By MA. Adrián Martinez, and Maria Paula Calvo Barboza, La Ruta del Clima, Costa Rica

Human mobility is a right, not an obligation or a crime. In La Ruta del Clima, we have been working in Los Chiles and Caldera in Costa Rica, researching alongside local communities how climate change has caused severe consequences on their lives and livelihoods. One thing these processes have shown is how diverse human mobility impacts are: not all people and communities want to leave their territories, and the ones who do cannot always access the economic and social resources to restart their lives in a safer place with dignity. There is an International Law and Human Rights obligation to enable the exercise of the right to adapt to climate change, meaning to be provided with the resources to ensure their human dignity, food security and development. People and their territory have a right not to be harmed, and this applies to climate impacts, due to their transboundary nature and human-made causality. Climate change harm is an internationally wrongful act for which responsible states are obliged to provide climate reparations. These obligations include the duty to deliver climate finance and resources for adaptation measures and to address loss and damage.

In Los Chiles, the community prioritized adaptation measures for agriculture. La Ruta del Clima designed a program tailored to the local conditions that allowed community members to learn about new techniques to protect their crops from adverse climate effects. The project adopted an intergenerational, participative approach, allowing families to participate together in planning and capacity-building workshops. Participants from different generations learned from each other and from the technical experts on how to protect their territories, families and agricultural activities to ensure a good quality of life in the face of climate impacts. This approach focused on providing resources to prevent forced human mobility.

Most of the families that used to live in Caldera, instead, have already been forced to leave due to sea level rise. Those who remained in the affected territory were constantly threatened by wave surges or high tides overnight, which also generated fear and anxiety. Different community members have different positions: some are desperately trying to find the economic resources to move to a new location and others do not want to leave their territory but are also in need of resources to maintain their livelihoods and protect their land. This situation is extremely difficult for the subnational government, which does not have enough public finance for planned relocation or other actions. The case of Caldera shows how access to climate finance to perform risk assessments and support planned relocation is both an immediate urgency and a matter of climate reparations.

All these realities are deeply related to Loss and Damage due to climate change, as affected communities feel directly economic impacts on their livelihoods and health, culture and social dynamics. Even the psychosocial health of their members has been harmed due to environmental processes caused far from their homes and ecosystems, as they are living in fear and anxiety over the adverse effects of climate change. This underpins the need for establishing legal obligations and rights-based governance for the international climate change regime. Human mobility due to climate change must be addressed in the climate discussion, as it relates to Loss and damage.

Therefore, we want to conclude with three urgent recommendations:

1. There’s an urgent need to have a legal protection framework for human mobility in the context of climate change, especially for people who cross international borders to protect their human rights. Currently, there is a legal gap that leaves people unprotected and unable to exercise their right to safe and dignified mobility.
2. Planned relocations entail a wide range of impacts that are frequently forgotten. When addressing human mobility in the context of climate change, we need a broader approach that considers the economic and non-economic loss and damage suffered by communities. A direct engagement with and the effective participation of frontline communities is a minimum requirement to have adequate and rights-based planned relocations.
3. Adaptation measures need to be built in collaboration with the communities. The development of adaptation actions must be tailored to the specific needs of communities. The protection of livelihoods, well-being and sociocultural systems must be factored into adaptation planning and implementation. It is important that the adaptation measures and the economic resources provided to a community generate effective results, specially to prevent forced human mobility.

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this piece are those of the author/s and do not necessarily reflect the views or policies of AIDMI.