Disasters, climate change and human movement

We started by looking at the relationship between climate change, disasters and how this will alter patterns of migration and displacement

Key ideas:

1. Disasters can be be weather events (like hurricanes, floods, droughts) or they can have nothing to do with the weather (like earthquakes).
2. Some disasters may have more complex relationships to the weather – like disease outbreaks.
3. Different kinds of disasters are affected differently by a warming planet
4. Rapid onset events happen over the space of a few days (flash flooding, Typhoons). Slow onset events unfold over a number of months or years (like drought).
5. Human movement can either be forced or voluntary depending on the amount of choice people have about moving
6. People can move internally or across international borders.

At the start of the afternoon session we looked at some of the patterns of migration and displacement that climate change could create, and what trends we might expect in the future.

Key ideas:

1. Forced displacement linked to changing patterns of sudden disasters
2. Migration resulting from the erosion of livelihoods linked to slow onset disasters
3. Planned relocation projects where communities and governments plan large scale, organised migration
4. Immobility, where the impacts of climate change and subsequent poverty prevent people from moving – even though they might want to.  

Future trends:

1. In the future climate-linked migration is more likely to be internal rather than cross-border
2. People are more likely to move the shortest distance possible, rather than migrate long distances
3. People are more likely to move as individuals or households, rather than in sudden large scale migrations
4. People may engage in seasonal and circular patterns of migration, rather than moving permanently.

Further reading:

• Getting Started: This is a 20 minute podcast produced by us that looks at how different kinds of climate linked disasters create different kinds of migration and displacement.
• World Meteorological Association: (Un)Natural Disasters: Communicating Linkages Between Extreme Events and Climate Change
• UN Refugee Agency: Environment, Disasters and Climate Change
• UN Refugee Agency: Climate Change and Disasters
• Understanding a slow disaster – getting to grips with slow onset disasters, climate and migration.

During these sessions we worked with:

• A collection of disasters that have taken place over the last 10 years. These disasters were all taken from the Relief Web disasters database.
• A collection of testimonies from people who had moved – many as a result of disasters and the impacts of climate change. These testimonies and many other are in our publication Moving Stories: the testimonies of people move in the context of environmental change.
• The presentation of current and future trends is available here.

Climate change and conflict

We spent some time looking the the relationship between climate change, migration and conflict.

Key ideas:

• The academic world is divided on whether there is a strong connection between the impacts of climate change and increased levels of armed violence
• There are studies many looking at this connection – some have found a strong correlation, others have found no connection. Some have even found that weather extremes result in less violence
• Academics are also divided on how interpret this research as a whole. Meta studies combining the data have reached differing conclusions.
• Where studies have found a link between climate change impacts and conflict – it is usually with civil conflict. Usually violence between armed non-state forces, or between non-state forces and government forces.
• There doesn’t seem to be much evidence that migration plays are role in the nexus of issues. Although climate change can (and will) change patterns of migration, there is little evidence that migration (or migrants) are a source of conflict or violence.

Further reading:

The two competing viewpoints are expressed in these papers:

• Climate, conflict, and social stability: what does the evidence say?
• One effect to rule them all? A comment on climate and conflict

More general analysis:

• When climate change and history spark violent conflict
• Commentary versus evidence in the climate / conflict debate
• Unpacking climate, migration and armed conflict
• Syria and climate change – did the media get it right?

We briefly discussed the issue of sub-state regional conflict contagion – where conflicts spread from one country to another. This is actually surprisingly rare. Further reading on this issue.

Policy and law

Finally we looked at various initiatives designed to address the issue of climate-linked migration and displacement.

Key issues:

Climate-linked migration can be thought of as needing to be addressed in a number of different ways including:

1. Rights – a person or group’s right to move from one place to another, and their treatment when they are in a new location.
2. Planning – how governments and communities prepare for disasters and the migration and displacement that will result from them
3. Finance – who pays for the costs of climate-linked migration? How are plans to help people move, or to protect people from forced migration financed?
4. Adaptation – how can migration be built into adaptation plans? Could and should migration be encouraged as a way of coping with the impacts of climate change?

We then looked a a few key policy initiatives and assessed which of the above issues they addressed. We also discussed these critically looking at the advantages of shortcomings of some of them. The initiatives we looked at were:

The Sendai Framework
The Sendai Framework is a 15-year, voluntary, non-binding agreement which recognizes that the State has the primary role to reduce disaster risk.

Changing the refugee convention
Proposals have been made to alter the refugee convention so that people fleeing the impacts of climate change are entitled to the same rights as existing refugees. (Note: this idea was included in order for us to critically evaluate it. This is not a proposal we support).

The Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement
The Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement issued by the Secretary General of the United Nations identify internationally recognized rights and guarantees of persons who have been forcibly displaced from their homes due to a number of factors, including natural disaster.

Migration as Adaptation to climate change
A number of researchers have argued that migration has for centuries been a traditional coping strategy that could be set to increase in the face of climate change. Rather than viewing migration as a last resort these researchers have proposed the idea that migration could become a new way for people to diversify agricultural livelihoods in response to climate change impacts. Such migration strategies give an individual the chance to diversify their income, allows the spreading of risk for the household, and the sending of money back to family members, which would, in turn, increase resilience back home.

The international climate change negotiations – task force on displacement
At the Paris climate change negotiations in 2015 an important decision was made establishing a Task Force on Displacement. The decision clearly establishes an entity specifically mandated to make recommendations on how to avert, minimize and address displacement related to the adverse impacts of climate change.

The Platform on Disaster Displacement – Protection Agenda
People who are forced to cross a border in the context of a disaster and the effects of climate change have limited protection when they arrive in another country. Rather than calling for a new binding international convention on cross-border disaster-displacement, the Protection Agenda supports an approach that focuses on the integration of effective practices by States into their own legal frameworks.

Further reading and resources:

• Fixing climate-linked displacement: are the climate talks enough?
• The task force on displacement: the pieces begin to fall into place
• Interview: preparing for climate and disaster migration (looking at the Platform on Disaster Displacement)
• Why is a disaster risk reduction deal important for climate change?