Cities on the climate front line

By Priya Deshingkar

Extreme weather has displaced around 26 million people from their homes every year since 2008. Yet climate migration has failed to make it on to the negotiating table at major climate change summits, and COP 21 could be no different.

The draft agreement gives short shrift to climate-induced migration: the word is used just twice in the 54-page document, and the only other mention relates to a “displacement coordination facility” to support those displaced. Campaigners and major migration agencies fear that even these will be axed from the final treaty. This matters because without momentum at global level, governments may fail to put in place policies and infrastructure to address links between climate and migration.

Extreme weather events and sea-level rise will displace people. But evidence shows this is unlikely to result in the ‘tides of people’ swamping Europe that scaremongers often speak of. [1]

Rather, cities in the global South are likely to bear the brunt of climate migration — or, to be more precise, their slums.

This is certainly the case in South Asia, which has some of the world’s fastest growing megacities. In Dhaka, capital of disaster-prone Bangladesh, roughly 350,000 migrants arrive every year, adding to the city’s 14 million inhabitants. Most are displaced from the delta region where storms and sea level rise have made farming less viable.

One way of viewing such migration is as a way to adapt to climate change. But government attitudes and policies around rural-to-urban migration are increasingly hostile. [2] Many governments refuse to provide services for fear of encouraging further migration, which they link to worsening crime, filth and disease. Research from Ghana and India shows the extent of government inaction.

This inaction keeps in place awful systems of waste disposal. Take the notorious ‘flying toilets’ of Accra and Nairobi, where waste is put into plastic bags and flung as far away as possible. Or open defecation, which plagues cities such as Delhi and Mumbai.

For cities to cope, local governments must recognise the inevitability of climate-induced migration, and take action to upgrade infrastructure and services.

This will be tough. The high density of informal settlements coupled with insecure tenancy can make it impossible to improve sanitation. Virtually every inch of land in informal settlements is in use, making it difficult to dig trenches for drainage. Many people live in tenements under constant threat of eviction, meaning landlords are reluctant to improve toilets.

Not only that, but many informal settlements develop in marginal areas of the city that are vulnerable to flooding and destruction due to severe weather.

There are more enlightened, imaginative approaches to improving urban settlements. In Mumbai, the NGO SPARC gathered feedback from local people and built community toilets that 20,000 people use every day. In Kibera, Nairobi’s largest slum, the Human Needs Project NGO developed a clever system of wastewater recycling for unplumbed neighbourhoods. Often these ideas come from local people themselves: the Global Initiative on Community-Based Adaptation is compiling and sharing information on what people are doing to adapt — and these ideas are likely to be more effective than top-down formulas.

But governments must also act. And cities shouldn’t only see newcomers as a risk or burden: often migrants are the most resourceful of their peers, providing cheap labour, trading and manufacturing goods for urban consumers. A more enlightened attitude to migrants will benefit cities and all who live in them.

Priya Deshingkar is Research Director of the Migrating out of Poverty research consortium. Her interests include precarious migrant occupations, exploitation in labour markets, informal settlements, gender and poverty. 

This blog was originally published by Sci.Dev.Net on 3 December 2015 under their Focus on Migration series and is also available at: 

http://www.scidev.net/global/migration/analysis-blog/migration-cities-climate-front-line.html.  

References

[1] The Government Office for London Migration and global environmental change: future challenges and opportunities (UK government, 2011)

[2] UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs World population policies 2013 (UN, 2013)

Informal Settlements in Ghana

by Mariama Awumbila and Priya Deshingkar

On Saturday 20 June 2015, the Accra Metropolitan Assembly bulldozed Old Fadama, the largest informal settlement in Accra. Roughly 50,000 people, mostly migrants from Ghana’s northern regions, as well as others from the West Africa sub region, are said to have lost their properties during the demolition exercise, and many became homeless overnight. This is the not the first time that slum clearances and forced evictions have taken place in Ghana and Old Fadama residents have faced numerous eviction threats since 2002. 

