Page 18 - FMR64_Trafficking and smuggling & Climate crisis and local communities_2020_web

FMR 64
18 Climate crisis and local communities
www.fmreview.org/issue64 June 2020

Climate crisis and local communities in South East
Asia: causes, responses and questions of justice

Laura Geiger

Civil society networks with experience, knowledge and passion are fighting climate injustice
and promoting the rights of those displaced by the impacts of climate change.
Imagine walking four hours every day to Challenges – and community responses
fetch fresh water because the rising sea level According to the Internal Displacement
has made your nearby groundwater salty. Monitoring Centre, natural hazards triggered
Imagine being carried, while in labour, in a approximately 24.8 million new displacements
basket to a hospital several kilometres away in 2019, affecting all inhabited continents;
because more frequent flash flooding has IDMC also cites predictions ranging from
washed away the roads. Or imagine your 100 million to 1 billion climate migrants by
children having to leave home – because 2050. Many South Asian, Southeast Asian and
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traditional farming is no longer possible due Pacific countries face severe climate change-
to drought and land erosion – to work 12 related challenges. Coastal areas, for example,
hours a day, seven days a week, as a rickshaw are threatened by the increased frequency
driver or in a garment factory in order to and potency of storm surges, cyclones and
earn enough to help your family survive. sea level rise (which contributes to increased
People are not leaving their homes because salinity). People have started to convert their
they seek a similar lifestyle to that enjoyed rice paddies to salt-tolerant shrimp ponds
by many societies in the Global North; but this adaptation measure has drastic
often they are forced to leave their loved consequences. Where there were once
ones and their homes simply for survival. opportunities for paid labour on agricultural
Over the past century, wealthy nations fields and a chance for subsistence
have benefited significantly from the agriculture, there are now powerful owners
generation of greenhouse gases and the of shrimp companies, with foreign capital,
exploitation of ecosystems, while others trading their goods on international markets
around the world – usually the poor and and marginalising the landless farmers.
vulnerable – suffer the consequences. In Indonesia, since 2000, fishermen in
In the Global South, although colonial several locations on the north coast of Java
landownership has ceased, land grabbing and have experienced the effects of rising sea level
exploitation of natural resources continue through the submergence of their villages and
where labour and land are kept cheap reductions in their catch. Their fishing boats
as an incentive to foreign investors and used to have a crew of three to five fishermen
environmental and where social protection is but the reduced catch forces the fishermen
barely enforced; in this sense, governments to reduce the size of their crew. Masnuah, a
in the Global South also bear responsibility. 46-year-old woman who lives in the Demak
Monopolistic industries dominate the markets district, went to sea for the first time to
and set the rules while community-owned accompany her husband, whereas previously
enterprises or small-scale producers struggle it would have been considered shameful for a
against unfair competition. Those who have fisherman to ask his wife to help in his work.
to bear the burden of the direct and indirect She now chairs the Indonesian Fishermen
costs of historical and current exploitation Women’s Association (PPNI ). Thanks to
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are often abandoned to the devastating their advocacy work it has finally become
effects of climate change. And, worse still, acceptable for women to fish. Organising
once they are forced to migrate there is themselves was initially difficult because
little or no protection in place for them. many people, particularly village elders and