This paper assesses the likely effec-tiveness of the National Adaptation Programs of Action (NAPAs) prepared by least developed countries (LDCs) to mitigate the impacts of climate-related changes in agriculture, fisheries, forest-ry and related natural resource-based activities. NAPAs provide a process for the 49 least developed countries to identify high-priority activities that re-spond to urgent and immediate needs to help vulnerable groups to assuage the effects of and adapt to climate change. A review of the priority projects included in 15 NAPAs yields three major findings. First, broad-based economic development is the key to reducing poverty and strengthening the adapt-ability of poor rural residents to climate change. Under all climate-change sce-narios, reducing poverty increases the abilities of affected people to cope with storms, floods and other weather-relat-ed changes, so climate change makes the challenge of spurring development that raises incomes and reduces pov-erty even more urgent. Second, the fact climate change is likely to hasten rural-urban migration and make more people reliant on imported food highlights the importance of sound farm, urbaniza-tion, and trade policies. Third, NAPAs include interventions to help those ad-versely affected by climate change to adapt and facilitations that build gov-ernmental and personal capacity to deal with climate change. Proposed projects tend to focus on facilitations such as hiring more people to monitor climate change, but interventions that raise the incomes of vulnerable people may better enhance their protection against the adverse effects of climate change.

1744 R Street NW Washington, DC 20009 T 1 202 745 3950 F 1 202 265 1662 E info@gmfus.org

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Climate experts predict that global warm-ing will bring heavier rainstorms, bigger snowstorms, more intense droughts and more record-breaking heat waves. The drought and heat wave in Russia and the eastern US in the summer of 2010, de-structive floods in Pakistan in 2011 and Hurricane Sandy in 2012 reinforce the feeling that global warming is causing more weather extremes. The debate on climate change has shifted in important respects from one focused primarily on mitigation of future effects to one that is also considering adaptation to today’s impacts. For many of the least developed countries, National Adaptation Programs of Action (NAPAs) are the principal mechanism for addressing current and future adaptation needs. Since the popu-lations in many of these countries are heavily dependent on subsistence agricul-ture for their livelihoods, their strategies often focus on ways to help rural commu-nities adapt to the negative impacts of cli-mate change on agricultural production. This report presents three main themes with regards to climate change, migration and adaptation: first it introduces climate change and its major impacts on agricul-ture, secondly it outlines the dimensions

of agriculture and the farm work force, and finally it emphasizes that climate change is likely to accelerate the rural-ur-ban migration already underway in most NAPA countries.

Climate Change and Agriculture

Climate change can be identified through significant changes in temperature or precipitation, which persists for several decades. Climate change can raise global temperatures because of natural factors such as changes in the sun’s intensity, nat-ural processes such as changes in ocean currents, and human activities, such as emitting gases by burning fossil fuels or deforestation that changes the composi-tion of the atmosphere.1 The Intergovern-mental Panel on Climate Change in 2007 concluded that the “warming of the cli-mate system is unequivocal” and that hu-man activities contribute to this warming (IGCC, 2007, 4th Assessment Report).2

In 2004, the IGCC estimated that agricul-tural production contributed almost 14 percent to global greenhouse gas emis-sions, while deforestation, often to clear land for farming, added another 17 per-

Climate Change, NAPAs, Agriculture, and Migration in LDCsby Philip Martin

November 2011

1 Most of the climate change focus has been on reducing emissions of carbon dioxide, which can stay in the atmosphere for decades. However, a February 2011 study by the UN’s Environment Program suggested that it might be easier to reduce global warming by reducing emissions of two short-lived pollutants, black carbon (a component of soot that has-tens the melting of snow) and ground-level ozone. The UNEP suggested that banning the burning of crop residues and introducing clean-burning biomass cook stoves for cooking and heating in developing countries could reduce black soot, while upgrading wastewater treatment and controlling methane emissions from livestock could reduce ozone. 2 The IPCC report was criticized as flawed and biased by some scientists and organizations, especially after the release of emails in November 2009 between some of the world’s leading climate scientists that suggested they were trying to silence critics. There were errors in the 3,000-page IPCC report, including the assertion that glaciers in the Himalayan Mountains might disappear by 2035, which came from an activist group rather than peer-reviewed literature. The activist group claimed melting would occur by 2350, which the IPCC transposed to 2035. The Netherlands Environmental Assess-ment Agency concluded in a July 2010 review that the major conclusions of the IPCC report were correct, but the IPCC summary emphasized the negative effects of climate change.

Study Team on Climate-Induced MigrationNovember 2012

cent to emissions (Cited in World Bank, 2009, 146). Agricultural activity and deforestation contribute an estimated 31 percent to global greenhouse gas emissions, and the share of emissions linked to agriculture is typically larger in developing countries with larger farming and forestry sectors.

The three major responses to global warming due to human activi-ties are prevention, adaptation, and migration, otherwise known as PAM. Prevention aims to stop or reduce greenhouse gas emissions to slow the pace of global warming, through the use of policies such as carbon taxes and cap-and-trade policies.3 Adaptation in-volves countering the effects of climate change, such as changing fishing practices by switching to aquaculture and altering cropping patterns by constructing more defenses against severe storms and seawater surges that can inundate farmland. Migration, which is sometimes considered a failure of adaptation, involves moving from places made less viable by climate change to places that are more livable and offer more opportunity.

There is general agreement that the least developing countries (LDCs) are likely to be more adversely affected by climate change than richer developing and industrial countries, primarily because the residents of LDCs are poorer and thus less able to adapt, and their governments have fewer resources to invest in prevention and adaptation. Moreover, it is within LDCs that the poorest residents are likely to suffer. Since poverty is concentrated in the rural areas of least developing countries (three-fourths of the poor in LDCs live in rural areas), climate changes that adversely affect farming, fishing, and forestry could increase poverty in rural areas and out-migration from rural areas (World Bank, 2008, 1).

Global warming is an increase in the average temperature of the at-mosphere near the earth’s surface. The earth’s climate has changed many times due to natural factors, but the advent of the industrial revolution about two centuries ago increased the significance of human activities in altering the composition of the atmosphere and thus the climate. A combination of burning fossil fuels and defor-estation appears to have increased concentrations of heat-trapping “greenhouse gases” in the atmosphere, raising average global tem-peratures (NASA, 2009). Additionally, temperatures are likely to continue increasing because of the greenhouse gases that have ac-cumulated in the atmosphere. Rising temperatures are likely to al-

ter rainfall patterns, the extent of snow and ice cover, and sea levels.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, charged with evaluating the effects of human activities on climate change, urged a reduction of 20 to 40 percent in greenhouse gas emissions from 1990 levels by 2020 (IGCC, 2007). The EU agreed, but the US, Chi-na, and many other countries did not (China and the US each ac-count for about 20 percent of global emissions of greenhouse gas-es). The major issues at international conferences aimed at slowing global warming are (1) whether to make binding individual coun-try targets to reduce emissions, including enforcing penalties for noncompliance, (2) what tools, such as taxes and subsidies, offer the most efficient and equitable means to achieve emissions targets within countries, and (3) how much aid industrial countries should provide to LDCs to help them to reduce their emissions and adapt to climate change.

Global leaders hope to prevent temperatures from rising by more than 2 degrees Celsius from preindustrial levels by 2020. Since average temperatures are likely to rise at least 1.4 degrees Celsius based on the current composition of the atmosphere, the major climate change issue is how to slow and eventually reverse current-ly rising greenhouse gas emissions that could push temperatures higher. The policy options include taxes on emitters of greenhouse gases and cap-and-trade systems that cap emissions, sell or grant rights to emit, and allow such rights to be bought and sold.

