“I think it’s appropriate to think about [climate change] adaptation or investments in adaptation as investments to open up the range of choices available to people to deal with an uncertain future,” said Jon Barnett, associate professor of geography at the University of Melbourne, in an interview with ECSP. “In some circumstances it might be appropriate to build infrastructure and hard options where we’re very certain about the nature of the risk…but in other cases, expanding the range of choices and freedoms and opportunities that people have to deal with climate change in the future is perhaps the better strategy.”

“This risk, while recognised, has been inadequately dealt with by the international community,” admitted John Crowley, who heads the ethics of science and technology section at UNESCO, the body that currently chairs the Global Migration Group, a U.N. interagency group on migration issues.

Under today’s international law, “climate refugees” as a category are not formally recognised, and as such they have no right to asylum or other assistance. But an agreement at the U.N. climate summit in Cancun last year for the first time urged countries to accept that “climate change-induced displacement, migration and planned relocation” should be considered in plans to adapt to climate change.

That may open the door to migration costs being funded under the emerging Green Climate Fund, which is expected to disperse a promised $100 billion a year, starting in 2020, for climate adaptation and emissions reduction efforts in the world’s most vulnerable nations, said Koko Warner, an expert on environmental migration issues at the U.N. University.

Still, planning for predicted large-scale migration as a result of climate impacts remains preliminary, particularly regarding the politically perilous issue of migration across national borders.

Lack of preparation doesn’t mean migration won’t happen, however, experts warned.

“In some countries, there is no space (to resettle migrants), some countries might even go down under the water (and) in others, population pressure is so high that people cannot move (elsewhere in the country),” noted Qazi Kholiquzzaman Ahmad, a Bangladeshi economist and contributing author to several Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports.

“Therefore, it’s extremely important we find ways of moving them out of the country and into regional countries if possible, or into countries where the number of people is small and there is huge land area,” he said. He admitted that “this is a difficult subject”.

One particular difficulty in dealing with climate-induced migration is that much of it is likely to be gradual. In many cases, it is predicted to be the result of an increasing burden of problems – poor harvests, bad weather, insufficient income – that make it difficult for families to stay in their homes, rather than the result of a single disaster, something international agencies are more practiced at addressing.

“We are good at emergency response but bad on progressive, gradual phenomenon,” UNESCO’s Crowley said. “And climate change will be largely a progressive, gradual phenomenon. There won’t be anything to launch an appeal for, no specific event. There will just be growing pressure to migrate.”

Migration Needs To Be An Option

Keeping families in their homes as long as possible, through measures like promoting crops more tolerant of extreme weather, or better rainwater harvesting techniques, will be vital, the experts said. But there may also be some ways of helping those who have no choice but to leave.

First is to recognise migration as an effective kind of adaptation in some circumstances, rather than a failure of adaptation.

“Migration isn’t necessarily a bad thing. We have to recognise migration as an adaptation strategy, and make it an option available to the most vulnerable,” Crowley said.

But migration also needs to be carefully planned and managed to ensure migrants don’t end up becoming even more vulnerable, by moving to flood-prone urban slums, for instance, or provoking conflict with their new neighbours, he said.

That may require reworking government safety net programmes to direct money to families displaced by climate pressures, or carrying out land reform to effectively settle landless people.

Changing immigration laws will also be important. Australia, for example, has a new visa category to accommodate displaced people from the region, experts said.

But many nations have steadfastly resisted giving environmental migrants refugee status.

“The problem with refugees is they have a claim to asylum. That’s why states are reluctant to expand the (refugee) regime,” Crowley said.

What’s worth remembering, experts say, is that migration usually happens as a last resort, to families who would prefer to remain where they are.

“People want to stay home. They have a profound spiritual tie to their homeland. But if they can’t, we need to make sure they can migrate in safety and dignity,” Warner said.

Source: AlterNet

Contents include the following:

• A Decision Framework for Environmentally Induced Migration
• Multidimensional Re-creation of Vulnerabilities and Potential for Resilience in International Migration
• The Thin Line Between Choice and Flight: Environment and Migration in Rural Benin
• North-South Migration in Ghana: What Role for the Environment?
• Economic or Environmental Migration? The Push Factors in Niger
• Flooding and Relocation: The Zambezi River Valley in Mozambique
• Western Sahara: Migration, Exile and Environment
• Environmental Degradation and Migration on Hispaniola Island
• Drought Triggered Temporary Migration in an East Indian Village
• Migration and Displacement Triggered by Floods in the Mekong Delta
• Contrasted Views on Environmental Change and Migration: the Case of Tuvaluan Migration to New Zealand

Download each article free here.

As her book summary outlines:

Environmental migration is not new. Nevertheless, the events and processes accompanying global climate change threaten to increase human movement both within States and across international borders. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has predicted an increased frequency and severity of climate events such as storms, cyclones and hurricanes, as well as longer-term sea level rise and desertification, which will impact upon people’s ability to survive in certain parts of the world.

