From 1951 to 2014, the Hindu Kush Himalayas (HKH) have experienced a temperature rise of about 1.3°C, according to studies. What’s more, several areas of the HKH region have experienced a declining trend in snowfall and retreating glaciers in recent decades.
Presently, there is enough evidence to suggest that climate is changing and that it is affecting people in unprecedented ways. Communities living in mountains and coasts continue to be some of the most affected people around the globe.
Since the seventies, the HKH region has lost 15% of its glaciers, and in the best-case scenario, is likely to lose another 15-20% by 2100. If global action against climate risks falters, it is estimated that as much as 90% of snow in the region will disappear.
Increased glacial melting would mean that flooding disasters will escalate over the next fifty years, and this is likely to be followed by acute water stress, large-scale migration, and conflict. This is likely to affect all countries the Himalayas are spread over, including India. When it comes to crafting policy about the issue, countries still seem to be largely following their own individualistic approaches.
Climate Migration Policies in a Himalayan Nation
At a regional level within the HKH region, Nepal has already been facing ravages of climate change – increasing droughts, forest fires, and long and dry spells – also sound familiar when we look at Himalayan states in the country. A massive disruption in agricultural production has forced people to look at other options for employment, and migration forms one of them.
The situation is dire in the mountain regions of Nepal. Seventeen out of twenty-six families of village Dhye in Nepal decided to migrate in order to survive. One of the villagers challenged naysayers to visit his village if they had to prove him wrong.
Despite this, Nepal’s National Climate Change Policy, 2076 (2019) does not directly address climate migration, and instead only looks at displacement caused by climate-induced disasters, which is only a minute part of climate migration.
It is no secret that large swathes of seasonal forest fires that swept the Terai region of Nepal in the month of April 2021 and the Himalayan states of Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh were induced by climate change.
India’s Take On Climate Migration in the Himalayas
Similar to Nepal, the Disaster Management Act, 2005 in India deals only with displacement arising out of “natural or manmade calamities”. Under this, disasters occurring on account of climate change are also covered. In its definition of disaster, the act often resorts to terms like “catastrophe”, “mishap”, “calamity” and “grave occurrence”, which causes “substantial loss”. Such terminologies rely on quantification of damage at a given point of time, rather than looking at the entire course of damages inflicted by climate change. Rescue, rehabilitation, and mitigation processes – all pertain to the definition of a “disaster”.
The pending Climate Change Bill, 2015 could have been a step towards addressing climate migration, but it only concentrates on carbon footprint, carbon budgeting, while reducing greenhouse emissions. The bill proposes the setting up of a National Committee on Climate Change but its scope is not specified.
In 2014, the Central Government had asked states to set up a state action plan on climate change. For some Himalayan states, under this action plan, climate migration became an issue to be addressed. For example, the Sikkim State Action Plan on Climate Change talks about distress rural-to-urban migration caused by changing precipitation patterns and informs that people have already started coping with changes in climate as springs dry up during winter months.
Talking about climate change and migration in greater detail is also the government of Uttarakhand’s report that acknowledges the impact climate change has on people from the state. It not only highlights how climate change has affected agricultural patterns in the state but also how it is hampering its developmental priorities since interventions are often derailed by natural disasters.
What We Can Learn From Africa
The Hindu Kush Himalayas are spread over eight countries – from Afghanistan to Myanmar. Mitigating climate change in the Himalayas, therefore, needs to be a collective strategy for all eight countries, where data sharing becomes an important part of regional cooperation, despite nation-state contestations in the Himalayas.
This also translates to having a collective strategy on mitigating climate migration in the HKH region, because even when the global temperatures hit the 1.5 degree Celsius mark, one-third of glaciers in the Himalayas would already have melted.
Collective regional cooperation is imperative as people from neighbouring nations, especially Bangladesh move to India, and are not covered under international law. As an analysis by the United Nations on international migration policies shows, most of the policies are centred around labour, and seldom address the issue of human security with respect to climate change.
The African Union, which comprises 55 nations, already has a migration policy framework for the continent, based on cross-national cooperation. It beckons increasing collaboration with relevant stakeholders, including international agencies, to address population movement on account of environmental degradation. The fact that there is an acknowledgement of climate-induced migration at a regional level is itself a milestone.
If we look at specific countries in Africa, the National Migration Policy, 2015 of Nigeria acknowledges the impact of climate change on people, but only looks at internal displacement and forced migration.
On the other hand, Ghana has been one of the most proactive countries in terms of climate migration. It had a National Climate Migration Policy in 2013, which was subsequently included to the Ghana National Migration Policy, 2016. The policy takes an understanding of Ghana’s geography coupled with the nature of migration and then places this in the context of climate change, and specific vulnerabilities climate change will introduce people to. The policy does not adhere to sensationalist words like “climate refugees”, and instead includes an encompassing (and empathetic) terminology of migration, acknowledging different ways in which climate change can affect people apart from disasters and destruction.
The policy also calls for mainstreaming of migration to the National Climate Change Policy 2013 and National Urban Policy 2012, since distress migration often results in population movement from rural to urban areas. It also calls for an increase in research and data gathering on migration-environment-climate change (MECC), as some of the tangible steps towards understanding the phenomenon.
According to the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre, India has the highest level of disaster displacement in entire South Asia and is also one of the highest in the world. While this does not reflect that all displacements have been caused by climate change, it does justify the robust National Disaster Management Act, 2005.
But the immediate questions are more pertinent – what if the impending disaster is in fact a slow, steady process whose extent will only be realised later? What if we start planning before it is too late to go back? In addition to devising its own strategy, it is imperative that we approach the issue of climate migration in the Himalayas from a cross-regional view as well. The African Union can offer some compelling insights on the way forward for India in this regard.