Speech by Rt Hon Hilary Benn MP to the Institute for Public Policy Research conference on climate change and forced migration - 29 April 2008
I am delighted to be here today and to follow my good friend and colleague Kim Howells. Congratulations to IPPR for holding this important debate.
I want to talk to you about how we can act to prevent dangerous climate change and its effects, including forced migration. Although because of what’s already happened we are going to have to deal with some change.
The climate has, of course, long influenced where and how people live. The first modern human beings reached Britain around 30,000 years ago, but within 3,000 years they were driven south again by the advance of the last ice age.
And the same may be true of this century, where a changing climate might force millions of people to move to seek new sources of food or water.
Just look at the food riots in Haiti, Cameroon and Mexico when prices went up.
Just think how the Ganges, the Indus, the Yellow and the Yangtze rivers all depend on the Himalayan glaciers for their flow.
Just imagine how atolls and small islands could be submerged. Over a fifth of Bangladesh could be under water.
Just reflect on how desertification and drought - as Nick Stern picked up - could push areas such as West Africa and the Nile Basin into conflict over water.
I have seen for myself the impact that climate change is already having: in Bangladesh, in Malawi, in Sudan, and in Somalia where I visited a town called Wajid.
Eleven thousand people had moved there because it had stopped raining where they had been living. Their homes were the most pitiful shelters I think I have ever seen in my life - made of turned over twigs covered in scraps of clothing and plastic taken from the town rubbish tip. Their lives were on hold. They were waiting. Waiting for rain.
And I stood there and asked myself. Is this the future ?
We may be facing a world in which migrations like this could be much more frequent and much, much bigger.
So what do we do?
It is clear that in tackling climate change we should do two things. Firstly, reduce the immediate vulnerability of countries to the effects of climate change. And secondly, seek to prevent dangerous climate change to avoid these consequences.
To successfully adapt to climate change however we need better to understand when, where and on what scale these effects will occur.
We know for example, that global networks of weather stations provide poor coverage of Africa. So we are supporting efforts to develop these systems.
We are also taking other practical steps to help. The UK is the largest donor to the UN Special Funds to help developing countries adapt to climate change.
- In Bangladesh we have put £50 million into improving the lives of 50,000 people by raising their homes above the ‘1 in 100’ year flood level.
- We are investing in research and capacity building in Africa, Asia and Latin America.
- We are working with India and China to improve information on the risks of climate change and to develop ways of adapting.
- And as I think Kim said earlier, when I was the Secretary of State for International Development we introduced the policy that up to 10% of all humanitarian aid in response to natural disasters should be spent on reducing the risk of it happening again.
The truth is that we still have a lot to learn, and we need to work together to work out how best to deal with these uncertain risks at the local level.
I mentioned what we’re doing in Bangladesh.
The Jamuna is one of Bangladesh's major rivers. It is so large that in many places small islands, called chars, emerge. And people live on these shifting sands – some of the poorest people in the country.
The chars, are continuously being deposited and eroded. They are also highly vulnerable to flooding. I met a woman there who had had to move her home 35 times.
An NGO initiative – the Chars Livelihoods Programme – supported by the UK, has made a huge difference. Now when the floods come, the people living there have access to clean water from wells and refuge from the floods on special mounds. And because of this, food aid can be distributed.
So what does all this mean for adaptation to climate change?
Well, above all it means that adaptation can work to save lives.
But it also reminds us that we need to improve planning for the future. What are developing economies going to look like in 30 years? Exactly how will climate change affect local populations? What challenges will it bring?
Development must build in adaptation to climate change. And as my former colleagues at DfID will tell you, development produces the best sort of adaptation – strong institutions, education, health, infrastructure and a diversified economy which can provide the resilience and the flexibility to deal with economic shocks and natural disasters. And with a growing world population - 6.2bn of us now and another 2.5bn of us in under 50 years - it is worth pointing out that development is also the fastest route to smaller families.
But adaptation – important though it is – is not a way of solving dangerous climate change. And that’s why we have to act to halt it in the long-term.
And we must do this in a fair way. Because there is a fundamental issue of social justice here.
Between 1994 and 2003 natural disasters killed an average of 44 people [per event] in countries with high levels of economic development in comparison to 300 people [per event] in those with low economic development.
Research by Oxfam has found that the average Somali is about 100 times more likely to die from events caused by climate change than the average American, despite emitting roughly 16,000 times less carbon.
And we now know that we have a finite quantity of carbon the world can cope with.
So how do find a fair, global solution to climate change and what it may bring?
First, we must get a global deal that works in Copenhagen next year under the UNFCCC. A deal that takes action on the environment while delivering justice and security for the developing world.
What are the development tests against which we can judge the effectiveness of such a deal?
- It must include an ambitious long-term goal for cutting emissions that is high enough to avoid dangerous climate change.
