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Water Insecurity and Climate Change As Emerging Human Migration Pressures Loyola University Chicago International Law Review Volume 16 Issue 1 Article 6 2020 Water Insecurity and Climate Change as Emerging Human Migration Pressures Michael Tiboris Follow this and additional works at: https://lawecommons.luc.edu/lucilr Part of the International Law Commons Recommended Citation Michael Tiboris Water Insecurity and Climate Change as Emerging Human Migration Pressures, 16 Loy. U. Chi. Int'l L. Rev. 87 (2020). Available at: https://lawecommons.luc.edu/lucilr/vol16/iss1/6 This Feature Article is brought to you for free and open access by LAW eCommons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Loyola University Chicago International Law Review by an authorized editor of LAW eCommons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. WATER INSECURITY AND CLIMATE CHANGE AS EMERGING HUMAN MIGRATION PRESSURES Michael Tiboris I. Introduction' Water insecurity is the inability of a population to reliably gather adequate water of acceptable quality to simultaneously meet its needs for health, well- being, and basic economic development. 2 Reflecting on this definition one is struck by how much has to go right in order for a population to be water secure. Even under circumstances of relative abundance, water must be managed well- properly treated and transported-with economic uses balanced against ecologi- cal consequences and shared sources governed by law and policy. The immedi- acy of the emergency caused by a sudden drop in availability or quality is unusually destabilizing. 3 This underscores the extent to which water insecurity, and its consequences, are fundamentally mediated by human institutions and pol- icies. Scarcity, even if quite deep, does not automatically result in lower quality or development, but it makes careful governance and thought- health, well-being, 4 ful planning all the more important. Climate change raises the stakes and creates new crises. Since the publication of the International Panel on Climate Change's First Assessment Report in 1990, an enormous volume of scientific research on the effects of climate change has painted an increasingly dire picture.5 Carbon emissions have not slowed suffi- ciently in the interim and halting international political efforts to reverse carbon emissions allow us to predict a near-term future that is both profoundly changed for the negative and almost unavoidable. 6 Passing the established threshold of a 1.5'C global average temperature increase above pre-industrial levels, which we are likely to do, will put hundreds of millions of people at risk of food insecurity, I Thanks to Michelle David for research assistance and editing. 2 E.g., U.N. Water, Water Security and the Global Water Agenda (Mar. 22, 2013), https://collec tions.unu.edu/eserv/UNU:2651/Water-Security-and-the-Global-Water-Agenda.pdf, Brahma Chellaney, WATER, PEACE, AND WAR: CONFRONTING THE GLOBAL WATER CRISIS 26 (2015); Colin H. Kahl, STATES, SCARCITY, AND CIVIL STRIFE IN THE DEVELOPING WORLD 11 (2008); Colleen Devlin & Cullen S. Hen- drix, Trends and Triggers Redux: Climate Change, Rainfall, and Interstate Conflict, 43 POL. GEOGRAPHY 27, 28-30 (2014). 3 Scott Moore, SUBNATIONAL HYDROPOL1TICS: CONFLICT, COOPERATION, AND INSTITUTION-BuILD- ING IN SHARED RIVER BASINS 8 (2018); Joshua Busby, WATER AND U.S. NATIONAL SECURITY 6 (2017), https://cfrd8-files.cfr.org/sites/defaultfiles/pdf/2017/01[Discussion-Paper-BusbyWater andUSSe curityOR.pdf. 4 Moore, supra note 3, at 8; Busby, supra note 3, at 6. 5 IPCC Working Group I, Climate Change: The IPCC Scientific Assessment, at 7-8 (1990), https:// www.ipcc.ch/publications and-data/publications-ipcc-first assessment-_1 990_wg 1.shtml. 6 The IPCC's most current special report collects impacts of global warming of 1.5°C above pre- industrial levels related to greenhouse gas emissions. IPCC, Global Warming of 1.5°C, at 8, Doc. SR1.5 (Oct. 6, 2018), http://report.ipcc.ch/srl5/pdf/srl5-spmfinal.pdf. Volume 16, Issue 1 Loyola University Chicago International Law Review 87 Water Insecurity and Climate Change water stress, and poverty. 7 Water insecurity is already quite common in the de- veloping world. About 1.2 billion people live with physical water scarcity, where water consumption is greater than seventy-five percent of renewable supply. Even when water is available, a population may not have the technical or finan- cial means to access it. An additional 1.6 billion 8 people live with this sort of "economic scarcity." Water insecurity clusters in low-and-middle-income coun- tries in Sub-Saharan Africa and Central and South Asia and, within those popula- tions, is most severe for the poor, rural populations, and women. 9 This is set to become considerably worse in the coming decades because the communities most affected by scarcity are also the least prepared to adapt to and recover from climate change. 