Over the past half century, global food production has increased as fast or faster than population growth because of green revolu-tions that has improved seeds and added irrigation to augment yields, fostered better storage and handling systems, and increased international trade in farm commodities. However, even without climate change, the real prices of major agricultural commodities such as corn, rice and wheat are projected to be 50 to 70 percent higher in 2050 relative to 2000 because of population growth, in-come growth (which raises the demand for meat) and the diversion of some crops into biofuels.

Climate change is expected to add to upward price pressures on food as global warming slows the growth of agricultural, fishery, and forestry output.4 Global warming is expected to reduce yields in many already warm areas that depend on rain-fed agriculture

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3 The major issue in prevention is how much to reduce consumption now to slow global warming. The Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change, released in October 2006, used a 0.1 discount rate to argue that one percent of global GDP should be invested to reduce global warming and thus avoid losses of five to 20 percent of GDP in the future. William Nordhaus, on the other hand, uses a three percent interest rate to suggests doing little to reduce carbon emissions now. Instead, Nordhaus argues that societies should invest to increase physical and human capital so that people can better cope with climate change in the future. 4 The world’s fish catch increased from 19 million metric tons in 1950 to a peak of 90 million tons in the late 1980s. In the past two decades, the global fish catch has been declining. It was 87 million tons in 2005 and 80 million tons in 2008. Farmed fish now account for about half of the fish consumed each year.

Study Team on Climate-Induced Migration

while raising yields in some temperate areas that use irrigation (Nelson et al, 2009). For example, agricultural production may fall in Africa because most crop production depends on rain and many crops are already near their maximum temperatures; rising tem-peratures in arid areas may reduce rainfall and crop output. Asian agriculture is more dependent on irrigation, so that improved wa-ter storage and more efficient use could enable crop production to continue increasing despite climate change. The IPCC (2007, 14-15) predicts that yields of most North American and European crops would increase with rising temperatures.

This means that the effects of climate change on agriculture are ex-pected to be very uneven:

• Many relatively densely populated agricultural systems in LDCs are expected to suffer from hotter temperatures, more or less precipitation, and stronger storms and floods5

• Some sparsely populated regions in industrial countries may benefit from global warming, as hotter temperatures allow farming in areas that are not used for crop production, as in northern Canada and Siberia.

The net effects of these expected agricultural changes due to climate change include more out-migration from agriculture in relatively densely populated agricultural systems. However, there is likely to be little in-migration to regions with expanding agricultural systems in industrial countries because production techniques are likely to be highly mechanized. Most of the literature on climate change and agriculture emphasizes the growing importance of trade of farm commodities, that is, farmers displaced by climate change in developing countries need to earn money in cities to buy imported food (Slater et al, 2007).

Agricultural People and Policies

In developing countries, farmers, fishers and foresters are gener-ally poorer than other residents, making them vulnerable to more severe droughts and floods, changes in water quality, and hotter and colder temperatures that affect the production of particular crops and livestock, the growth of fish stocks and the growth and resilience of forests. In industrial countries, by contrast, farm op-

erators are richer than nonfarm residents and may benefit if hotter temperatures increase yields in colder areas and farmers receive payments to sequester carbon in the soil,6 plant trees to reduce deforestation, and reduce methane gas emissions from livestock production.7

Within LDCs, poor people in wet coastal areas and in arid zones are most likely to be on the front lines of climate change. Those who seem most vulnerable are self-employed farmers and fishers whose income is the difference between revenue from the prod-ucts sold and expenses spent to produce them. Many farmers and fishers are subsistence operators who produce primarily for their families, but most can sell some of what they produce or, in the case of foresters, sell most of the wood and related products they collect to buy food. Most self-employed farming households include un-paid family workers who share in the consumption of farm and fish production and income. The third category of persons employed in agriculture includes hired workers, persons employed for wages. The ILO estimated that in 2003, the number of “waged” or hired workers was about 450 million.

Employment in world agriculture, fisheries and forestry is marked by three major trends:

1. The share of workers employed in agriculture falls with eco-nomic development, and falls especially fast during periods of rapid economic growth, as in European countries and Japan in the 1950s and 1960s. Today, most industrial countries have less than five percent of workers employed in agriculture when compared to the 50 plus percent in LDCs.

2. Farmers and their families rely on a variety of mechanisms to leave agriculture and farm-related sectors such as fisheries and forestry, including family and social networks and inter-mediaries that range from labor contractors to travel agents. Networks and intermediaries can smooth the transition to nonfarm jobs, including transitions that result from climate change, but intermediaries can also exploit farmers and fishers seeking nonfarm opportunities.

3. Some of the people leaving agriculture in LDCs cross national borders, often moving to neighboring countries, such as from

5 Climate change may also hasten the spread of some diseases. More heat, humidity and rainfall could allow mosquitoes, ticks and other parasites to spread tropical and subtropical diseases to new areas, which could have devastating effects on a populations that have not built up resistance to them. Malaria, cholera and other diseases are spreading to new areas of Africa and Asia. Plants and animals are also subject to disease spread by climate change, such as the bark beetle infestations that threaten commercial forestry in the US. 6 Paying farmers to sequester carbon in the soil by increasing its organic content raises the risk of releasing the stored carbon via natural events such as fire or flood or by resuming greenhouse-gas emitting farming practices. 7 Methane, generated in livestock production from the fermentation of organic matter, is a more damaging greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide.

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southwestern Bangladesh to India. In some cases, remittances from foreign earnings are used to promote adaptive develop-ment at home, such as improved housing to better withstand storms. Private remittances are unlikely, however, to provide the resources needed for the major adaptations expected in low-lying and climate-sensitive areas since most go to indi-vidual households.

There is a sharp contrast between farm and nonfarm incomes in developing versus industrial countries that helps to explain why especially young people in farming households in LDCs often leave for nonfarm jobs while farm families in industrial countries are often multi-generational. In industrial countries, median farm in-comes are generally higher than median nonfarm incomes,8 and this gap widens when wealth is considered because farm house-holds generally own at least some farmland. In developing coun-tries, by contrast, farmers tend to be poorer than nonfarm resi-dents, and many own little or no land.

Governmental policies often reinforce the tendency to lock human resources into agriculture in rich countries and accelerate out-migration from agriculture in LDCs. Farmers in the 33 member OECD countries received $253 billion in producer support from governments in 2009, equivalent to 22 percent of gross farm re-ceipts.9 The commodities receiving the most support were rice, sugar, livestock and dairy.10 The highest levels of producer sup-port were in Norway and Switzerland, where government support was about 60 percent of gross farm revenue. The lowest levels of support were in New Zealand and Australia, where less than five percent of gross farm revenue was received through governmental support. US government support was $31 billion, nine percent of US gross farm revenue, and EU support was $121 billion, 23 per-cent of EU gross farm revenue.

Farm subsidies affect commodity and land prices as well as hu-man resources in agriculture in several ways. First, farm subsidies directly and indirectly raise prices for farm commodities and the price of land used to produce them, often resulting in excess pro-duction that is dumped on world markets at low prices.11 Second, subsidies that increase the price of land act as a barrier to young

people who want to farm, which ultimately increases the average age of farmers in industrial countries. Many farming operations are multi-generational enterprises because inheritance is a way to overcome the typically high startup costs of farming.

In LDCs, by contrast, farm households tend to have lower incomes and less wealth than nonfarm households. Developing country governments nonetheless often tax farmers, usually by creating or allowing monopolies to sell farmers the seeds, fertilizers and other inputs they need at high prices or to buy the commodities they pro-duce at low prices—the tax is the difference between the price paid or received by the farmer and the world price. Low farm incomes and few prospects for upward mobility in agriculture in families with little or no land encourage movement out of rural areas, espe-cially for young people.