This book brings together a variety of disciplinary perspectives on the phenomenon of climate-induced displacement. With chapters by leading scholars in their field, it collects in one place a rigorous, holistic analysis of this phenomenon, which can better inform academic understanding and policy development alike. Governments have not been prepared to take a leading role in developing responses to the issue, in large part due to the absence of strong theoretical frameworks from which sound policy can be developed. The specialist expertise of the authors in this book means that each chapter identifies key issues that need to be considered in shaping domestic, regional and international responses, including the complex causes of movement, the conceptualisation of migration responses to climate change, the terminology that should be used to describe those who move, and attitudes to migration that may affect decisions to stay or leave. The book will help to facilitate the creation of principled, research-based responses, and establish climate-induced displacement as an important aspect of both the climate change and global migration debates.

She includes chapters by familiar and influential migration, human rights, environmental, and legal scholars:

• “Climate Change-Induced Mobility and the Existing Migration Regime in Asia and the Pacific” by Graeme Hugo
• “Migration as Adaptation: Opportunities and Limits” by Jon Barnett and Michael Webber
• “Climate-Induced Community Relocation in the Pacific: The Meaning and Importance of Land” by John Campbell
• “Conceptualising Climate-Induced Displacement” by Walter Kälin
• “‘Disappearing States’, Statelessness and the Boundaries of International Law” by Jane McAdam
• “Protecting People Displaced by Climate Change: Some Conceptual Challenges” by Roger Zetter
• “International Ethical Responsibilities to ’Climate Change Refugees’” by Peter Penz
• “Climate Migration and Climate Migrants: What Threat, Whose Security?” by Lorraine Elliott
• “Climate-Related Displacement: Health Risks and Responses” by Anthony J McMichael, Celia E McMichael, Helen L Berry and Kathryn Bowen
• “Climate Change, Human Movement and the Promotion of Mental Health: What have we Learnt from Earlier Global Stressors?” by Maryanne Loughry
• “Afterword: What Now? Climate-Induced Displacement after Copenhagen” by Stephen Castles

We have yet to read the book, but it seems set to be an essential part of any climate change and migration reader’s diet.

Location of the community of Igarape do Costa. Photo credit: WWF-Brazil

The World Wildlife Fund established the Climate Prep blog to “define climate change adaptation through illustrations of on the ground adaptation projects and scientific adaptation studies, explorations of adaptation concepts, and tracking firsthand the progress of adaptation in the international policy arena.”

This is especially pertinent to the field of climate change-induced migration, as the more preventative measures are taken the less impact climate change should have on migration. A great illustration of the climate’s impact on migration can already be seen in Brazil, where the recent blog post “Building Climate Adaptation Capacity in Amazon Floodplain Communities” claims “many people are migrating in the Santarém region from lake to lake in search of fish.” The post from Climate Prep is cross-posted below.

(Climate Prep) February 12, 2010 – Located in the lower Amazon floodplain of Brazil, the Santarém region harbors important fisheries that many people depend on for employment, food security, government tax revenues, and items to export to both domestic and foreign markets. Climate change is creating difficulties, but not without hope and new opportunities as well.

These fisheries and the services that they provide are known to be sensitive to shifts in the climate. Precipitation patterns are shifting in the Santarém region, with the amount of annual rainfall generally decreasing and floods and droughts becoming more common. Livelihoods for most people around these lakes combine farming and fishing, both of which will be negatively affected by a reduction in rainfall. Less rain will have an especially big impact on the local economy through the quantity of fish that are locally harvested. If regional climate forecasts are accurate, rural livelihoods in lakeshore regions will become increasingly precarious over time.

Because of these shifts in climate, many people are migrating in the Santarém region from lake to lake in search of fish. And more people are even moving from rural regions to cities and other areas of greater economic opportunity. The rate people leave their traditional homes will probably increase as rainfall becomes increasingly variable.

Conflicts also arise over the governance of floodplain resources that so many individuals around Santarém depend on. The issue of how to determine rights to resources in lakes and rivers throughout the region is increasingly contentious.  Should they be monitored and regulated by the state control, or should communities decide how and when fish are harvested? Or should all of these decisions be settled by individuals? So far, neither the state nor the market has been uniformly successful in solving common-pool resource problems. While access to certain “subsistence lakes” is restricted to rural, local communities, the establishment of formal regulation of open-access resources such as fisheries may be an important means to avoid over-exploitation and the resulting degradation of the resource base, in the same way that many harvests of wild species are regulated through hunting or fishing permits globally.

