Of Tsunamis and Climate Change: The Need to Resettle

Climate and environmental change has become one of the great challenges at the end of the 20th century and it is expected that it also keeps science, policy makers and the general population concerned for the decades, if not centuries to come. Especially in developing countries where exposure to the impacts of climate change is serious and where resilience and the capacities to adapt to a changing climate is small risks and threats to experience unwanted, extreme negative consequences seem to be greatest. Not only in the scientific community it is widely assumed that in extreme cases entire states like Kiribati, the Marshall Islands, Tuvalu, and the Maldives will become inhabitable. People living in these states need to resettle to other countries. For the Pacific Islands alone Campbell (2009) estimates that by 2050 a population between 665,000 and 1,725,000 will be displaced as a result of climate change. Some 320,000 of them live on atolls and require international resettlement, while in many of the other cases resettlement within the same country might be an option. The book chapter looks from an historical perspective on major movements of people that have taken place in regions of the Pacific Islands due to either sudden-onset events (e.g. earthquakes, tsunamis, or volcano eruptions) or slow-on set movements (e.g. sea level rise, desertification, droughts) or other events. It gives ideas of the challenges that come along when bigger numbers of people migrate or get resettled. Finally the paper looks at different programs and activities promoting short-term, temporary mobility and permanent migration as an adaptation strategy to environmental changes in developing countries, with a particular focus on the Pacific region

Globalization and the Human Right to Feed Oneself: The impact of the blue revolution on the Food Security of Small-Scale-Fisherpeople in Tamil Nadu

In Indian fisheries you find the situation the Indian Government and other Governments of developing countries aim to achieve also for their agricultural sector: to get high prices for their commodities in the international market and to have unlimited access to these markets. By exporting high value marine products India earns much precious foreign exchange as prawns realize very high prices in the international market and as there are no restrictions for the entry into the markets of the industrialized countries. The quantities of exportable marine products are thus just restricted by the quantities that can be caught and by the demand in the industrialized countries. This situation is almost unchanged during the last three decades. In that time both the value and quantity of marine products exported from India increased considerably. Despite this development the economic status of small-scale fisherpeople in India did not improve much. In most parts of the country the fishing communities belong to the poorest sections of society. They do not only get a neglectable share of the money earned by the export of marine products, very often they are deprived of their resource basis as outsiders tend to see fisheries as a sector they can make easy money in. Economic development for the one means marginalization and destruction of their livelihoods for the others. The way economic development was achieved the fisherpeople became more vulnerable to food insecurity. This structure of vulnerability is additionally overlaid by internal structures and processes as well as by temporal events which might lead to drastic consequences for members of the fishing community as they can not cope easily with such situations like sharp increases in food prices, restricted numbers of days for fishing due to climatic reasons, decrease of fish-catches due to seasonal variations of fish occurrence. Some of these temporal changes are closely connected with the nature of fishing and the fisherpeople created their strategies to cope with them. Changes within the fisheries sector and the inner structure of the fishing community are responsible that these coping strategies are becoming more and more insufficient to protect the members of the fishing community

The Pacific Solution – A Catastrophe for the Pacific!?

Climate change and related sea-level rise has caused fears that many people in the Pacific Islands might become homeless. However it is difficult to say who is more afraid: politicians of countries that are potential destinations of environmental refugees or affected people, who realize that it is not at all a pleasure to lose the home, and that it might be even a bigger nightmare to become a refugee. While in low-lying Pacific Island countries (PICs) debates and discourses about people’s future flare up the fear of becoming homeless and refugees is worrying many. It seems that governments whose countries could become preferred destinations of climate change refugees are concerned how to keep them away from reaching safe harbors. In 2001 the Australian Government started its Pacific Solution, a policy that should prevent aliens arriving by boat in Australia to seek the status of refugees. The Australian Government has established detention centers on the Pacific Islands of Manus (PNG) and Nauru to process asylum seekers outside Australian territory. In 2013 a new element was added to the Pacific Solution: refugees arriving on boats will be processed and settled in PNG or Nauru (or countries other than Australia), if found to be genuine refugees. Others can be detained for unspecified time. Migrants’ well-being is not only based on material conditions, but also reflects on emotional ones. The inhumane treatment of refugees increases angst amongst those who are threatened to lose their homes as a result of climate change and depend on support from other countries

Poverty, Marginalization and Polarisation: The Example of a South Indian Fishing Community

This presentation is based on a study on economic and political change within a fishing community located in the city of Madras. The research work for this study was done between October 1990 and August 1992. It is no exaggeration to say that within these 22 months India totally changed in many respects. Many of those changes are closely connected to what we are discussing in our meeting: poverty, marginalization and development In some cases these connections are obvious, sometimes they are hidden but nevertheless very much relevant. In his presentation the author tries to connect the lives of fisherpeople in Madras city with changes that happenened outside their spheres of influence. It is not possible to discuss these changes themselves in detail. As they are closely connected with the conceptual frame of the study the most important events have at least to be mentioned briefly

Globalization and the Human Right to Feed Oneself

On December 26, 2004 a tsunami triggered by an earthquake west of caused serious damage in India, Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia and Bangladesh. Almost 300,000 lives were lost and several million people put at risk of sliding into even more poverty. Particularly coastal fishing communities all over the region were severely affected. They suffered heavy losses in lives and their means of production were destroyed and their sources of livelihood put at risk. This chapter takes the tsunami in the Indian Ocean as a starting point to reflect on social and economic change in fishing communities along the Coromandel Coast of Tamil Nadu, India. It argues that processes of globalization made small-scale fishermen more vulnerable than they had been before. Forces triggered by globalization took away people’s ability to control their destinies and adequately respond to challenges. Today they might be richer than a hundred years ago, but at the same time they are less resilient to resist to and recover from events that put their lives and livelihoods at risk

