Loss and damages are already significantly evident on the ground, especially in climate-vulnerable areas such as the southwest coast of Bangladesh.
The most affected people in this community require immediate action. But the policymakers, negotiators, and researchers are still busy debating, negotiating, writing, and publishing.
Hence, the practitioners are the only hope as the first adapters, in the conditions of a faulty and failing system of the UNFCCC mechanism -- though it shows the light of the “loss and damage fund and funding mechanism” at the end of the climate breakdown.
The tale of two survivors
Md Saimun and Md Helal, two 22 year old youths, work at Pollimangol bazar in Morrelganj Sadar union, of the Morrelganj upazila in the Bagerhat district of Bangladesh. Both their families have experienced the devastating impacts of climate change for the last couple of decades. Both families were uprooted from their origins and were displaced several times, when they lost almost everything during cyclone Sidr in 2007.
The cyclone destroyed their standing crops and agricultural land, their houses, and their livestock, leaving them without a single source of income. They sustained their life and livelihood with emergency reliefs and early recovery support, which gradually dried out during the recovery phase.
Over time, climate change impacts are a threat multiplier.
Because of shrunk livelihood opportunities in the traditional sectors such as crops and fisheries, their fathers tried limited opportunities in alternative sectors, such as van and rickshaw pulling, and daily unskilled labour, but ultimately they failed to manage.
They also tried to initiate income-generating activities with loans from different sources. Still, it failed and trapped them in the vicious cycle of loan repayments with interest. Thus, the only option -- not a choice -- was migration.
Md Saimun and Md Helal grew up in families left behind by their fathers. They experienced their mothers' struggle for livelihood in the broader context of social and economic perspectives. Their families had only a few investment-intensive options left, which they did not try in order to recover from the situation. Their efforts at alternative opportunities, such as homestead gardening and other varieties failed yearly in the context of climate change and its emerging effects.
Both of their households -- even to this date -- get flooded regularly during the full moon and new moon, and they have been experiencing a higher water level for the last few years. Back in July and August 2022, they experienced the highest water level during the high tide.
Hence, their adaptation effort is failing, losing even the minimum livelihood options. In addition to that, disasters with increased intensity and frequency because of climate change, such as tidal surges and coastal floods, often damage and bring their efforts down.
Helal already experienced migration a couple of years ago. He found it to be a lost project as an unskilled labourer and sought other opportunities.
Empowering those most affected
They both got in touch with an ongoing loss and damage pilot project funded by the Climate Justice Resilience Fund in their community. This was the first-ever institutional funding by the Scottish Government on loss and damage as well as by Helvetas Swiss Intercooperation.
Shushilan and DORP, the local organizations in charge of implementation, are creating local-level awareness and discussion sessions on climate-induced migration, and supporting skill development opportunities at the local level. In the event of losing livelihood opportunities among crop, fishery, and livestock sectors because of climate change impact, they support alternative livelihood options.
Through the support of this project, Both Helal and Saimun learned valuable technical skills in the last quarter of 2022. They are now engaged in their employment, having secured an alternative livelihood that will sustain them even with further climate change impacts. They now feel less vulnerable to the prospect of climate-induced migration.
We must dig into the process and principles to learn the essence of loss and damage actions. The most important is identifying the climate-induced migrants, the biggest victims of loss and damage.
A youth-led initiative facilitates this at the union level with support from community-based and civil society organizations at the local level. It also develops a database to influence loss and damage actions at the local level and social safety net programs.
Moreover, it brings a new dimension to non-migrants who aspire to remain at their birthplaces despite having no or lower-level capacity to adapt to the changed environment. Sadly, however, they remain more vulnerable than those with the aspiration and capability to migrate.
As for the most affected people in the community, development efforts differ from classical migration and capacity-building initiatives.
There are different government and non-government initiatives, either formal or non-formal, for capacity development. However, these tend to only reach the more skilled group of people in the community, because of the criteria for eligibility, such as literacy level. If we look at the financing institution, the same situation persists. The poor and hard-labourers cannot afford to meet the criteria.
Challenging conventions
The loss and damage project addresses and challenges these existing norms and practices.
The project facilitates an apprenticeship model to support alternative skill development opportunities for the most affected migrants and (non)-migrants. It is based on the interest and support of local employment opportunities, where the project takes the role of matchmaking in between.
It does not end at capacity building; it reaches out to the employers as critical stakeholders to generate employment opportunities and play an influential role as local actors.
The conventional capacity-building initiative in the country should be revisited through the lens of loss and damages, and revised to address economic loss and damage. Moreover, the government of Bangladesh must establish a system to map and monitor the flow of climate-induced migration, as it has outlined a vision to end it in the draft of the Mujib Climate Prosperity Plan.
Globally, such initiatives can be an influencer as more northern governments are coming forward with funding commitments for loss and damage actions. The bilateral funds, already committed, can scale it up to reach the most vulnerable immediately. Such evidence can be a good input for the 24-member transitional committee for loss and damage fund and funding mechanism in their upcoming meetings to outline actions before COP28 in the UAE.
Ashish Barua is the Programme Manager of the Climate Change and Sustainable Development program at Helevtas Swiss Intercooperation. Musrat Hasan Emon is the Technical Officer of the Migration, Climate Change and Sustainable Development program at Helevtas Swiss Intercooperation. Dipali Biswas is the Upazilla Coordinator in Morrelganj, Bagerhat, Shushilan.
