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.