Many slum clearances are done in the name of the greater public good. This most recent destruction of Old Fadama was ostensibly to improve storm water drainage and prevent floods in the city. The need to do this was highlighted by the 3^rd of June floods and fire in the city which claimed over 150 lives. The argument was that unauthorised construction, partly due to the activities of the residents at Old Fadama, was hindering the flow of water and in particular had stalled the execution of the Korle Lagoon Restoration Project, which aims to improve the ecological functioning of the Korle lagoon and so to improve Accra’s drainage, flooding and sanitation problems. City authorities felt that the demolition was necessary to help prevent future flooding and destruction around the Odaw river. The authorities are planning to construct drains that will allow water to flow into the Odawna drains and Korle Lagoon and then finally into the sea.

 

However it is not clear whether any scientific studies were conducted to establish the causality between activities at Old Fadama and flooding in Accra, and doubts have been expressed in the press about the effectiveness of slum clearance in addressing the root cause of flooding. Critics have called for a demolition “with a human face”.

 

Those who favour the evictions have an unwavering conviction that their approach is correct. Such approaches are embedded in the overall negative policy stance related to the migration of the poor. According to the 2013 World Population Policies Report, 84% of less developed country governments want to reduce rural to urban migration, up from 73% in the previous round. Africa and Asia have some of the highest percentages of governments with policies designed to reduce the flow of rural-urban migration: 85% in Africa and 84% in Asia. There has been a hardening of negative attitudes in many parts of the world and it is not clear what the empirical basis for this is.

 

There are a number of concerns about poor migrants and informal settlements - most inadequately supported by evidence - including the overburdening of urban services, the spread of disease, worsening crime and exacerbating vulnerability of cities to environmental disasters. There is little recognition of the economic contribution of the residents of informal settlements to the city in the form of cheap labour, specialised services and products.

 

A 2014 study on rural-urban migration to urban informal settlements or slums in Accra conducted by the Centre for Migration Studies at the University of Ghana under the Migrating Out of Poverty research programme showed that most of the residents in Old Fadama are young migrants who are economically very active. More than 80% find work within a few days of arrival, mainly in the informal sector, doing jobs such as recycling electronic waste; food vending, street hawking, head load portering (kayeyei), petty trading, and hairdressing. All the respondents in that study reported a wider range and better paid employment options compared to their places of origin. More than 77% remitted money home and this money went directly to poor and disadvantaged rural households. For some, these remittances are the only source of income. When asked how their lives had changed as a result of migration to the informal settlement, nearly half said their overall situation had “improved a lot”, 38% said it had “somewhat improved” and the rest said that it had deteriorated or remained the same. 

 

According to Amnesty International, Ghana’s laws and constitution do not provide the residents of informal settlements with adequate protection against forced evictions. They are, for all intents and purposes, illegal settlers and the metropolitan authorities can file a case against them in court as was seen in 2002 when the Accra Metropolitan Authority filed an eviction notice against the residents of Old Fadama.

 

It is well known that forced evictions do not provide long term solutions; in fact the only long term impact they seem to have is to worsen the risks of already poor and vulnerable people. Very often there are inadequate resettlement plans for residents, as happened in this case, and even when offered, the alternatives do not replace what has been lost because the sites are located at a distance from civic amenities and established business and social networks.

 

Old Fadama residents have faced a constant threat of eviction and have tried to unite against it. In 2006 and then again in 2009, two organisations, the Ghana Federation of the Urban Poor (GHAFUP) and People’s Dialogue on Human Settlements organised a community enumeration of the residents to Old Fadama with Shack Dwellers International. This was seen as an important first step to show the civic authorities how many people lived here and what they do. It was hoped that such information would transform the attitudes of government towards informal settlements and prevent evictions. But unfortunately this has not happened.

 

By razing Old Fadama to the ground, countless poor, rural families will have lost an important source of support. It is therefore important that  informal settlements are recognised not only as a places of despair and misery, requiring social protection, but also as hives of economic activity providing services to urban areas and remittances to rural households dependent on them.

 

There is thus an urgent need to shape policy attitudes towards informal settlements away from forced evictions towards participatory relocations or rehabilitation.

 

 

Mariama Awumbila leads the Migrating out of Poverty West Africa team at the Centre for Migration Studies at the University of Ghana. Priya Deshingkar is the Research Director of the Migrating out of Poverty Research Programme Consortium.