I-18 M F , _ . . D \ .

0 All) IVAVG 3 L l

W coucouas CENTRALE-SUPELEC 2016

9pm I: J 3 1i) 1? / 0:3 ANGLAIS

\vw , . _ , 2 722$

Paris Accord Considers Climate Change as a Factor in Mass Migration

By SEWELL CHAN THE NEW YORK TIMES, December 12, 2015

LE BOURGET, France The two-week United Nations climate conference outside Paris
that drew to an end on Saturday focused on many of the physical dangers associated with
climate change: extreme weather, severe drought, the warming of oceans, rain forest
destruction and disruptions to the food supply.

But global warming has already had another effect the large-scale displacement of
people that has been an ominous, politically sensitive undercurrent in the talks and side
events here.

Scientists have said that climate change can indirectly lead to migration by setting off
violent conflicts. Scholars have made this connection since at least 2007, when they cited
climate change as a reason for the war in Darfur, Sudan. A drought that lasted from 2006 to
2011 in much of Syria has been cited as a factor in the long-running civil war there, fueling
a mass migration to Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan, but also to Europe, Canada and, in small
measure, the United States.

Europe, in particular, is experiencing the largest influx of migrants since World War II
Germany alone has already taken in nearly a million this year. Jean-Claude Juncker, the
president of the European Commission, told world leaders that climate change could
destabilize entire regions and start massive forced migrations and conflicts over natural
resources.

The Paris climate accord calls for developing recommendations to avert, minimize and
address displacement related to the adverse impacts of climate change an explicit
acknowledgment of the dangers of migration that some of the poorest of the 195 countries
involved in the talks had sought to include in the text. ()

William Lacy Swing, a retired American ambassador who now leads the International
Organization for Migration, said that climate change was adding to a perfect storm of
unprecedented human mobility, a result of the quadrupling of the worlds population
over the last century and wars, conflicts and persecution that have displaced a record 60
million people.
The United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification and the British Defense Ministry
recently cited a 2009 report estimating that 135 million people are at risk of displacement
because desertification, the drying out of once-fertile land, will reduce drinking-water
supplies and lower coral yields. The problem is most pronounced across a band of Africa,
from the Sahel in the west to the Horn of Africa in the east.

By 2020, some 60 million people could move from the desertified areas of sub-Saharan
Africa toward North Africa and Europe, the report found; by 2050, about 200 million
people may be permanently displaced.

As early as 1990, a report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)

warned, The greatest single impact of climate change could be on human migration.

It was not until 20 years later, at the 2010 United Nations climate conference in Cancun,
Mexico, that countries formally agreed that climate changeinduced migration,
displacement and relocation were among the challenges the world faced in adapting to a
warmer planet.

In 2012, the Norwegian and Swiss governments established a research entity, the Nansen
Initiative, which found that a serious legal gap exists with regard to crossborder
movements in the context of disasters and the effects of climate change. The initiative has
held consultations in four particularly vulnerable regions Central America, the Horn of
Africa, Southeast Asia and the islands of the South Pacific and plans to recommend a
protection agenda that may include standards of treatment.