The World Bank (2008, 2) is leading an effort to transform agricul-ture in LDCs to be a more effective tool for development. About 75 percent of the poor in developing countries are in rural areas, and human resource indicators suggest that, poor farmers and farm workers and their families lag behind national averages.12 The World Bank wants governments to recognize that agriculture can contribute to development if investments in agricultural R&D are increased. This may include research on how to produce food and fiber under flood and drought conditions, which are expected to be exacerbated by climate change. Second, the World Bank recom-mends that governments implement policies to help small farm-ers and landless workers to raise their incomes via reform of land, commodity, and water markets, while also creating opportunities for rural people to supplement their incomes in the rural nonfarm economy. Third, the World Bank urges governments to change policies to encourage farmers to better manage limited supplies of land, water and other natural resources.

Impact of Climate Change on Migration Patterns from Rural Areas

Climate change will affect agriculture, which relies on a biologi-cal production process where “productivity is strongly determined by both temperature and precipitation.” (Nelson et al, 2010, 13).

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8 An example can be seen, in 2007, when a median income of $52,500 for farm households compared to a median income of $50,250 for all US households. (www.ers.usda.gov/Briefing/WellBeing/farmhouseincome.htm#distribution) 9 Total support for agriculture, including support for farmers, R&D and inspections and support for consumers to buy food, was $375 billion a year between 2007-09. Farm subsidies have been declining due to high food prices. 10 In all countries except Japan and Korea, most governmental farm support is for livestock and dairy commodities. 11 For example, a World Trade Organization appeals panel in June 2008 ruled that US cotton subsidies of about $3 billion a year were an unlawful breach of US trade commitments be-cause they increased global cotton production and depressed global cotton prices. 12 Agriculture employs 40 percent of the world’s workers and 70 percent of the world’s five- to 14-year old workers (Pigott, 2003).

There is more uncertainty about the effects of changing tempera-tures than changing precipitation on agriculture, but the main con-clusion of the literature is that global warming will speed the exit of people from agriculture in relatively densely populated warmer areas that are subject to more severe storms and floods. There will also be faster exits from arid areas; however, these are less densely populated.

There are three major ways in which the climate changes that in-crease average temperatures could affect agricultural productivity and migration patterns. First, agriculture depends on water. In 2010, farming accounted for 93 percent of the world’s water that is consumed, deriving most from rain and groundwater rather than irrigation. The average person drinks two to four liters of water a day, but eats food that required 2,000 to 5,000 liters to grow. More-over, meat is far more water intensive than grains.

Climate change that raises temperatures is expected to generate more precipitation. For example, a two degree Celsius increase in temperature is projected to increase precipitation by two to five percent (Nelson et al, 2010, 13).

However, climate change could also make precipitation patterns less reliable, which could increase the risk of short-run crop fail-ures and lead to long-run production declines. Some of these risks could be offset by more irrigation if additional water can be stored and used as needed. Much of the world’s irrigated cropland is in South and East Asia, where rice is the primary irrigated crop. If rising incomes shift consumer demand in Asia from rice to meat, water could be saved by importing meat or feed for livestock and poultry, which could allow most Asian countries to remain largely self sufficient in rice production if diets change.

Second, climate change may increase competition for land and water, both in arid areas with rapidly growing populations, such as in sub-Saharan Africa, and in river deltas such as Bangladesh where land is regularly inundated, which both destroys and cre-ates land. Competition for land can lead to conflict and migration, as when herders come into conflict with crop farmers or there are arguments over who gets the new lands created by annual floods.

Third, rising temperatures are likely to shift optimal production zones. The areas in which agricultural productivity is expected to decrease because of climate change include sub-Saharan Africa,

South Asia and parts of South America. On the other hand, agri-cultural productivity may increase in currently colder areas such as Canada and Russia (Darwin, et al, 1995; World Bank, 2008, 16-17). Areas in which agriculture is likely to become less productive are more densely populated than the sparsely populated areas of in-dustrial countries where agriculture may become viable at higher temperatures. In other words, the out-migration from low-lying areas of Bangladesh or arid areas of Africa is likely to be far greater than in-migration to northern Canada or Russia.

Agriculture is also affected by other trends that may affect mi-gration patterns, including a rapidly rising demand for meat in middle-income developing countries that can accelerate deforesta-tion, increase demand for biofuels that diverts crops from food to fuel and helps to raise food prices and a rise demands for seafood, which encourages production of fish, shrimp and other seafood in the coastal areas of LDCs, often in ways that can make these areas more vulnerable to storm-related damage. Deforestation in devel-oping countries contributes to greenhouse gas emissions, and half of this deforestation occurs in order to expand agriculture (World Bank, 2008, 17).

Encouraging changes in agriculture to reduce emissions and slow global warming leads to trade offs. For example, biofuels can re-duce the use of fossil fuels and their emissions; however, increased biofuel production may have negative side effects, from rising food prices to more deforestation to create land to produce crops for ethanol production.

Patterns of Migration from Rural Areas

There are far more internal than international migrants, about 740 million versus 200 million in 2009, according to UNDP (2009). Most internal migrants are moving from rural to urban areas within developing countries. The estimated 150 million internal migrants in China provide a substantial illustration of these trends. Furthermore, many internal migrants face barriers to public ser-vices at their (internal) destination. UNDP estimates that a third of developing countries restrict access to public services for internal migrants. Recommendations to governments to improve manage-ment of rural-urban migration patterns often include: (1) strength-en education systems in rural areas so that rural youth can take advantage of urban opportunities and (2) remove registration and other requirements that hinder the ability of internal migrants to

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receive equal treatment in access to employment and basic services in destination areas.

Often people fleeing argricultural work become international mi-grants. The Mexico-US migration, is perhaps the best known case of migration spawned by the movement of agricultural workers, which spilled over national borders. This migration has its roots in US government approved recruitment of rural Mexicans to fill US farm jobs between 1942 and 1964. Decades of Bracero guest worker programs sowed the seeds for later unauthorized migra-tion. This was predominately influenced by the distortion of US agricultural development—farmer’s expanded labor-intensive ag-riculture in areas without workers under the assumption that the US government would admit or tolerate foreign migrants. At the same, the Mexican government did little to accelerate development in migrant-sending areas, which begot a negative effect for rural Mexican’s who became increasingly dependent on US earnings (Martin, 2009, Chapter 2). Today, over ten percent of the 120 mil-lion persons born in Mexico have moved to the US, and many have or had a first job in the US agricultural sector.

Similar stories of migrant workers preserving or expanding rela-tively large labor-intensive agricultural sectors that depend on mi-grant workers play out in Europe, Japan and Korea, and Austra-lia and New Zealand. The production of strawberries in southern Spain highlights one policy, that is, importing workers to produce crops for export. Spain is the world’s largest exporter of fresh straw-berries, and this Spanish industry employs 50,000 to 60,000 people for the harvest, most of whom are migrants from North Africa, Eastern Europe and Latin America (Plewa, 2009). Alternatives to importing migrants include increasing investment in agriculture in migrant-sending countries and communities so that they can produce crops such as strawberries for export.

Many middle-income developing countries also admit or tolerate migrants from lower-wage countries to help produce farm com-modities for export, including Thailand, which has over a million workers from neighboring countries employed in the agriculture and fisheries sectors. Moving workers rather than farm commodi-ties over borders helps to increase the value of farm land in richer countries, ensures that farm-related packing and transportation jobs are in richer countries, and can increase the dependence of farming households in poorer countries on remittances from abroad. These remittances are often spent in part on education and

healthcare for children, which can help youth find nonfarm op-portunities; however, they may also reduce investments that garner the potential to make agricultural systems more resilient to climate change.