The community of Igarapé do Costa is located on a low sandbank, surrounded by three floodplain lakes called Pacoval, Aramanaí, and Itarim (Figure 1). About 90 families depend on fishing, small gardens and farms, and cattle ranching. Of these, fishing is the main productive activity for 94% of families (Figure 2). During the rainy season, the sandbank is covered by the waters of the Pacoval and Aramanaí lakes, linking the Amazon river and the community. But during the dry season the community is cut off by a massive sandbank and the lakes shrink in size, leaving them 5 km (3 miles) from the mainstream of the river, which is their source of water, transportation, and sustenance. The decreasing amounts of rainfall — especially during drought years — mean that the periods when these communities are separated from the mainstream of the river are getting longer.

The lives of the people of Igarapé do Costa are typical of many people in the Amazon floodplain, especially those located in low sandbanks, far from upland on the banks of river. The key aspect of the Amazon that has determined the ways of life for these communities is the dependable flood pulse that comes every year. Like a clock, it helps regulate the fish species of the Amazon, and the fish regulate the traditional livelihoods and economy for millions of people.

Changes in the rain result in changes in the flood pulse, which alters seasonal fishmovement between the river’s mainstem and the surrounding lakes and wetlands and disrupts the livelihoods of the people. These characteristics make the record of the environmental aspects of climate change and responses of the community´s floodplain a critical element for social environmental sustainability in the region in the coming decades. The implementation of the Climate Witness Project in the community of Igarapé do Costa gives an important contribution to the generation of knowledge.

In my future entries I will present results of the Climate Witness Project that has been implemented in the community of Igarapé do Costa and Santarém region. My analysis considers the study of environmental and social adaptations to climate change at the local level in light of the inherent variability of floodplain ecosystems and the community’s capacity for adaptation.

Source: Climate Prep

Small Island Developing States are often depicted as being among the most vulnerable of all places to the effects of climate change, and they are a cause célèbre of many involved in climate science, politics and the media. Yet while small island developing states are much talked about, the production of both scientific knowledge and policies to protect the rights of these nations and their people has been remarkably slow.

This book is the first to apply a critical approach to climate change science and policy processes in the South Pacific region. It shows how groups within politically and scientifically powerful countries appropriate the issue of island vulnerability in ways that do not do justice to the lives of island people. It argues that the ways in which islands and their inhabitants are represented in climate science and politics seldom leads to meaningful responses to assist them to adapt to climate change. Throughout, the authors focus on the hitherto largely ignored social impacts of climate change, and demonstrate that adaptation and mitigation policies cannot be effective without understanding the social systems and values of island societies.

This publication is, as Barry Smit, Canada Research Chair in Global Environmental Change at University of Guelph points out, “a timely check on established paradigms and their effectiveness (or otherwise) in contributing to practical adaptation to climate change in vulnerable regions.”

Meanwhile Jon Barnett has been researching climate adaptation in small island states, particularly through the lens of migration, for some time.  His most provocative and recent work released in 2009 was the World Bank-commissioned study “Accommodating Migration to Promote Adaptation to Climate Change.”  The paper examines the ways in which climate change may increase future migration, and the risks associated with such migration. It also examines how migration may enhance the capacity of communities to adapt to climate change.

You can see a distillation of his views on climate change in the Pacific in this short video interview with the Woodrow Wilson Center:

No one is currently emigrating from Pacific small island states principally due to climate change, according to Australian geographer Jon Barnett of the University of Melbourne. Barnett situates climate change’s potential future impacts within the broader social, political, and economic challenges for residents of small island states, reminding us that there is great physical and political diversity among these islands.

Stressing the mix of pushes and pulls that motivate people to move, Barnett suggests we examine existing patterns of migration to better understand how they will develop in the future. He emphasizes that climate change is most likely to push islanders to move due to declining food production and drinking water availability, rather than sea-level rise—despite the iconic image of lapping waves submerging low-lying countries. These sober reminders on the complexity of climate-migration links are worth keeping in mind when evaluating the plethora of new reports on the topic.

A growing flood of landless poor, many displaced by climate-related problems, are moving into the canal-side slum, which lies adjacent to Gulshan, one of Dhaka’s poshest areas.

Everywhere, people are busy building new makeshift rooms – in some cases multi-story shanties of bamboo and wood – to accommodate the arrivals.

Bangladeshi researchers estimate that about half a million people each year are pouring to the capital city after losing their homes and livelihoods to problems linked to climate change, including land erosion, worsening storms and sea level rise.

At present around 10,000 people live crammed into each square kilometer in Dhaka, where finding open land has become very difficult. The city, built for a million people in the 1960s, now accommodates more than 12 million and is one of the most densely populated on earth.

Bangladesh is ranked by the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change as one of the countries most at risk from climate change. Models suggest the low-lying nation of 156 million people could lose 17 percent of its land to rising seas, displacing 15 million people by 2050.

FEW RESOURCES TO SPARE

Providing for the needs of ever-increasing numbers of climate migrants is proving difficult in a country with few resources to help them.

