New Publications on Climate-Induced Migration

The Transatlantic Study Team on Climate-Induced Migration has recently published three reports on climate change and migration.  Click here to access the new publications.

The latest reports, for which there is more information below, are authored by Dr. Sarah Collinson (Overseas Development Institute), Dr. Philip Martin (UC Davis), Dr. Susan Martin (ISIM, Georgetown) and Dr. Koko Warner (UN University).

‘Reviewing the Challenges of Severe Climate-Related Hazards:  A Review of the Effectiveness of the International Humanitarian Regime’, by Sarah Collinson. 

 The international humanitarian regime remains critical for absorbing and reducing the impacts of shocks and stresses caused by extreme weather-related events and processes, particularly in some of the world’s poorest countries that lack sufficient resources and capacities to respond effectively. Yet many key normative, institutional, operational and resource structures and systems within the international humanitarian system appear insufficient or inappropriate for addressing the multiple and complex challenges to human security posed by climate change, and continue to undermine the system’s global capacities. This paper presents a range of priorities for increasing the effectiveness of the humanitarian regime.

‘Climate Change, NAPAs, Agriculture, and Migration in LDCs’, by Philip Martin.

This paper assesses the likely effec­tiveness of the National Adaptation Programs of Action (NAPAs) prepared by least developed countries (LDCs) to mitigate the impacts of climate-related changes in agriculture, fisheries, forest­ry and related natural resource-based activities. NAPAs provide a process for the 49 least developed countries to identify high-priority activities that re­spond to urgent and immediate needs to help vulnerable groups to assuage the effects of and adapt to climate change. A review of the priority projects included in 15 NAPAs yields three major findings, all of which are discussed in-depth throughout the paper.

‘Climate Change and Migration: The UNFCCC Climate Negotiations and Global Forum on Migration and Development’, by Koko Warner and Susan Martin.

Human migration and displacement in the con­text of climate change has come to the renewed attention of policy makers in recent years. This rejuvenated focus can most ostensibly be seen with the Global Forum on Migration and De­velopment (GMFD) and the UN Framework for Climate Change Convention (UNFCCC) Confer­ence (known as COP16), which both took place in Mexico in 2011.  These discussions were preceded and accompanied by numerous others, most prominently in the 2011 International Dialogue on Migration, organized by the International Organization for Migration, which focused on climate change, environmental degradation and migration.  The report focuses on the confluence of events that brought discussion of climate change and migration to the attention of governments in Mexico.