Will climate refugees get promised aid?

Marwaan Macan-Markar in IPS: With extreme weather pounding countries across a wide arc in the Asia-Pacific region, questions hover over entitlements for millions of people displaced by climate change, pledged under the Green Climate Fund (GCF) and other sources.

Will the long wait by climate change migrants – including the 42 million people displaced by storms, floods and droughts in Asia and the Pacific during 2010 and 2011 – be finally over? Will they be able to tap international aid to help them adapt to extreme weather?

The International Organisation of Migration (IOM) hopes it is so as it sets its sights on the annual United Nations climate change summit to be held in Qatar later this year. The Geneva-based body is looking to the 18th session of the Conference of the Parties (CoP 18) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change to deliver on a breakthrough that emerged at the end of acrimonious negotiations at the CoP 16, held in the Mexican resort of Cancun in December 2010.

..."The IOM is pushing to implement this para at the next CoP in Qatar," says Diana Ionesco, migration policy office at IOM, referring to paragraph 14f in the Cancun document. "Migration can now be part of the global adaptation strategy, which was not the case before Cancun."

"We want people who have been victims of climate change – including those who cannot move – to benefit from this new policy that has recognised migration as part of the climate change adaptation framework," she told IPS. "It opens the way to apply for adaptation-related funding to help migrants."...

Old luggage at Arley railway station on the Severn Valley Railway, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license