONS: CLIMATE INDUCED MIGRATIONS IN DROUGHT STRICKEN BALOCHISTAN With a continuous loss of income and no other option at hand, Abdul Malik, a 55 year old Brahvi speaking Baloch, decided with a heavy heart to migrate to a new village along with his community of 102 households. They moved from Purana Mian Khanzai to to a new village, located in Panjpai, Quetta, which is in the outskirts of Quetta city. Migrating to a new place brought numerous challenges for him. “I had to sell some of my belongings at very low prices because some resources could not be carried out to the new migrated region.” The village where they decided to migrate was also not abundant in resources, so the people already living there were not so welcoming. According to him, “they were not
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open to the idea that 100 households migrated all at once, while resources in their own land were barely enough for their own use. With the migration of additional migrants, the situation would worsen.” “My native land was once agriculturally rich before the prolonged droughts. I used to live as a farmer and worked on my own piece of land where I had livestock and I grew crops. Water scarcity and extreme climatic conditions have resulted in loss of both of my source of income. After migrating, my villagers and I have become tenants.” Remembering his life before migration, Abdul Malik said that “I am grateful to still be a farmer but I am a worker in other’s fields.”
CLIMATE INDUCED MIGRATION IN PAKISTAN: GLOBAL DISCOURSE, LOCAL REALITIES AND GOVERNANCE 2021
1. Introduction During the 1980s and 1990s, climate change was predominately perceived as an environmental and scientific discussion, rather than a challenge facing populations across the world. Today, the impacts of climate change can be seen in a multitude of layers and is hard to ignore with its devastating interaction with other environmental and non-environmental issues. Climate change has had profound impacts not only when it comes to disaster risks and uncertainties, but also on human, economic, social, and political systems. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) warned the world that the “greatest single impact of climate change could be on human migration”, emphasizing the vast potential impact of climate change on humans.⁸
The relationship of the components - climate change and migration - has been explored in a number of ways, with some studies focusing on the impact on the environment due to refugee movements, while more recent studies have predominantly addressed the impacts of environmental changes on migration flows. The consequences of climate change on humans are multiple, complex and unpredictable, due to the fact that many factors of inter alia, social, economic, political, and ecological nature influence the mobility of people. Establishing a linear and causative relationship between climate change and forced migration has, therefore, been difficult.⁹ Yet there are a number of different theories and schools of thought on the subject.
Forced displacement resulting from the adverse impacts of climate change is one of the biggest challenges of the 21st century that are currently being faced by the international community, especially by the vulnerable Global South. Every year, millions of people are displaced by climate related hazards including floods, tropical storms, droughts, glacial melting and GLOFs, salt water intrusion, melting permafrost, and overall environmental degradation.¹⁰
Some recent scientific studies have projected that as regions continue to get warmer and land becomes unproductive for humans, hundreds of millions of people from across the globe will be forced to choose between flight or death. A New York Times article series on global climate migration predicted that, by 2070, 19% of the world will become ‘barely livable hot zones’.¹¹ A UNDP report predicted that there will be 200 million forced climate migrants by 2050.¹²
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