Robyn Williams: Could it be that climate change is already causing the migration of people and even conflict?

An article headed 'Climate Change Helped Spark the Syrian War' appeared in March 2015 in National Geographic magazine, and told how droughts drove Syrian farmers to "abandon their crops and flock to the cities", triggering unrest and then civil war.

Well now closer to our region, Dr Celia McMichael finds that other movements of people have also been happening. She's at the Department of Geography, University of Melbourne, and here she reflects on the work of her famous father, Tony McMichael, who wrote on climate and the health of nations.

Celia McMichael: In 2014, residents from the small coastal village of Vunidogoloa in Fiji relocated to higher land. Their village of 26 houses was previously located a few meters from the foreshore, but over recent years they experienced increasing coastal erosion and flooding. When I was there last year on a research visit, villagers told me that the community had relocated, ultimately, because of the impacts of climate change. Higher tides and flooding were damaging their homes and crops, and coastal erosion was washing away the land upon which their village was built. As one man said to me:

“Well it all started about ten years ago when we noticed the sea water coming into the village. At first we used to have spring tide that used to come up, but then it was almost a daily occurrence. The bread fruit trees weren’t fruiting well because of the salt water. Some parts of the houses were washed away.”

With the support of government, international agencies and, of course, community involvement, they designed and built a new village located about two kilometres inland. So while people still walk down to the remains of their old village — to fish and to swim — their new village has fish ponds, pineapple plantations, a coconut copra drier and better access to roads. Some infrastructure work still needs to be completed, but residents agree that moving the village uphill has provided a way for them to adapt to climate change and to protect their livelihoods, community, health and wellbeing, and indeed their future.

My own interest in conducting research in this area stems from concern with the urgent and inequitable realities of climate change impacts; but on a more personal note, it has been developed through talking and co-authoring with my late father, Professor Tony McMichael, who was an eminent epidemiologist. We wrote together about potential health outcomes for climate migrants, such as infectious disease risks among people who are displaced by environmental disaster, or the opportunities for improved health via well-supported migration and relocation planning.

When my dad died unexpectedly in 2014, he was putting the finishing touches to his forthcoming book, Climate Change and the Health of Nations. The book examines historical records and finds that human health is very sensitive to changes in climate. And drawing on history, he warns that the impacts of climatic change — such as environmental disaster, increasing temperatures, and food insecurity — will amplify infectious diseases, under-nutrition, and heat-related deaths, especially among vulnerable populations, such as children and forcibly displaced people.

Globally, the impacts of climate change are going to contribute to human migration. While estimated numbers of climate migrants are widely debated, it has been projected that hundreds of millions of people could migrate by the middle of this century due to climate-related hazards such as flooding, sea-level rise, erosion and drought.

So sea-level rise, for example, is expected to displace people living in low-lying communities in many small islands and coastal areas. Somewhere between 70 to 190 million people could be affected by coastal flooding and land loss by the end of this century, assuming an average sea-level rise of somewhere between half a meter and two meters. In some places, adaptation to sea-level rise will entail relocation of people and communities to areas of lower environmental risk. Now this is a really complex phenomenon; particularly as climate change will rarely act alone, but will intersect with other social, economic and environmental factors that shape migration patterns.

Many governments, policy makers and researchers now regard climate-related migration not as a crisis, but in fact, a potential adaptive response to climate change. More than a dozen low-income countries have submitted national adaptation plans to the United Nations that include relocation of affected communities. And in 2010, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change officially recognized the need for community relocation.

So coming back to the Pacific region, where I started, low-lying atolls and island nations — such as Tuvalu, Kiribati, and the Carteret Islands — have drawn attention to the potentially devastating impacts of sea-level rise. Among policy makers, researchers, governments and affected communities, there's been a lot of discussion about the need for people to migrate. Kiribati, for example, is initiating a state-led attempt to develop migration opportunities in a warming world, which the government refers to as ‘Migration with Dignity’. But low-lying coastal villages in Fiji are among the first in the region, and indeed the world, to actively begin relocation of communities in response to environmental changes.

Over the last few years, I've been visiting villages in Fiji, along with local colleagues from the Fijian Government Climate Change Division, a development donor agency, and Provincial Councils, and we conducted research that aims to understand and document experiences of relocation. It is clear that people are very concerned about their environmental futures. They describe local flooding and coastal erosion, and they're worried about the impacts of sea-level rise for their villages in coming years and decades.

So as one older man explained: "We understand climate change because we live climate change, we experience it, it’s our daily lives, we walk through this."

As I first mentioned, Vunidogoloa relocated to higher land about three years ago. Another low-lying village, Narikoso, has 27 households and a population of around 90 to 100 people. Over the past few decades, the shoreline has receded by about 15 metres; homes closest to the waterfront are now inundated during high tide and storm surges. The government and international agencies have supported planning and earthworks for the new village site; and community members have funded and constructed a water source for the new village. During a recent visit, people spoke of their concerns about how and when the relocation will occur, and who will move. They're quite unhappy that the village might be moved in phases, rather than as a whole. In other low-lying villages, relocation and retreat is considered an impending likelihood, particularly as they hear about relocation initiatives elsewhere in the country.

But importantly, relocation is possible in Fiji as people are able to move to higher land, and many villages can move quite small distances within their customary land. Nonetheless, relocation is expensive, disruptive, and represents a last-resort option.

During my time in Fiji, I heard from a lot of people about the global inequities of climate change, and how their immediate environments, lives and futures are compromised by greenhouse gas emissions produced by higher-income countries. It's clear that most people regard global climate change as the primary or even sole driver of local environmental changes and coastal erosion.

As one man explained: "Other big countries caused the problem. And the small countries suffer".

My dad’s last book challenges us to learn from the past, understand the present, imagine a better and more sustainable future — and act on it. This is a call to action that resonates with the realities of people living in low-lying coastal areas and other sites of climate vulnerability, such as people I've spoken about in Vunidogoloa and Narikoso in Fiji.

While a ‘last resort option’, migration can be an adaptive response to climate change impacts. Where it occurs, it should be supported so as to protect people’s communities, livelihoods, rights, and health. As people begin to move from sites of climatic vulnerability, it's critical that the international community take decisive action to cut greenhouse gas emissions, create a low-carbon world and support climate adaptation.

Robyn Williams: There's a challenge.

Dr Celia McMichael from the Department of Geography, University of Melbourne.

She mentioned her late father's book: Climate Change and the Health of Nations. It's by Tony McMichael and published by Oxford University Press. He was at the Australian National University.

Next week, another public health professor, Simon Chapman, on Smoke Signals. I'm Robyn Williams.