10 This is by no means, however, a problem limited to the global poor. Cape Town, South Africa's recent water crisis demonstrates the extent to which climate change is likely to make water security a challenge even for wealthier places, historically thought to be paradigms of aggressive climate preparedness. 1' We do not have to wait for some distant future to see the effects of climate on water resources, but we should expect them to inten- sify significantly in the coming decades.' 2 One likely consequence of this will be increased human migration away from chronic water insecurity. 13 Again, this is not just a future problem. Migration patterns toward cities in Bangla- desh, for instance, display a retreat from salinized soil caused by flooding, sea- water intrusion, and poor irrigation practice. 14 Other environmental migration 7 Id. at 8-12. 8 Peter H. Gleick et al., THu WORL D'S WATER: THE BIENNIAL REPORT ON FRE.SHWATER RESOURCES 2 (2014). 9 Id. at 3. 10 Z. W. Kundzewicz et al., The Implications of Projected Climate Changefor FreshwaterResources and Their Management, 53 HYDROLOGICAL SCIENCES J. 3, 3- 10 (2008) (stressing the need for research to better understand "how climate change might affect freshwater and to assist water managers who need to adapt to climate change."). I I Brett Walton, Cape Town's Harrowing Journey to the Brink of Water Catastrophe,CIRCLE OF BLUE (July 12, 2018), https://www.circleofblue.org/2018/world/cape-towns-harrowing-journey-to-the- brink-of-water-catastrophe/. 12 Blanca E. Jimrnez Cisneros & Taikan Oki, et al., Freshwater Resources, in CLIMATE CHANGE 2014: IMPACTS, ADAPTATION, AND VULNERABI.ITY 234-36 (2014), https://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment- report/ar5/wg2/WGIIAR5-Chap3 FINAL.pdf. 13 Richard Black et al., The effect of environmental change on human migration, GLOB. ENVTL. CHANGE S3, S8 (2011); M. MnE-rTo -,TAL., MIGRATION AND ITS INTERDEPENDENCIES WITH WATER SCARCITY, GENDER AND YOUTH EMPLOYMENT (2017); Rafael Reuveny, Climate Change-InducedMigra- tion and Violent Conflict, 26 Poi. GEOGRAPHY 656, 658, 662 (2007); Julia Toscano, Climate Change Displacement and Forced Migration: An International Crisis, 6 ARIZ. J. ENVTL. L. & Poi 'y 457, 462 (2015); Koko Warner et al., Climate Change, Environmental Degradation and Migration, 55 NAT. HAZARDS 689, 694 (2010); JEFFREY D. SACHS, THE AGE OF SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT 333 (2015). 14 Ram Mukul Fishman et al., Over-Extractionfrom Shallow Bedrock Versus Deep Alluvial Aquifers: Reliability Versus Sustainability Considerationsfor India's Groundwater Irrigation, 47 WATER RE- SOURCES REs. 1, 3 (2011), https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1029/2011WRO10617; Richard Marshall and Shibaab Rahman, INTERNAL MIGRATION IN BANGLADESH: CHARACTER, DRIVERS AND POLICY ISSUES 6, 25 (UNDP 2013), http://www.bd.undp.org/content/dam/bangladesh/docs/Publica tions/Pub-2013/lnternal%20Migration%20in%20Bangladesh%20UNDP%2OFinal.pdf; see Michael Gil- Ian, Refugees or Infiltrators? The Bharatiya Janata Party and "Illegal" Migrationfrom Bangladesh, 26 ASIAN STUD. REV. 73, 75-76 (2002). 88 Loyola University Chicago International Law Review Volume 16, Issue I Water Insecurity and Climate Change hotspots include Central and East Africa, Central Asia, rural China, and the 15 Caribbean. Human migration is becoming a major logistical and political challenge which we can expect to get progressively worse with the destabilizing effects of climate change. 16 People move for many reasons, of course, some of them quite positive. Water and climate are only two of a complex set of reasons for migration and are both complex motivators in their own right. But water is potentially special in this context-the need for it is constant and urgent, its management is exception- ally complex, and it is directly affected by climate change. This article begins with what we know about the relationship between water insecurity and the population vulnerable to human migration as a result of water in security. This is followed by a brief description of the relevant international legal instruments relevant to water-related migration. It then discusses the inter- action between emerging conceptions of water rights, the authority of states to restrict migration, and the degree to which responsibility to protect water mi- grants can be globalized. I will argue that we cannot adequately distinguish be- tween migration resulting from physical scarcity and failures of governance and that this ought to have consequences for our views about state obligations to accommodate migration. The article concludes with some suggestions about legal and policy instruments that would help us better respond to the expected increase
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