Forced Migration Review No. 31 - Climate Change and Displacement

Forced Migration Review provides a forum for the regular exchange of practical experience, information and ideas between researchers, refugees and internally displaced people, and those who work with them.

Contents include...

- Human security policy challenges, by Andrew Morton, Philippe Boncour and Frank Laczko.
- Island evacuation, by Ilan Kelman.
- Social breakdown in Darfur, by Scott Edwards.
- Mobile indigenous peoples, by Troy Sternberg and Dawn Chatty.
- Rural-urban migration in Ethiopia, by James Morrissey.
- Adaptation and cooperation, by Britta Heine and Lorenz Petersen.
- Recovery and the rule of law: what have we learned?, by Kathleen Cravero.

Read more on the FMR website.

IOM Migration Research Series No. 33: Climate Change and Migration: Improving Methodologies to Estimate Flows

This paper is concerned with the question of trying to further the understanding of how different types of shocks and stresses caused by climate change influence different types of migration. The relationship between climate change and migration is currently a topic of great interest as the ongoing “environmental refugee” debate demonstrates. Proponents of the concept of “environmental refugees” argue that climate change will increase the severity and the frequency of extreme weather events, which will in turn cause the displacement of the majority of the population of affected areas. As a consequence, hundreds of millions of “environmental refugees” from vulnerable regions all over the world are expected to seek refuge in wealthier countries.

This approach is potentially misleading for a number of reasons. First, the consequences of changes in climate patterns are diverse, ranging from slow-onset phenomena such as rising sea levels and melting glaciers, to increased extreme events that occur suddenly, and at variable intervals such as tropical cyclones and floods. It is likely that these heterogeneous manifestations of climate change will affect people’s livelihoods in different ways. Second, people might make use of a variety of different coping strategies in response to these different shocks and stresses. It is not clear whether and under what conditions migration is one of them. Third, migration decisions are complex with respect to destination, length of stay, and the profile of migrants. In addition, migration itself is a multi-causal phenomenon, making it difficult to isolate climate change related factors from other factors that cause people to move.

Access the paper via Reliefweb.

NRC: Future Floods of Refugees: A Comment on Climate Change, Conflict and Forced Migration

With the certainty of global warming, the term “climate refugees” is gaining popularity in public discourse. There seems to be some fear in the developed countries that they, if not flooded literally, will most certainly be flooded by ”climate refugees”. From a forced migration perspective, the term is flawed for several reasons.

The term “climate refugees” implies a mono-causality that one rarely finds in human reality. No one factor, event or process, inevitably results in forced migration or conflict. It is very likely that climate change impacts will contribute to an increase in forced migration. Because one cannot completely isolate climate change as a cause however, it is difficult, if not impossible, to stipulate any numbers. Importantly, the impacts depend not only on natural exposure, but also on the vulnerability and resilience of the areas and people, including capacities to adapt. At best, we have “guesstimates” about the possible form and scope of forced migration related to climate change.

Download the full paper from the Norwegian Refugee Council from Reliefweb.

UNHCR: The Impact of Environmental Degradation on Refugee-Host Relations: a Case Study from Tanzania

While the majority of literature in the field of refugee studies centres on refugees specifically, recent years have seen an increasing amount of research that looks beyond the refugee communities to the other groups and individuals also affected by refugee emergencies. In particular, these studies look at how the host communities – the communities living in the areas where refugees eventually settle, either formally or informally – are impacted by a rapid and often unexpected influx of refugees.

The document is available for download from Reliefweb.

Sometimes refugees bring positive changes to host communities, such as economic growth or the funding of various development projects by international aid organizations that have come to the area in response to the refugee emergency. However, the influx and presence of refugees has also been shown at times to have negative impacts on individuals within a hosting community, or even on the community as a whole. In light of this, it is important to not only investigate the impact of the presence of refugees on the hosting communities, but also to consider how these impacts have then influenced the overall relationship between the two groups. In particular, it is important to determine what might contribute to a contentious or even conflictual relationship. A better understanding of this can ultimately assist those working with refugees in other situations, to plan and implement projects that may lessen the likelihood of such conflict.