National Adaptation Programs of Action (NAPAs)

Country NAPAs are prepared under guidelines developed by the LDC Expert Group (LEG). Most begin with a brief review of the likely changes in the country associated with climate change before turning to the physical features of the country, such as major rivers and deserts. The NAPAs also summarize socio-economic condi-tions, emphasizing that most residents depend on natural resource industries. The NAPAs then justify proposed projects and rank them by priority and sometimes cost and sector to guide donors.

Most NAPAs have four substantive sections:

1. An outline of potential climate change effects relevant to the country

2. The socio-economic characteristics of the vulnerable groups likely to be most affected

3. The process of developing priority NAPA projects, including a description of how vulnerable and community groups were indentified and incorporated into the process of ranking pri-ority projects

4. Summaries of the projects

NAPAs include interventions to help those adversely affected by climate change to adapt. Additionally, NAPAs assist in the facilita-tions that build governmental and personal capacity to deal with climate change by adding staff to relevant ministries who can edu-cate vulnerable people about weather-related changes that might affect them. The NAPAs were prepared under LEG guidelines that called for inclusive processes to identify high-priority action items.

This section reviews the priority projects included in 15 NAPAs. They range widely in cost, timelines, and integration with other development activities. For example, subsidizing tree planting, constructing more flood shelters and improving the resilience of drinking water supplies in coastal areas prone to flooding are key

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components in the process of development and an adaptation to climate change. On the other hand, many of the capacity-building or capacity-enhancing projects, such as hiring more specialists in national ministries and providing more information to vulnerable people and communities, lack a framework to readily assess im-pacts—it is easy to count people hired and review educational ma-terials and activities, but not to assess impacts. Finally, developing salt-and drought-resistant tolerant seeds and farming techniques, improving farm-related storage and transport systems and adapt-ing fishing industries introduce longer-term adaptations to climate change.

Afghanistan

Afghanistan is a country of 29 million whose population is increas-ing by 610,000 or 2.1 percent a year; the Afghani population may be increasing faster due to the return of refugees. Three decades of fighting have accelerated the loss of institutions developed over centuries to cope with limited water supplies, an increase in pov-erty and a more dramatic vulnerability to climate change.

The 128-page Afghani NAPA, prepared by the National Environ-mental Protection Agency in February 2009 with the help of inter-national consultants, emphasizes that Afghanistan is an arid coun-try and 80 percent Afghanis rely on farming and herding for their livelihoods. It identifies lack of water as the most pressing problem aggravated by climate change, and highlights desertification and deforestation, mis-management of limited water supplies and soil erosion as man-made issues that could, if reversed, mitigate the ef-fects of climate change.

The Afghani NAPA acknowledges that “opium poppy is the most important economic and agricultural crop,” involving about 3.3 million people and almost 200,000 hectares or 500,000 acres of land (2009, 20). Since opium can tolerate drought conditions, farmers plant more when water is scarce.

The Afghani NAPA is among the most professionally prepared and includes:frequent references to international conventions and agreements, detailed tables and many photos. The Afghani NAPA short-listed only two priority projects, each costing $2.2 million and both lasting three years. The first, improved water manage-ment and use efficiency, aims to improve resilience to drought by “mainstreaming climate change and water management issues at

the national level” by strengthening the mandates of relevant gov-ernment agencies and conducing surveys and participatory discus-sions (NAPA, 81). This improved water management project also proposes to construct water storage systems and introduce drip ir-rigation, but does not detail where the specific projects will take place and how much each will cost.

The second project, community-based watershed management, proposes “a holistic intervention in specific watersheds” by form-ing Watershed Management Committees to provide “commu-nity members” with “sufficient technical and socio-organizational knowledge to be able to take wise decisions on natural resource issues at the watershed level.”(NAPA, 82-84) This project promises 20 Watershed Management Committees, but gives no numerical goals for rehabilitation and improvement of irrigation systems, an-other project goal. Unlike some other NAPAs, the Afghani NAPA does not specify particular dams or reservoirs to be strengthened or expanded, nor does it identify the particular communities or regions where projects will be implemented.

The Afghani NAPA includes a list of other projects that were not short-listed, including the development of seeds and breed-ing livestock more adaptable to limited water supplies. Many of these projects appear to have been drawn from development plans prepared for other donors, and some have limited ties to climate change, including diversifying crops away from opium, improving infrastructure and marketing, and creating more nonfarm earn-ings opportunities.

Bangladesh

Bangladesh is a country of 164 million whose population is in-creasing by 2.5 million a year. Its area is about the same as the US state of Iowa, which has a stable population of less than three million, making Bangladesh one of the world’s most densely popu-lated countries. Bangladesh is crisscrossed by river deltas, and 80 percent of the land is flooded every year.

The Ministry of Environment and Forestry, which published Ban-gladesh’s NAPA in November 2005, noted that Bangladesh experi-ences natural disasters such as flooding after cyclonic storm surges on a regular basis, and that formal and informal coping mecha-nisms have evolved to limit the loss of life and property associated with these events. However, climate change is expected to increase

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the frequency and severity of natural disasters. The Bangladeshi NAPA proposes projects to mitigate the effects of more frequent and severe storms in a country that already has frequent and severe storms.

Bangladesh is in the low-lying Ganges–Brahmaputra river delta formed by the Ganges (Padma), Brahmaputra (Jamuna), and Meghna rivers and their tributaries. The Ganges joins the Jamu-na, the main channel of the Brahmaputra, and later the Meghna. These rivers, which enter Bangladesh from India, deposit alluvial soil when flooding the low-lying land. Most of Bangladesh is just above sea level.

The major water issues include: the erosion of levies that protect farm land lying below river levels, the risk of salinity impeding yields on land affected by tidal surges through broken levies and pollution of rivers and canals. Dealing with storms is also a major challenge, as there are sharp differences between high river flows and floods in the months of August and September and low flows in March and April. Groundwater provides most irrigation and drinking water, raising pollution and salinity threats to human health and agricultural viability. Bangladeshi soil has a high arse-nic content, and the tube wells used to obtain water expose many residents to arsenic poisoning. The alternative is for the population to collect and store more rainwater.

Climate change is expected to make storms in Bangladesh more severe, which could break more levies and spread salinity and pol-lution. Moreover, summer temperatures may also rise, which could lead to lowering yields of some crucial crops. However, the levies that protect low-lying farm land from rivers are sometimes weak-ened deliberately by shrimp farmers who need tidal surges to flush their farms. Many run pipes through the levies so that river water can enter and leave their farms, which weaken the ability of lev-ies to withstand storm surges. Shrimp farming in low-lying areas of Bangladesh provides an example of how a new crop that can increase some farmers’ incomes and can also make all residents of low-lying areas more vulnerable to the more severe storms associ-ated with climate change.

The consultation process used to prepare the NAPA emphasized that poor residents of coastal areas are most likely to be negatively affected by climate change. The 15 priority projects laid out in the Bangladeshi NAPA range from afforestation (with community par-

ticipation) and improvements in drinking water supplies to explor-ing options that allow Bangladeshis to insure against natural disas-ters. Only two of the priority projects are likely to have short-term impacts, viz, providing safe drinking water and information about how to cope with the more severe storms associated with climate change. However, even the drinking project focuses more on hiring experts to assess the options for improving drinking water supplies than on providing safe drinking water.

