Climate Change effects – Trauma, Trials and Struggles but no Rights for Climate Refugees

Sundarbans, always well-known for its rich mangrove diversity and Royal Bengal Tiger, is now drawing attention of the world for the drastic climate change effects on the community and the crisis they are facing are coming to the fore.  

Climate change is a challenge to the development of the community. Apart from loss of lives, livelihood and health impacts, it is creating a huge number of Climate Refugees every year who have no recognition

The fishermen boats are resting and preparing for next day's journey

The frequent displacement of these coastal communities from one island to another and to nearby cities in search of better livelihood opportunities created a wide range of ecological and socio-economic problems leading to humanitarian crisis. These climate refugees are poorest communities who do not have access to any basic amenities like pure safe drinking water and two times healthy meal.

The situation worsened after the cyclone AILA in 2009, which left more than a million people homeless and dead. Those who survived were the worst sufferers as they were homeless, lost livelihoods and forced to live in unhealthy situation. There is no rehabilitation programme for these climate refugees who were forced to migrate to nearby cities and other islands. 

 

This shanty is in the verge of being washes away in the next monsoon

Agricultural lands decreased due to erosion and salt water intrusion and decline in agricultural growth again increased the number of migration. Shrinking resources make them helpless and here the external forces like traffickers get the opportunity to lure them. The male members usually migrate to cities in search of better livelihood leaving families behind. They hope to offer a better life to their family but that never happens in reality. As a result, many children had to dropout from school and start earning for the family. The young women and their families are lured with the promise of marriage without dowry and later handing over them to outside traffickers. In fact, the children were taken away from the parents in return of a little amount of money and they are either forced into prostitution and some were sent even in other countries as domestic help. The traffickers come in the guise of job scouts and the youths fall prey to their false promises. 

The children suffer from malnutrition and various communicable diseases as aftermath of the coastal flooding every year. The fishermen community also suffers for the decreased number of fish in creeks and ponds due to increased temperature. The number of cattle has also decreased due to worsening floods and cyclones thus reducing the amount of milk available for the children to drink.

The children of the flood affected families in Mousuni Island

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The survivors are left to struggle in their daily lives with the limited available resources. They live with no rights of the land, no recognition of being refugee and with no support from government level. The climate refugees were never in the purview of developmental planning and they were left ignored. The migrated adults usually live in shanties along the rail lines in cities or over the River embankments. In many cases, their entire lives are spent in polythene made tents without having any toilet and drinking water.

Health and sanitation in these kinds of shanties are the major problem. They also face immense shortage of energy for cooking their foods since in metropolitan cities like Kolkata, getting wood is very costly and using kerosene as fuel is a luxury. While for the coastal people, wood from the forest area is the only resource. These shanties frequently face fire hazards due to lack of safety measures and in many cases due to such breaking of fire, the families lost everything whatever they had. 

Girls are not only for taking care of their siblings and help in domestic works

The female child of such families face the hit most as they are neither sent to school nor given enough attention to their health compared to their male siblings. Early marriage is another curse that the girl children of climate victims need to live with. The families consider these girls as burden on their poverty ridden lives and try to get rid of them as soon as possible. In this situation, the girls also fall prey to trafficking in the name of marriage without dowry.

Those who have migrated from Bangladesh are facing the worst due to their controversial status of citizenship. They cannot be recognized as an Indian citizen as per the law and the government is trying to push them back to their country where they are not accepted. The number of such refugees is increasing perpetually leading to a challenging situation. Policymakers need to give more attention to these climate refugees, for providing them a legal status and a secure social life altogether.