One of the most frequently cited negative impacts in recent years, emphasized in particular by the host country governments, is environmental degradation and natural resource depletion. However, it is not only the host governments that claim that refugee camps cause environmental degradation: over the past several decades, there has also been a growing acceptance by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and other organizations working with refugees, as well as by independent researchers, that the presence of refugees often leads to environmental degradation and natural resource depletion both within and around the refugee settlements. As written in the UNHCR manual entitled Key Principles for Decision Making: “Evidence shows that large-scale dislocation of people, characteristic of many recent refugee crises, can create adverse environmental impacts. The scale and suddenness of refugee flows can rapidly change a situation of relative abundance of local resources to one of acute scarcity” (Engineering, 2005: 3).

UNHCR and IOM on Climate Change and Migration

Two new reports out recently deal with the migration and climate change nexus - first, this from the UNHCR:

The term "environmental refugees" was first coined in 1985 as a report title for the United Nations Environment Programme (El-Hinnawi 1985). It has since been widely diffused in both political and academic circles (Castles 2002). This growing concern of the international community about the consequences of migration resulting from environmental deterioration was reinforced in 1990 by the publication of the first UN intergovernmental report on climate change which stated that "The gravest effects of climate change may be those on human migration as millions will be displaced" (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 1990, 20).

The links between climate and human migration are not new (Beniston 2004). Thus, the droughts of the 1930s in the plains of the American Dust Bowl forced hundreds of thousands of migrants towards California, and those that struck the Sahel between 1969 and 1974 displaced millions of farmers and nomads towards the cities. Notwithstanding the present media focus, the amount of systematic research on environment and migration remains quite limited.

In this article we will first try to understand why the environmental aspect of the study of migration and refugees has, up until now, been neglected. We will then propose a definition of population movements induced by environmental factors, before concentrating on climate aspects by providing a synthesis of results put forward by researchers. Finally, we will examine forecasts for future developments.

The article can be downloaded from Reliefweb. The International Organisation for Migration has just released 'Migration Research Series No. 31 on Migration and Climate Change':

This report focuses on the possible future scenarios for climate change, natural disasters and migration and development, looking to increase awareness and find answers to the challenges that lie ahead.

The report states that even though it is defined as a growing crisis, the consequences of climate change for human population are unclear and unpredictable. In 1990, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) noted that the greatest single impact of climate change could be on human migration -with millions of persons displaced by shoreline erosion, coastal flooding and agricultural disruption. Since then various analysts have tried to put numbers on these flows of climate migrants, the most widely repeated prediction being 200 million by 2050.

The study points out that the scientific basis for climate change is increasingly well established, and confirms that current predictions as to the “carrying capacity” in large parts of the world will be compromised by climate change.

The document is available for download from Reliefweb.

Migration

• The UNHCR have published a discussion paper on their strategy for dealing with increasing numbers of mobile people, and
• The Forced Migration Review No. 29 is jam-packed with interesting articles about humanitarian reform and its impact on migration, and asks - Is it fulfilling its promise? The contents list is in the longer post (click the link to read it).
  

Forced Migration Review contents:
- Humanitarian action: a Western-dominated enterprise in need of change by John Holmes
- The Global Humanitarian Platform: opportunity for NGOs? by Elizabeth Ferris
- Challenges of collective humanitarian reponse in Sri Lanka by Firzan Hashim
- Unity in diversity - the One UN, UNHCR, and Rwanda by Tim Maurer
- UNHCR, IDPs and humanitarian reform by Jeff Crisp, Esther Kiragu and Vicky Tennant
- Is humanitarian reform improving IDP protection and assistance? by Anne Davies
- Reform in focus: the IFRC perspective by Robert Mister
- Integration and UN humanitarian reforms by Eric Stobbaerts, Sarah Martin and Katharine Derderian
- Insecure environments: the missing piece? by Matthew Benson
- Iraq: towards a field-focused humanitarian reform by Cedric Turlan
- Strengthening the Humanitarian Coordinator system by Claire Messina
- Neglecting the third pillar by Manisha Thomas
- Humanitarian reform: a view from CAR by Toby Lanzer
- Humanitarian reform: saving and protecting lives in DRC by Ross Mountain
- Assessing the impact of humanitarian reform in DRC by Nick Bennett
- The state of humanitarian funding by Peter Walker and Kevin Pepper
- Worlds apart? Muslim donors and international humanitarianism by Mohammed R Kroessin
- Cluster approach - a vital operational tool by Allan Jury and Giammichele De Maio
- Early recovery from disaster: the Pakistan earthquake by Andrew MacLeod