From deserts
to squalor

Montreal photojournalist François Pesant
chronicles the plight of Indian climate
refugees at the TOHU

LEFT DESERTED: Refugees in “survival mode”

by PATRICK LEJTENYI

François Pesant has had a busy 2010. The 34-year-old Montreal photojournalist arrived back home on Tuesday, Jan. 12, from five months in India and Sri Lanka. That same day, the 7.0-magnitude earthquake hit Haiti, destroying Port-au-Prince and killing an estimated 200,000 people. The freelancer, who shoots for Le Devoir, L’Actualité and the free daily Metro, left five days later.

Back now, Pesant is hardly relaxing. He’s gearing up for the Thursday, Feb. 11 opening of his exhibit Les réfugiés du climat, at the TOHU (2345 Jarry E.), a series of photos taken in refugee camps in the Indian states of Maharashtra, Rajasthan and Punjab, mostly of poor farmers and their families who have been forced off their land by drought. Pesant visited a dozen camps, with a commonality running through all of them.

“The people are resigned,” he says. “They don’t know they are climate refugees. They just know their land has dried up. They’re in survival mode. They don’t have time to think politically.”

The changing global climate is already creating a new breed of refugees, and is bound to create millions more. And it isn’t a problem exclusive to the developing world: The displaced residents of New Orleans, thousands of them still stuck in Houston or Alabama and FEMA trailer parks across the south will attest to that.

But as evident as the problem is, it remains a political football. Because the problem is relatively new—despite being first identified in the late 1970s—it has no legal definition, and the international community has no legal framework or definition to work with. This, despite an estimated 30–40 million climate refugees today, with some estimates reaching as high as 250–500 million by 2050.

The scope of the problem, says Pesant, is reflected in the rapid growth of refugee camps. Some started out as simple squats, where a few dozen families gathered, usually on the banks of a river. But as more and more farms dried up, the makeshift camps swelled, with some now holding thousands.

Nor is there much government to serve them. In the Milkplate camp in Jalandhar, Punjab, the only government action its residents saw initially was the razing of their squats. Eventually, the government relented and placed them in a camp behind an industrial park. Hardly much, but at least a home. Its residents have difficult, sparse lives, with some part-time work in construction sometimes available, and food always scarce. Shoemaking and scavenging are other common occupations. Medical attention is practically non-existent, as the medical establishment, including doctors, are “revolted” by the refugees, Pesant says. “The Indian government is not interested in them,” he says. “It’s ignoring their existence.”

To its peril. Desertification is threatening up to half the arable land in India, and 300 million of its people, according to Pesant, and that number could increase. And desertification is only one aspect of climate change that will make the refugee population soar in the coming decades. Its flipside, catastrophic flooding, is sure to affect the subcontinent, as stronger typhoons, hurricanes and monsoons batter low-lying coastal regions, and melting glaciers flood riverside communities. Pesant says the glaciers will be the focus of his next project.

LES RÉFUGIÉS DU CLIMAT WILL BE AT
THE TOHU (2345 JARRY E.), FEB.
11–APRIL 25, 9 A.M.–5 P.M., FREE.
VERNISSAGE TONIGHT, THURSDAY,
FEB. 11, 5:30 P.M., WITH PESANT IN
ATTENDANCE. A ROUNDTABLE ON
CLIMATE REFUGEES WITH PESANT
AND MEMBERS OF ÉQUITERRE AND
AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL WILL BE
HELD ON MONDAY, MARCH 22, 7 P.M.
SEE TOHU.CA FOR MORE INFO.