Keeping People in Place: Political Factors of (Im)mobility and Climate Change
Abstract
:1. Introduction
2. Narratives on (Im)mobility and Environmental Change
3. Methods
4. Policy Responses to Impacts on (Im)mobility Outcomes in Senegal and Vietnam
4.1. Senegal: Bilateral Agreements and International (Im)mobility
4.1.1. Context of Guet Ndar, Saint-Louis
4.1.2. Senegal-Mauritanian Bilateral Agreements and International Labor Migration
4.1.3. Impacts on (Im)mobility
4.2. Vietnam: Relocation Programs and Internal (Im)mobility
4.2.1. Context of the Mekong River Delta
4.2.2. Resettlement Schemes in the Mekong River Delta
Population distribution shall be conducted mainly within communes, districts and provinces. Where population should be relocated to other provinces, agreement should be reached between provinces where people leave and those where they move to in order to arrange them in the planned areas so as to stabilize their life and production for permanent settlement.22
4.2.3. (Im)mobility Impacts
Most young people migrate. Middle-aged and older people prefer to live off of the land and be supported by the local authorities. […] It’s difficult to find a good job. The young move to earn money for the family. They work and earn money, and we live day by day.23
[Respondent]: I don’t have money to leave. But even if I did, I wouldn’t go because the local authorities support me with the land and I was born and grew up here, even if life is difficult.[Interviewer]: What about your children?[Respondent]: I don’t want them to go far away. No, they can live here. When there are troubles, we can help each other. […] No, never anywhere else. Never.25
5. Conclusions
Funding
Conflicts of Interest
References
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1 | This model has since been updated (Carling and Schewel 2018). |
2 | And, to a lesser extent, planned relocation. |
3 | Most explicitly this drove immobility in a case study on Comoros within the IMMOBILE project, although it is beyond the scope of this contribution. |
4 | Findings are drawn from the IMMOBILE project (2015–2018) in Senegal and Vietnam, financed by the Belgian Fund for Scientific Research (FNRS) and additional earlier fieldwork, using the same methods and general interview guide, was conducted by the author in Senegal the European FP7 Project HELIX (High-End cLimate Impacts and eXtremes) in 2014. |
5 | A third case study, in four coastal villages in Ngazidja, Comoros has been excluded from the following analysis precisely because there was a lack of policies targeted at recurrent displacement, a problem in and of itself. |
6 | A few of the interview participants spoke French and therefore interviews were conducted directly between interviewer and interviewee. |
7 | The only difference in the methods of these two separate fieldworks in Senegal was that the first explicitly centered on the impacts of climate change whereas the second included climate change along other environmental factors. |
8 | This stretch of land, including but not limited to Guet Ndar, is known as the Langue de Barbarie spit. |
9 | Fishermen frequently mentioned their expertise and pride in it in interviews but also in focus groups and informal meetings. |
10 | This demonstrated the lack of general awareness in Guet Ndar regarding the threat of climate change and the importance of sensitizing affected communities to its impacts. |
11 | |
12 | The length of time varies by fishing type and boat size. Larger boats, that fish in tandem, fish for fifteen days. |
13 | Le Point, “Sénégal—Mauritanie: ce que dit le nouvel accord de pêche” 4 July 2018. Last accessed 28 April 2019. https://www.lepoint.fr/economie/senegal-mauritanie-ce-que-dit-le-nouvel-accord-de-peche-04-07-2018-2233234_28.php. |
14 | RFI Afrique, “L’accord de pêche entre la Mauritanie et le Sénégal finalisé” 20 December 2018. Last accessed 25 April 2019. http://www.rfi.fr/afrique/20181220-accord-peche-mauritanie-senegal-finalise-usines-poisson-nouakchott. |
15 | Le Monde, “Le Sénégal et la Mauritanie signent un nouvel accord de pêche.” 4 July 2018. Last accessed 5 June 2019. https://www.lemonde.fr/afrique/article/2018/07/04/le-senegal-et-la-mauritanie-signent-un-nouvel-accord-de-peche_5325948_3212.html. |
16 | Author’s translation. Interview, Guet Ndar, Saint-Louis, Senegal. August 3, 2014. |
17 | Author’s translation. Interview in Guet Ndar, Saint-Louis, Senegal. July 26, 2014. |
18 | Author’s translation. Interview, Guet Ndar, Saint-Louis, Senegal. July 20, 2014. |
19 | As of 2009, it accounted for 40 percent of the country’s cultivated land surface and produced more than a quarter of the country’s GDP. Half of Vietnam’s rice is produced in the Mekong River Delta, 60 percent of its shrimp harvest, and 80 percent of the national fruit crop. Ninety percent of Vietnam’s total national rice export comes from the MRD (Warner et al. 2009). |
20 | Interview with local officials from the Department of Natural Resources, Thanh Bình District. 7 September 2016. |
21 | The overarching Living with Floods Policy includes two programs: (1) construction of dykes and (2) resettlement schemes. |
22 | Decision No. 193/2006/QD-TTg, issued on 24 August 2006 on ‘Approving the Program on population distribution in natural disaster- and special difficulty-hit areas, border regions, islands, areas inhabited by free migrants, and important and very important areas of protective forests and strictly protected zones of special-use forests in the 2006 to 2010 period, and orientations up to 2015’, cited in (Chun 2015, p. 10). For more relevant national decisions, see (Chun 2015). |
23 | Interview in Trần Đề, Soc Trang province, Vietnam. 6 September 2016. |
24 | It is also important to consider in light of findings that the poorest households are the most likely to migrate in the MRD (Entzinger and Scholten 2016). Migration decreases as income increases. |
25 | Interview in Thanh Bình village, Dong Thap province, Vietnam. 8 September 2016. |
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Zickgraf, C. Keeping People in Place: Political Factors of (Im)mobility and Climate Change. Soc. Sci. 2019, 8, 228. https://doi.org/10.3390/socsci8080228
Zickgraf C. Keeping People in Place: Political Factors of (Im)mobility and Climate Change. Social Sciences. 2019; 8(8):228. https://doi.org/10.3390/socsci8080228
Chicago/Turabian StyleZickgraf, Caroline. 2019. "Keeping People in Place: Political Factors of (Im)mobility and Climate Change" Social Sciences 8, no. 8: 228. https://doi.org/10.3390/socsci8080228