Many of the other priority projects are likely to be more useful in the medium term, including (re)foresting in areas that strength-en protections against floods and teaching K-12 school children about climate change. Some priority projects are likely to be useful to cope with climate change and to spur economic development, including developing new seeds and fishing techniques as well as improving the urban infrastructure. For example, the afforestation activity, after finding suitable land on which trees could be planted, would provide short-term jobs for local residents to plant trees while increasing protections in flood-prone areas.

Bhutan

Bhutan’s undated 95 page NAPA, prepared by the National En-vironment Commission, emphasized that the mountainous and heavily forested country’s economy is heavily dependent on ex-porting hydropower to India. The major climate change threat is from rising temperatures that could accelerate the melting of gla-ciers and cause some of the 2,674 glacial lakes to burst their banks, posing dangers to people downstream and potentially destroying hydropower facilities.

The priority projects included hiring staff to improve disaster man-agement and weather forecasting for the country of 750,000, devel-oping early-warning systems for glacier lake outbursts, lowering the level of Thorthomi Lake, and improving flood protection.

Bhutan’s NAPA lists nine priority projects with a total cost of $3.5 million USD, beginning with developing a disaster management strategy to provide food security and emergency medicine to vul-nerable communities and ending with community-based forest-fire prevention. Lowering the water level of Thorthomi Lake was the most expensive activity, costing $3.2 million, reflecting the fact that the lake is a week-long trek from the nearest road. The Bhutan NAPA includes a mix of interventions and facilitations.

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13 India is diverting more water from the Ganges, and the resulting “vacuum” draws salt water from the Bay of Bengal further inland during tidal and storm surges.

Cambodia

The Cambodian NAPA, a 125 page document prepared by the Ministry of Environment in October 2006, stresses that Cambodia is a poor country and most of the 14 million residents are depen-dent on agriculture and vulnerable to flooding. The Cambodian NAPA aims to mitigate the impacts of climate change within the parameters of an overall “rectangular strategy for growth, employ-ment, equity and efficiency” adopted in July 2004. This strategy aims to increase agricultural productivity by expanding irrigation and improving water management to reduce the vulnerability to natural disasters (2006, 3).

The NAPA cites inadequate human resources to comprehend and deal with climate change, limited integration of climate change into government development programs, and limited awareness of the threats posed by climate change including: floods, drought and windstorms as well as seawater intrusion and rising salinity in some coastal areas (2006, 4). Surveys of residents in communities prone to flooding found that most people made few special prepa-rations to deal with anticipated floods, such as constructing ele-vated enclosures for livestock and increasing supplies of food and feed stuffs (2006, 4). The NAPA says that “traditional resignation to climate change and to climate extremes should not be equated to preparedness and adaptation” (2006, 6).

Cambodia’s NAPA lists 39 priority activities in Table 4, and Table 7 which includes the 20 highest-ranked projects, categorized as dealing with health and non-health issues. The total cost of the 20 highest-ranked projects is over $125 million, including $45 mil-lion for the improvement of community irrigation systems in par-ticular areas and $30 million for rehabilitation of upper Mekong and provincial waterways (2006, 13-17). The Cambodian NAPA is distinguished by the inclusion of relatively high-cost intervention projects to rehabilitate particular dams and reservoirs by remov-ing the build-up of sediments that limits their capacity to hold flood waters, improving community water supplies, strengthening flood-protection dikes and levies, and planting trees for protection from storms. The high-priority health projects deal with reducing malaria by developing biopesticides and raising public awareness about mosquitoes and their habitats (2006, 16-17).

Individual project descriptions emphasize the links to climate change and the potential benefits of completing the project. For

example, a $4 million project aims to prepare 500 higher eleva-tion safety grounds for flood-vulnerable communities and raise 5,000 houses to reduce damage from floods in districts along the Mekong and Tonle Sap rivers. There are references to similar proj-ects underway, but it is not clear how the projects proposed in the NAPA link to these other projects, making it hard to assess whether NAPA projects are building blocks of both development and cli-mate change policies.

Ethiopia

Ethiopia’s 96 page NAPA was published in June 2007. Ethiopia is a country of 85 million whose population is growing by between 2.3 million and 2.7 percent a year. This rapid population growth in a country with 85 percent of residents in rural areas contributes to soil erosion and deforestation.

Most Ethiopians depend on rain-fed agriculture, and the highest priority project is an $8 million project to develop and promote crop insurance for farmers. The second highest-ranked project is a $10 million project to strengthen drought and flood early-warning systems. Ethiopia’s NAPA also included the single most expensive project in the NAPAs, a $700 million dam and water project in the Genale-Dawa basin. Many of the other priority projects were facilitation measures whose price tags were not justified, such as a $2 million project to enhance rangeland resource management practices or a $3 million project for capacity building for climate change adaptation.

Kiribati

Kiribati is a chain of 33 atoll islands in the Pacific with 90,000 residents. Its 71-page NAPA created in January 2007 outlines the threat of higher sea levels and increased storm surges to coastal and soil erosion. Most Kiribati residents, who live near the coasts and depend on fishing and farming, have already taken various steps to protect their home and land from storm surges.

Climate change is likely to exacerbate current problems of pollu-tion and overfishing. Many residents drill wells to obtain ground water near their homes for growing taro and for household use, which increases the risk of contamination from pollution. The ris-ing number of wells also threatens salt water intrusion.

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The 10 projects proposed in Kiribati’s NAPA deal with climate change and development. The top-ranked projects would develop a pricing system for water on South Tarawa to encourage more effi-cient use of limited water supplies and hire government staff to en-courage drilling ground water wells further from people’s homes. Most of the projects outlined in Kiribati’s NAPA are facilitation measures, such as using GIS to learn about threats in coastal zones, monitor the threats, and educate local residents about them. The $12 million price tag for Kiribati’s priority projects suggests spend-ing $135 per resident.

Laos

Lao PDR is a country of six million. The 106 page Lao PDR NAPA from February 2009 asserts that climate change is adversely affect-ing Laotians, but also says that “Lao PDR lacks data, adaptation strategies, funds, human resources, experience, an appropriate ap-proach and the mechanisms to develop immediate and long term solutions” to climate change (2009, 1).

The Lao PDR NAPA says that 70 percent of Laotians depend on natural resources for their livelihoods; it identifies 45 priority proj-ects in agriculture, forestry, water resources and public health. Most of the priority projects strengthen the capacity of the gov-ernment to anticipate and deal with climate change, such as a $1 million USD project to strengthen the National Disaster Manage-ment Committees (NDMC) that respond to floods and droughts by training NDMC members about climate change and adaptation, including best practices from abroad. One of the most expensive projects requests $10 million USD to “replace slash-and-burn agri-culture with appropriate agricultural land use systems.”

Lesotho

Lesotho is a landlocked country of two million that is prone to drought. With over 85 percent of people in rural areas and a very high rate of HIV (one third of adults infected), poverty is wide-spread because of deforestation (less than one percent of the land is forested) and falling yields of crops such as corn and other grains. The main threat of climate change is prolonged droughts that could reduce the usefulness of the rangelands that cover 70 percent of Lesotho and are used for communal livestock grazing.

The highest ranked among the eight projects in the Lesotho NAPA

is improving sheep and dairy farming at a cost of $3 million USD; the total cost of the eight projects is about $12.5 million USD. The second-highest ranked project is a $4.2 million USD effort to im-prove the cereals farming; about 90 percent of the land is used for corn and sorghum crops, which depend on rain; however, only 10 percent of farm land is irrigated. The sub-projects within this proj-ect include capacity building, such as training farmers in new tech-niques and intervention measures, such as the building of small dams.

