The Climate Change, Environment and Migration Alliance (CCEMA) was initiated in April 2008 at an expert meeting in Munich, Germany. The CCEMA has just launched their portal website which lists the aims and objectives and also has current news and event listings. According to the website, “The major aim of CCEMA is to mainstream the environmental and climate change considerations into the migration management policies
and practice and to also bring migration issues into the world’s on-going environmental and climate change discourse”. As such, CCEMA will provide an essential platform to (1) raise awareness, (2) improve the knowledge base, (3) provide neutral and open forum policy dialogue and, (4) provide practical support (ccema-portal.org).
The current CCEMA members include:
- International Organization for Migration (IOM)
- Munich Re Foundation (MRF).
- The Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI) .
- United Nations Environment Program (UNEP)
- United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA)
- United Nations University – Institute for Environment and Human Security (UNU-EHS)
- University of Sussex – The Development Research Centre on Migration, Globalisation and Poverty (DRC)
- World Wildlife Fund (WWF)
This alliance is the first ever of its kind and is reflective of the momentum that the climate change and human mobility discourse has gained over the past two years. The actions of the CCEMA will no doubt contribute in many ways to a better understanding of the size and characteristics of issue, leading to concrete and long-term solutions.