- It must contain a fair and equitable way of ensuring emissions reductions to meet these targets – with developed countries taking the lead but with all countries, and particularly the emerging economies, doing more.
- It must deliver a reformed and bigger carbon market – so that we can support developing countries to pursue low-carbon growth. Indeed a fair carbon market could mean a significant change in financial flows, encouraging countries to develop cleanly, and could potentially rival flows of aid.
- It must help develop low carbon technology
- And finally, it must provide support for developing countries to build their resilience and capacity to develop.
So that’s the first task.
Second, we must reform our international institutions.
The Bretton Woods system was designed in a different age for a different age and to deal with different problems. Today we have to deal with climate change and poverty together.
Later this year the UN will hold a global summit – a ‘call to action’ – to renew the international community’s commitment to the Millennium Development Goals.
There is a growing belief that the 7th goal – ensuring environmental sustainability – must be central to the all the MDGs and therefore to development.
But to do this, we have to address the broader problem in international governance; namely that development and the environment are still treated separately.
That is why the Prime Minister, on his recent visit to the US, proposed that we should ‘make the World Bank a bank for development and the environment’. By doing this we could ‘transfer billions in loans and grants to encourage the poorest countries to adopt alternative sources of energy and in doing so ensure that their development programmes provide an integrated approach to both eradicating poverty and tackling global warming.’
The third area for reform is what we do about conflict.
We know that climate change could be a herald of conflict – look at Javier Solana’s recent report to the European Council – and that a mass movement of people potentially caused by climate change could contribute to this, or be a result of it. So what will be the flashpoints? Where might these conflicts arise?
- In North Africa and the Sahel degraded soil could lead to a loss of 75% of arable land
- In the Middle East water supply systems are under significant strain. In Israel the water supply could drop by 60% over the course of this century
- Kyrgyzstan has lost over 1000 glaciers in the last four decades
- And of course in Bangladesh 35 million people live within the coastal floodplain; so if sea levels rise, they’re moving house, and they’re most likely to move next door.
And it’s happening already. The conflict in Darfur has been made worse by shifts in rainfall which have caused dispute over grazing land between nomadic and settled herders.
Last month we launched the UK’s National Security Strategy, which in saying that climate change is ‘potentially the greatest challenge to global stability and security, and therefore to national security’ set out the increased potential for territorial disputes, humanitarian disasters and even state failure.
But it also rightly pointed out that this prospect increases the responsibility on the international community to deal with the problem; and to do so by strengthening international cooperation.
So we need the UN to be better at preventing conflict and dealing with it when it happens. We should continue to push for a significant increase in the number of peacekeepers internationally. We should continue to provide military, diplomatic and financial support for UN mandated peacebuilding missions. And we should continue to support UN development programmes and mediation efforts so that conflict over resources does not turn violent.
The final area for reform concerns how climate migration should fit within the international framework.
Now this is a complex issue, which I am sure you will discuss over the rest of the day, so I want to ask a few questions and offer a view.
How should the international community react to this type of migration? Who is going to lead ? Clearly, the countries affected will have the first and principal responsibility, but the international effort must be through the United Nations.
Should we concentrate on helping people where they are, wherever possible? Yes, clearly. Indeed, experience tells us that when people have to move, they don’t all head for the EU or the US. Take the example of Afghanistan. The conflict there in the 1980s caused about a third of the Afghan population, an estimated 5 million people, to flee the country. Most moved next door. Approximately 3 million in Pakistan and 2 million in Iran. That’s where the bulk of the help must go.
Are our institutions geared up for this? Will we apply the old internally displaced people/refugee division that we operate currently under which who helps you depends literally on which side of a border you pitch up on. We have to make sure the institutions work to provide food, shelter, medical care and education wherever people are.
Will the Central Emergency Response Fund be able to cope with the immediate demands on the system? Is the funding there to deal with the longer-term effects, remembering that all but one of the UN’s emergency appeals last year were climate related? The answer would be no if the scale of the movement is as some predict.
So the choice is clear. We must adapt. We must mitigate. We must prepare. And we must shape our international institutions to ensure they are ready for whatever may lie ahead.
So I will leave you with this thought.
We are working on cutting UK emissions, building consensus at home and abroad and preparing us to do more.
And I am confident that many people are seized of the seriousness of this cause – but there is a danger here. A danger that the prophets of doom, the apocalyptic predictions could simply turn people off at the very moment we are trying to engage them.
Our case is not strengthened when we overstate it. Rather it is weakened, and the IPPR has warned of this.
Teddy Roosevelt, who was himself a passionate environmentalist, said:
‘I have a perfect horror of words that are not backed up by deeds.’
He was right. It’s what we do that counts. And the best way to avoid the things we fear, is to get on with the job of stopping them happening.
Thank you.
Page published: 6 May 2008