Malawi

Malawi’s 58 page NAPA, published by the Environmental Affairs Department in February 2006, identifies the major climate-relat-ed problems as the impacts of extreme weather events, including floods and droughts and their affects on food, health, water and energy , which drastically affect the poor and populous country of 15 million. Moreover, the population is expanding by 445,000 peo-ple, or about three percent a year. Land-locked Malawi is among the poorest LDCs, and the NAPA explains that 90 percent of Ma-lawi’s residents are dependent on rain-fed agriculture, producing tobacco, sugar and tea for export and corn (one crop a year), cas-sava and vegetables for local consumption (NAPA, 2006, 1). The NAPA stresses that extreme weather events can lead to crop failure, food insecurity and health-related risks. However, implementing the projects proposed in the NAPA are constrained by poverty, il-literacy and lack of capacity.

The first Malawi priority is to “improve community resilience to climate change through the development of sustainable rural liveli-hoods” (NAPA, 2006, 12). This would be accomplished by improv-ing access to water, improving storage facilities for seed and food and diversifying crops to improve nutrition and food security. The more climate-specific priority projects include reforestation in ar-eas prone to flooding, improving seeds to deal with drought and constructing and rehabilitating dams. Both the general and the climate-specific projects would begin with baseline surveys and in-teractions with affected communities, particularly with the most-vulnerable groups. These activities would help identify and explain the dangers of climate change and obtain community inputs on ex-act project activities.

14The source of 98 percent of Malawi’s energy is a hydro-electric power plant on the Shire river; energy production is adversely affected by drought.

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Niger

Niger is a country of 16 million and is growing by 560,000 or 3.5 percent a year. Its August 2006 NAPA stresses the negative effects of drought on a poor agrarian-economy based on raising livestock, farming and fishing. The 15 priority activities deal with improv-ing the availability of storage facilities for feedstuffs for livestock, increasing water storage capacity to expand crop and feedstuff pro-duction as well as and dealing with the health-related aspects of climate change for people and animals. The Niger NAPA did not include cost data for these proposed projects.

Sierra Leone

Sierra Leone is a country of almost six million in Western Afri-ca whose population is growing by 140,000 people a year or 2.4 percent a year. The December 2007 NAPA identifies floods, storm surges and deforestation as major challenges likely to be aggravated by climate change. The NAPA lists 24 priority actions, ranging from a national early-warning system for disasters ($750,000 USD) and improving the capacity of the meteorological services ($1.5 million USD) to monitoring of malaria, water, and HIV/AIDS in specific districts (about $5 million USD).

The projects most relevant to farming and fishing are mostly based on capacity-building initiatives, including $304,000 USD for sen-sitization and awareness raising campaigns on the impact of cli-mate change on women (NAPA, 2007, 43). There are six farming projects. They include a $1 million USD project to develop irriga-tion and drainage systems and other projects to train and educate agricultural extension personnel. There are eight fisheries projects, and they involve monitoring and promoting sustainable practices, improving regulation and “fostering international aid.”

Sudan

Sudan is an arid country of 43 million with a population that is growing by 2.2 percent a year. In January 2011, the southern prov-inces voted to form a new country. Sudan is the largest country in Africa; however, only a fifth of the arable land is farmed, due in part to a lack of irrigation water. There is water in Sudan: the White Nile enters Sudan from Uganda and the Blue Nile enters Su-dan from Ethiopia, but a 1959 treaty with Egypt limits Sudan to 20 percent of the flow of these rivers as they pass through the country.

Desertification and deforestation threaten agriculture in Sudan, as does flooding, especially in the southeast.

The 64-page NAPA identifies farmers who lack irrigation and those who raise livestock as the most vulnerable to climate change, and proposes projects to improve water storage. The highest prior-ity activity requests $2.8 million USD to build dams for livestock farmers in the Gedarif State so that they can cope with varying amounts of rainfall. The second project requests $2.5 million USD for water for harvesting practices and storage facilities in southern Darfur State. The third requests $2.4 million USD for new crops and improved irrigation systems in the River Nile State. The fourth project requests $2.4 million USD for environmental conservation in Kordofan State, and the fifth requests $5 million USD to reduce vulnerabilities to drought in Central Equatorial State.

Tanzania

Tanzania’s 61 page NAPA, prepared by the Division of Environ-ment in January 2007, highlights the risk of drought from rising temperatures that shrink the glaciers of Mount Kilimanjaro, which affect the 44 million residents on the mainland. The NAP also em-phasizes the risks of more severe storms for the million residents of Zanzibar.

Tanzania’s NAPA lays out evidence that mean temperatures are rising and precipitation is falling, and both of these trends are to blamed for poor harvests in 2005. If these rising temperature and reduced rainfall patterns continue, human and animal health may worsen.

Tanzania’s NAPA lays out 14 priority projects that help residents to cope with climate change and are compatible with the country’s national development strategy. Most are water related, including improving the efficiency of irrigation systems, developing more water storage facilities, preventing forest fires and developing alter-natives to hydro energy if low water levels persist. Several projects are longer-term and more idealistic, including developing sustain-able tourism activities in low-lying coastal areas and improving the land tenure system.

The priority projects mostly reinforce projects already underway, such as improving irrigation systems, diversifying crops and in-creasing water storage capacity and efficiency. The NAPA proposes

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15 A sixth of human deaths in Tanzania are linked to malaria (NAPA, 2007, 8).

projects to deal with the tsetse fly that affects livestock as well as reforesting areas.

Under the umbrella of improving food security, Tanzania’s NAPA proposes an $8.5 million project to encourage farmers to plant more drought-tolerant crops, with almost all of the funds going to hire staff to advise farmers on what to plant. The $800,000 USD water availability project allocates $300,000 USD to develop reser-voirs and underground storage facilities. A $620,000 USD project in the Luguru district would provide electricity as an alternative to wood-burning, The NAPA proposes expenditures for roads and transmission facilities, but two-thirds of the proposed $3.3 million USD reforestation project is for planning and educating farmers.

Tuvalu

Tuvalu is a small Pacific island country with fewer than 10,000 resi-dents, and almost half of its citizens live in the capital city of Fa-nafuti. Its 55 page NAPA, prepared by the Ministry of Natural Re-sources, Environment, and Agriculture, highlights the dangers of coastal erosion and saltwater intrusion. Additionally, it considers drought, which reduces rainwater and farm production as well as drinking water shortages, as well as fewer fish to sustain residents. The NAPA recounts the effects of storms, which destroyed housing and accelerated erosion, and aims to strengthen defenses against what could be more frequent and severe storms.

Tuvalu’s islands are generally less than three meters above sea lev-els, making people, housing and agriculture highly vulnerable to storm surges. Strengthening community-based healthcare and disaster preparedness are cross-cutting issues. The seven priority projects laid out in the NAPA begin with reinforcing coastal de-fenses against storm surges, and also consider increasing pit-grown pulaka productivity and improving rainwater storage capacity. Fur-thermore, it also aims to improve fisheries. The total cost of the projects is about $8.7 million, and over half of the funds would be devoted to the pulaka and rainwater storage projects.

Yemen

Yemen is an arid country with 24 million residents at the south-eastern end of the Arabian Peninsula. The major climate change threats are less rainfall along with higher temperatures that could accelerate desertification and coastal erosion.

The NAPA’s highest ranked projects include the development of an integrated coastal management plan at a cost of $3.2 million USD, which will take over four years complete. It includes a rainwater collection projects at mosques and projects to promote grey wa-ter reuse at a cost of $3.2 million USD, over three years, as well as an awareness raising on climate change at a cost of $650,000 USD over two years. Other projects include planting and replanting mangrove and palm trees at a cost of $2.5 million USD over five years, an improved weather forecasting and preparedness planning system at a cost of $5 million USD over four years, and rehabilitat-ing hillside crop land terraces at a cost of $5 million USD over five years.