Rotationally resolved fluorescence-dip and ion-dip spectra of single rovibronic states of benzene

We report fluorescence-dip as well as ion-dip spectra of single rovibronic one-photon states of benzene with a linewidth as narrow as 0.14 cm'1. The selective excitation of the rovibronic states was achieved through the combination of a frequency-doubled pulsed amplified cw dye laser (Avuv 100 MHz) and a collimated molecu-lar beam. The detailed analysis of the dip spectra shows that the observed spectral features correspond to single rovibronic transitions if suitable states are excited. From the spectra, precise harmonic frequencies and anharmonic constants for the So state are determined. A hitherto unknown Darling-Dennison resonance of the overtones of v, with the 52 state is found. 1

Only a pawn in their games? environmental (?) migration in Kiribati – past, present and future

The Pacific Island Countries and Territories (PICT) are exposed to the impacts of climate change. In extreme cases entire states may disappear. Kiribati is one of these countries. Within its own territory there are no ­places to where people could be safely resettled when their home islands become unsuitable for human habitation. Large-scale resettlement is nothing new to the people of Kiribati. In colonial times people from various islands were resettled. The Phoenix Island Settlement Scheme (PISS) is one of these efforts to allegedly bring people to safety. Making use of primary sources that have become available only recently the paper raises the question if there is anything to learn from PISS for present times, or if PISS has historical value only, as the ­United Kingdom’s last colonial expansion scheme. The paper asks about conflicting intentions of colonial authorities and assesses if and possibly why strategic political considerations resulted in a situation where humanitarian motivations retreated into the background leading to a sub-optimal preparation of the scheme, which then finally led to its failure. The paper comes to the conclusion that behind reportedly noble purposes there is a layer of colonial interests which lets settlers appear as objects in a larger colonial game

Sub-Doppler UV spectroscopy by resonance-enhanced two-photon ionization: the structure of the benzene20,22Ne cluster

In this work it is demonstrated that mass selected multiphoton ionization is a powerful technique for high resolution spectroscopy, isotope cluster separation and investigation of the structure of van der Waals clusters. The rotationally resolved UV spectra of the benzene-20Ne and benzene-22Ne clusters are selectively measured in a natural isotopic mixture of benzene and benzene-Ne clusters in a cooled supersonic jet. The analysis of these spectra yields accurate values for the rotational constants of both species. From this data it is found that the Ne atom is located on the C6 rotational axis of the benzene ring at an average distance of 3.46 Å with a slight difference for the two isotopes. This distance decreases by 40 mÅ when benzene is electronically excited. The influence of the large amplitude van der Waals vibrations on the average bond length is discussed

Klimaschutz und Entwicklung - eine indische Perspektive

"Möge Gott verhüten, dass lndien je die westliche lndustrialisierung übernimmt. Der wirt­schaftliche Imperialismus eines einzigen kleinen lnselkönigreiches (Grossbritannien) hält heute die Welt in Ketten. Wenn eine Nation von insgesamt 300 Millionen eine ähnliche wirtschaftliche Ausbeutung ausübte, würde diese die Erde wie Heuschrecken kahlfressen". ( Mahatma Gandhi, 1928 ) Gandhis Schreckensvision von 1928 scheint heute aktueller denn je. Viele Menschen hier in den lndustrienationen drücken es offen aus, andere denken es zumindest. Möge Gott verhüten dass Länder wie Indien, China, lndonesien oder Brasilien ein ähnliches Kon­sumniveau erreichen, wie wir es heute in den Industrienationen als selbstverständ­lich erachten. Dies hat freilich etwas Beklemmendes. Es kommt darin zum Ausdruck, dass es weder ökologische oder gar ethische Überlegungen sind, die viele Menschen mit Sorgen in den Süden schauen lassen; es ist schlichtweg der Ei­gennutz, der uns plagt. Jahrzehnte, ja jahrbundertelang hat es uns im Norden wenig gekümmert, wenn dort die Wälder abgeholzt wurden, wenn "dreckige" ln­dustrien dorthin ausgelagert wurden, weil sie mit unseren Umweltgesetzen in Konflikt gerieten, wenn wir unseren Giftmiill auf der "Deponie Entwick­lungsland" endgelagert haben, wenn dort auf den Feldem Früchte für unseren Mittagstisch angebaut wurden - oder auch nur Futter für unser Vieh - wäh­rend den Menschen nicht genug Land blieb, um damit ihre Versorgung mit Nahrungsmitteln sicherzustellen

Indien - Konsum ohne Monsun -- 50 Jahre unabhängiges Indien

Im Juni 1991 begann in Indien die Umsetzung von Strukturanpassungsmaßnahmen. Damit wurde der vom ersten indischen Premierminister Nehru eingeschlagene Weg eines Sozialismus zwischen den Blöcken endgültig aufgegeben. Mit dem neoliberalen Kurs ist Indien nun, 50 Jahre nach der formalen Unabhängigkeit des Landes, abhängiger vom Weltmarkt als je zuvor. Zudem rückt anstelle von Verteilungsgerechtigkeit mehr und mehr die Förderung der Mittelschichten in den Mittelpunkt der Wirtschafts- und Finanzpolitik