Italy ignores pleas, ends boat migrant rescue operation

Terra Daily via AFP: Italy on Friday ignored the pleas of aid agencies and confirmed the end of its search and rescue operation "Mare Nostrum", responsible for saving tens of thousands of boat migrants stranded in the Mediterranean.

"From tomorrow a new operation called 'Triton' begins," deputy prime minister and interior minister Angelino Alfano told journalists at a press conference, referring to a much more limited mission led by the EU border agency Frontex. "Mare Nostrum ends. Italy has done its duty,"

He said the government had spent some 114 million euros ($142 million) on the massive naval operation since two deadly shipwrecks in October last year left over 400 people dead.

The decision comes after growing criticism both within Italy and Europe that the rescue mission was creating an unintended "pull factor" for more migrants in makeshift boats to attempt the dangerous sea crossings.

Although the op -- which has saved over 150,000 people -- is being shelved, Italy said it will abide by the laws of the sea under which ships that spot migrants in trouble are obliged to rescue them....

A 1945 boat rescue in the Mediterranean by the UK, not Italy

A fresh start for climate change refugees

IRIN: Firmly attached to her home region and long used to the harshness of her living conditions, Amina Aliyu would probably not see herself as a potential “climate change refugee”. But there is a strong probability that in 10 or 15 years the place where she lives will no longer be fit for human habitation and migration to another region, or even another country, will be the only option.

...Aliyu has seen climatic changes at first hand. Rainfall, already scarce, has further diminished. But Aliyu is adamant she will not abandon her home region for a less hostile environment. Asked if she could leave she responds emphatically: “No! Generations of my family lies buried here, I cannot leave them. This is my only home.”

But if living conditions become even less sustainable, Aliyu will face difficult options: to stay in the hope of finding new ways of generating income or receiving more external help; moving to another part of the region, or moving even further away and risking the loss of her coveted ancestral and cultural ties.

Cases like that of Aliyu are of obvious interest to the Nansen Initiative, which was set up by the Governments of Switzerland and Norway in October 2012. The Nansen Initiative seeks to develop “a protection agenda addressing the needs of people displaced across international borders by natural hazards, including the effects of climate change”.

The Nansen Initiative works on the premise that climate change and migration need to be looked at together. Climate change will mean larger populations being challenged by both sudden-onset disasters and slow-onset disasters in the future.

The Nansen Initiative argues that current planning mechanisms on climate change, both national and international, are insufficient. The body argues for more effective early warning for extreme climatic events, better water management and more sustained efforts to reduce pressure on fragile environments. The Nansen Initiative particularly highlights the need for the protection of affected populations....

Refugees at Dolo-Odo Camp in Ethiopia, US Embassy photo 

Climate migrant remittances could help adaptation

Laurie Goering in AlertNet: Migration linked with climate change is more likely to involve a steady step-up in existing patterns of movement around the world than the sudden surges of desperate refugees many governments fear, climate and migration experts say.

Many argue, in fact, that migration – if prepared for and managed – could prove one of the most effective means of adapting to climate change and building resilience to its impacts, particularly if migrants send remittances home.

“When we think of climate migration, we think of areas emptying, of what happens if 10,000 people leave,” said Dan Smith, the head of International Alert, a London-based peace-building organisation. But much current - and probably future - migration focuses instead on people saying, “We’re a family. I’ll go, you stay. I’ll send some money home so you can survive.”

“It’s a different kind of migration from that odd picture we’ve constructed for ourselves,” Smith told a recent discussion at the Royal Commonwealth Club on the security challenges of climate change and migration.

Already there are 200 million people living in a country other than the one they were born in, and another 750 million people living in their native country but outside their region of birth – a total of about a billion migrants worldwide, said Richard Black, a professor of human geography at Sussex University and contributor to the UK government’s 2011 Foresight project, which explored the potential impact of climate change on migration, among other issues....

Old suitcases, shot by Mattes, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

East Timor may take climate refugees

Geraldine Coutts of Radio Australia interviewed the President of Kiribati: The president of Kiribati, Anote Tong, has been awarded the 2012 Hillary Laureate for leadership for raising global awareness about the effects of climate change on Pacific Nations.

The Hillary Institute of International leadership says President Tong's tireless efforts have been dramatic and pointed out how big nations are unfairly impacting smaller ones.

Some village communities from Kiribati's 32 pancake-flat coral atolls have had to be re-located because of climate change.

Anote Tong, Kiribati President [said]: "The most severe impact is the waves and the ocean on the shoreline. We've had some villages that have had to be totally relocated. There have been a number of villages now that have had similar problems with intrusion of the seawater into the fresh water ponds affecting food crops and so it's an ongoing but I think more frighteningly it's an increasing phenomenon and that is, I think perhaps, the most worrying factor.

...COUTTS: So a lot more people are in danger?

TONG: Oh I see this as getting worse, as the projected scenario of events as the impact of sea level rise get worse; we can anticipate an increase in frequency of occurrences like this....

...COUTTS: Well what are the choices? Where could you go? Are you negotiating to get land elsewhere?

TONG: Well we've been looking, there haven't been a great numbers of offers coming forward but I'm very happy to say that a number of pacific countries have come forward. East Timor has made a concrete offer and we've yet to discuss that in more detail. This is a new development and it's very encouraging because we don't choose just to go somewhere because we cannot do that...