Assessment of NAPA Priority Projects

The critiques of NAPAs often include three criticisms: institu-tions, integration and priorities. The institutional criticism is that most NAPAs were prepared by governmental ministries devoted to environment-related issues, often with the help of international consultants, leading to the suspicion that many of the priority proj-ects identified would also be implemented by environment-related ministries. For example, developing improved seeds or other ag-ricultural inputs may be more effective to adapt to climate change and reduce poverty, but may rank lower in a NAPA prepared by an environmental ministry because such projects are more likely to be implemented by an agriculture ministry.

Second, some of the NAPAs are criticized for not integrating pro-posed activities into broader development strategies. Many NAPAs were developed with new rounds of stakeholder consultations, even if the government recently engaged in similar consultations to develop PSRPs that included sections on coping with climate change. Some NAPAs referenced development plans and PSRPs, while others did not.

Third, some NAPAs are criticized for not focusing on the poorest and most vulnerable residents, such as minorities, forest dwellers and women, as well as for not placing a higher priority on land reform and clear land titles. Additionally, some were criticized for not explicitly mentioning HIV/AIDS orphans. This priority cri-tique, which calls for ranking the most vulnerable communities or families within communities rather than simply identifying the most vulnerable river basins or farming areas, engenders cost and timing issues. Conducting more surveys to identify the most vul-

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nerable in anarea costs money and takes time, and suggests that some critics would prefer to spend more on targeting than activi-ties that would benefit all residents, the most vulnerable and the least vulnerable.

NAPAs, Migration, and Policies

Migration is motivated by inequalities and facilitated by networks. Demographic and economic inequalities within and between the world’s roughly 200 nation-states motivates especially young peo-ple to move in search of opportunity, as well as for access to com-munication, transportation and the rights revolutions enable them to learn about, such as travel..

Many of tomorrow’s migrants are residents of rural areas today who are at least partially dependent on agriculture for income. Cli-mate change is expected to make agriculture less viable for already poorer-than-average rural residents in many developing countries, which should increase rural-urban internal and international mi-gration. This increased migration will likely follow well-established migration networks, which may make it hard to isolate the extra migration due to climate change.

The increased rural-urban migration due to the impacts of climate change on agriculture can be dealt with in the same way that gov-ernments are currently dealing with out-migration from agricul-ture. Policies to help rural-urban migrants to integrate in urban areas include removing barriers to government services, like in China and India, and creating nonfarm jobs in urban centers for migrants. The World Bank (2008, 17-18) stresses the importance of creating nonfarm job opportunities in rural areas so that those wanting to supplement agricultural incomes can do so without moving.

Creating nonfarm job opportunities in rural areas is easy to rec-ommend but hard to do. Farm employment falls “naturally” with economic development, and higher nonfarm wages act as a magnet to “pull” labor out of agriculture. Creating nonfarm jobs in rural areas could minimize migration, but nonfarm industries offering higher wages often need subsidies to induce them to relocate to areas that may have higher transportation costs and lack workers with needed skills, which is why calls for including value-added processing of the farm commodities produced in rural areas rarely leads to viable processing facilities. For example, many of the Afri-

can countries complaining that US cotton subsidies increase cotton production and reduce the global price of cotton ship their own raw cotton abroad to be turned into cloth, and import the cloth needed to produce garments.

Climate change is likely to add to current rural-urban migration and lead to some mass migrations. The challenge is to develop ap-propriate responses at two levels: the immediate response to more severe storms and floods and developing appropriate longer-term policies. For example, storms that cover land with salt water or wash away top soil can displace large numbers of people quickly, as with Cyclone Aila in southwestern Bangladesh in May 2009. The initial policy response is temporary food and housing support until levies can be repaired and those who were displaced can return to their land and resume farming. What is not clear is when or whether a mass movement to higher ground as a result of a climate-related event will or should lead to permanent resettlement.

Developing longer term policies may be even more challenging. Farmers, fishers and foresters are leaving for nonfarm jobs because of income differences that may be aggravated by climate change that reduces productivity in natural-resource industries. The policy question is how to divide limited adaptation funds between helping poorer-than-average farmers to maintain their incomes in places adversely affected by climate change versus helping them to move to urban areas, as many are likely to do regardless of climate change.

What about those displaced by the effects of climate change and who cross national borders? There is no global policy regime to manage migration due to climate change, but there are Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement. The African Union in 2009 recognized that climate change may contribute to internal dis-placement, and laid out a series of governmental obligations to those displaced by climate change. No comparable set of guidelines exist for addressing international migration from these same set of conditions.

Conclusions

Agriculture is a climate-sensitive industry that uses most of the world’s land and fresh water to produce food and fiber. Agriculture is also the major reservoir of people who do not have access to suf-ficient economic opportunities at home to sustain themselves and their families. In 2008, about 1.4 billion of the world’s 3.4 billion

16WDR 2010 on climate change and development includes a box on migration that emphasizes that “climate change is likely to add incrementally to existing migration patterns rather than generating entirely new flows of people.” (World Bank, 2009, 110) 17In the case of Cyclone Aila, the government expected flood waters to recede soon after the May 25, 2009 storm. They did not, which made it impossible for farmers to return to their land plant and turned the short-term emergency into a much longer period of assistance.

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workers were employed in the agricultural sector, and two-thirds were self-employed farmers and unpaid family members. There is already a significant outmigration from rural areas, and climate change is likely to increase the movement of people out of agricul-tural work. Most of these rural out-migrants are likely to remain within national borders, but an increasing number may spill over national borders if there are few domestic destinations offering op-portunities and networks bridge borders.

Global warming is expected to shift areas of viable agricultural pro-duction, adversely affecting many densely populated and warmer areas in developing countries, while opening more land up for farming in sparsely populated colder regions of some industrial countries. The net effects of climate change on food production are only slightly negative overall, but far more people are likely to be displaced in relatively densely populated areas of developing coun-tries by climate change than will be able to find jobs in sparsely populated areas of industrial countries where farm production becomes viable because of higher temperatures. There is also ex-pected to be an increase in the variability of factors that affect agri-cultural productivity, including temperature fluctuations and water availability. Poor farmers in developing countries are likely to be in the weakest position to adapt since they may lack the knowledge and capital to learn about and adopt new farming technics, includ-ing new seeds.

Amidst rising rural-urban migration, it will likely be difficult to separate climate change from other factors encouraging people in the rural areas of LDCs to move to urban areas. This poses a fundamental policy issue—should the policy emphasis be on strengthening general policies to assist all rural-urban migrants, or should there be special policies for climate-change migrants? This policy issue is similar to that raised by freer trade and unemploy-ment insurance. Freer trade benefits most residents in participat-ing countries by allowing each country’s economy to specialize in producing the goods in which it has a relative cost advantage and trading to obtain other goods. However, the process of opening an economy to freer trade can displace workers, and the question is whether these displaced workers should have access to regular un-employment insurance and retraining programs or whether they deserve special unemployment and training services because the reason for their displacement was a policy decision that benefited most residents, but not them.

The analogy to climate change is clear—should adaptation funding be used to strengthen general programs that help farmers to raise productivity and income, or ease the transition of those moving to urban areas, or should adaptation funds target areas and groups most adversely affected by climate change? Most economists fa-vor one general program rather than special programs for special groups for a number of reasons: (1) the potential mismatch be-tween narrow programs and broader development goals and (2) the higher administrative costs associated with a proliferation of programs. However, the politics of rich countries and the prefer-ences and limited funds of donors in poorer countries tend to gen-erate special programs.

Climate change is likely to widen gaps between farm and nonfarm incomes, and increase rural out-migration incrementally, but has the capacity to prompt mass movements because of more severe storms and floods in some places and conflicts over scarce water in others. The long-term challenge is to help the farmers, fishers and foresters to adapt, which will be easier if general economic devel-opment raises their incomes and lifts them out of poverty.

The immediate challenge is to help governments in LDCs spend quick-start adaptation funds that target the most vulnerable groups likely to be adversely affected by climate change. The NAPAs pre-pared by LDCs include a mix of interventions such as planting trees on levies to strengthen them against storm surges, as well as facilitations, such as hiring more staff in environment-related min-istries to raise awareness of climate change and its effects among vulnerable and other residents. Most of the priority projects would help to achieve the goal of assisting the most vulnerable, and many fit nicely into larger development strategies. However, few NAPAs are well integrated into the larger challenge of accelerating eco-nomic development, and thus few discuss the balance between (1) spending limited funds to accelerate development and raise incomes under the assumption that higher incomes increase resil-ience and capacity to adapt versus (2) targeting the most vulnerable with baseline surveys and capacity building.

Climate change is likely to widen farm-nonfarm income and op-portunity gaps and speed up migration out of agriculture and related natural resource industries. Most of the NAPAs prepared to date emphasize the innocence of the people affected in gener-ating the emissions that are warming the climate and the lack of knowledge about exactly how climate change will affect them. They

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then lay out a mix of facilitation projects to learn more and edu-cate about climate change and interventions to increase defenses against storms and floods and drought. The bias of many climate change researchers is for facilitations that bolster the capacity of LDC governments and peoples to plan optimal adaptations. The alternative, favoring interventions that help to raise the incomes of vulnerable people and enhance protections against the adverse effects of climate change, may be the better use of limited funds but only if such projects are well conceived.

Facilitation versus intervention leaves larger question of long-term goals unanswered. Almost all NAPAs seem to assume that the challenge is to help people to continue working in agriculture, forestry and fisheries even as the climate changes. A few island na-tions have discussed moving communities to higher ground or to other places, but most NAPAs seem to assume that farmers, fishers and foresters want to remain in these occupations, and that donor funds should be used to enable them to do so. None of the NAPAs included projects to facilitate the movement of vulnerable people in agriculture to the urban areas that are already attracting many farmers and their families, which may, in some cases, be the best use of limited funds to help vulnerable people.

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Philip Martin is a Professor and Chair of the Comparative Immigration and

Integration Program at the University of California at Davis.

The University of California-Davis Migration Dialogue provides timely, factual

and nonpartisan information and analysis of international migration issues.

PHOTO CREDIT: Floods in Ifo refugee camp, Dadaab,Kenya, UNHCR: B. Bannon,

December 2006.

InterAction, Washington, DC

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Susan Martin, Institute for the Study of International Migration, School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University, Washington, DC (Co-Chair)

Koko Warner, Institute for Environment and Human Security, United Nations University, Bonn, Germany (Co-Chair)

Jared Banks and Suzanne Sheldon, Bureau for Population, Refugees and Migration, U.S. Department of State, Washington, DC

Regina Bauerochse Barbosa, Economy and Employment Depart-ment, Sector Project Migration and Development, German Technical Cooperation (GTZ), Eschborn, Germany

Alexander Carius, Moira Feil, and Dennis Tänzler, Adelphi Research, Berlin, Germany

Joel Charny, Refugees International, Washington, DC

Dimitria Clayton, Ministry for Intergenerational Affairs, Family, Women and Integration, State of North Rhine-Westphalia, Düsseldorf, Germany

Sarah Collinson, Overseas Development Institute, London, United Kingdom

Peter Croll, Ruth Vollmer, Andrea Warnecke, Bonn International Center for Conversion, Bonn Germany

Frank Laczko, International Organization for Migration, Geneva, Switzerland

Agustin Escobar Latapi, Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios Superiores en Antropología Social (CIESAS), Guadalajara, Mexico

Michelle Leighton, Center for Law and Global Justice, University of San Francisco, San Francisco, California and Munich Re Foundation-UNU Chair in Social Vulnerability

Philip Martin, University of California, Migration Dialogue, Davis, California

Heather McGray, World Resources Institute, Washington, DC

Lorenz Peteresen, Climate Change Taskforce, German Technical Cooperation (GTZ), Eschborn, Germany

Aly Tandian, Groupe d’Etudes et de Recherches sur les Migrations (GERMS), Gaston Berger University, Senegal

Agnieszka Weinar, Directorate-General Justice, Freedom and Security, European Commissions, Brussels, Belgium

Astrid Ziebarth, German Marshall Fund of the United States, Berlin, Germany

Study Team on Climate-Induced Migration

Study team members List of Papers

2009-2011

Transatlantic Study Teams

In 2008, GMF’s Immigration and Integration Program launched the Transatlantic Study Team on Climate-induced Migration. For the first time, this initiative systematically brought together researchers, practitioners, and policy representatives from both sides of the Atlantic to link two important debates and policy spheres that up until then were only sporadically linked: those of migration and those of climate change. For three consecutive years, the Study Team investigated the impact of environmental change on migration patterns, reviewed the current state of research, compiled existing data, convened opinion leaders on both sides of the Atlantic, went on study tours to affected or potentially affected regions, such as Mexico, Senegal and Bangladesh, and helped to advance the policy debate by feeding the findings into national policy meetings and international fora such as the Global Forum on Migration and Development and the International Climate Negotiations (COP). The Study Team laid the groundwork for future policy analyses and research. Led by Dr. Susan F. Martin, Georgetown University, and Dr. Koko Warner, UN University, the team consists of scholars, policymakers and practitioners from the migration and environmental communities.

The German Marshall Fund of the United States (GMF) is a non-partisan American public policy and grantmaking institution dedicated to promoting better understanding and cooperation between North America and Europe on transatlantic and global issues. GMF does this by supporting individuals and institutions working in the transatlantic sphere, by convening leaders and members of the policy and business communities, by contributing research and analysis on transatlantic topics, and by providing exchange opportunities to foster renewed commitment to the transatlantic relationship. In addition, GMF supports a number of initiatives to strengthen democracies. Founded in 1972 through a gift from Germany as a permanent memorial to Marshall Plan assistance, GMF maintains a strong presence on both sides of the Atlantic. In addition to its headquarters in Washington, DC, GMF has seven offices in Europe: Berlin, Bratislava, Paris, Brussels, Belgrade, Ankara, and Bucharest.

The Institute for the Study of International Migration is based in the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. Staffed by leading experts on immigration and refugee policy, the Institute draws upon the resources of Georgetown University faculty working on international migration and related issues on the main campus and in the law center. It conducts research and convenes workshops and conferences on immigration and refugee law and policies.  In addition, the Institute seeks to stimulate more objective and well-documented migration research by convening research symposia and publishing an academic journal that provides an opportunity for the sharing of research in progress as well as finished projects. 

The UN University established by the UN General Assembly in 1973, is an international community of scholars engaged in research, advanced training and the dissemination of knowledge related to pressing global problems. Activities focus mainly on peace and conflict resolution, sustainable development and the use of science and technology to advance human welfare. The University’s Institute for Environment and Human Security addresses risks and vulnerabilities that are the consequence of complex environmental hazards, including climate change, which may affect sustainable development. It aims to improve the in-depth understanding of the cause effect relationships to find possible ways to reduce risks and vulnerabilities. The Institute is conceived to support policy and decision makers with authoritative research and information.