Dhaka already suffers widespread poverty and unemployment, and offers limited opportunities for new migrants. The country has no social safety net to assist those who cannot find work for themselves, and competition for jobs is increasing with each new arrival.

Most of the people living in Korail are beggars, day labourers, boatman, rickshaw pullers or roadside hawkers, said Abul Miah, 40, who lives with his family of four in a 10-foot by 10-foot hut.

“I could not afford schooling of my children, so they are working in garment factory and roadside shop to help me,” he said of his adult son and younger daughter.

Osman Mia, 70, formerly of Bangladesh’s southern Borguna district, became landless when the Payra River in southern Bangladesh claimed his property. He now earns a living by pulling a rickshaw in Dhaka’s bustling streets.

The Korail slum, with its bamboo and tin shacks, has no permanent toilet facilities, so residents construct hanging toilets over the adjacent canal, polluting its water.

MUD STOVES, NO WATER

The slum also has no piped water from the Dhaka Water Supply Authority. In exchange for monthly payments, some musclemen supply water through illegal pipelines in exchange of monthly payments.

Inhabitants cook on stoves made of mud, burning huge amounts of wood and bamboo since there is no gas supply in the slum, which lies just across the canal from the homes of some of Dhaka’s richest families.

Hasen Molla, 60, is one of the canal’s boatmen. He lost his village home in Chaulakathi, in Bangladesh’s Barishal district after the Kochar River claimed his family’s land.

“My family moved to my granny’s house as we lost all the properties to river erosion. Since then two of my brothers are living there and I left for Dhaka to find my bread and butter,” he said.

Nearly a third of his $65 a month income goes to rent.

“My son and daughters are also working, as I can’t bear all the expenses. There is no scope for anyone here to live without work, no matter if you are adult or not,” he said.

For those without work, the outlook is particularly bleak.

Rohiton Nesa, 60, who has no children and whose husband left her, now begs in the street and at bus stops to pay for food and a place to live. She lost her family home and land in Noakhali district to erosion from the Hatiya river, she said.

The situation is the same in Dhaka’s Mogbazar slum, home to about 10,000 climate migrants living in 1,200 shanties.

Amiron, 65, who like many Bangladeshis goes by one name, lives with her two sons, daughter-in-laws and grandchildren in an 80-square-foot room made of plastic sheets and bamboo. The room has a wooden platform where her children sleep, while she and the grandchildren sleep nearby on the floor.

Mogbazar has some piped-in water. But Amiron feels shy to shower in an open-air bathroom the Dhaka City Corporation has built.

“It’s very tough for women to bath under the open sky,” she said.

Her daughter-in-law Monwara, 22, who lost her own parents to flooding, said starting over in Dhaka’s slums is a huge challenge for families who have lost everything and can afford nothing better than a basic hut.

“We are very poor. We lost all the things to the river. I lost my parents, too,” she said. “We have no way to find a better place as buying food twice a day became a big challenge for us.”

The slum presents other perils as well. Devastating fires regularly break out among the bamboo and wood structures. Hanif Mia, 75, was narrowly saved by his daughter last December when a blaze raged through his slum area, burning nearly all of the huts.

“My leg was broken in mid-November. I had no capacity to move. God saved me from burning as my daughter took me out,” he remembered.

Now, “we built this hut again taking loan at high rate of interest from private lenders. I don’t know if I will be able to repay the loan,” he said.

Source: Reuters AlertNet

Up to 20 million people in low-lying Bangladesh are at risk from rising sea-levels, according to new research.

The BBC’s David Shukman has been to see how some of the solutions may help those who are in areas vulnerable to flooding.

So the country needs inventive solutions to help minimise the impact of flooding in the future.

Britain’s Department for International Development is sponsoring farmers to cultivate crabs not crops, ducks not chickens, and gardens that float.

Source: BBC

Dr. Tacoli is also of the growing chorus of analysts who cite migration as adaptation rather than as negative consequence. Ultimately, she says, “the failure to recognise the role of voluntary migration in adapting to climate change contributes to crisis-driven movements that inevitably increase the vulnerability of those forced to leave their homes and assets as they flee conflict and disaster…It is worth remembering that supporting migrants can ultimately help reduce the numbers of refugees.”

Below is a complete summary of Dr. Tacoli’s views for the BBC’s The Green Room in an article entitled “Climate migration fears ‘misplaced”.

(BBC News) September 29, 2009 – Fears of millions of “climate refugees” crossing national borders are not supported by evidence on the ground, says Cecilia Tacoli. In this week’s Green Room, she says we will fail to protect the world’s most vulnerable people if misconceptions about migration continue to shape policies. Search the internet for “migration” and “climate change” and you will find repeated warnings of a crisis in the making; of hundreds of millions of people on the move, of countries straining to cope with the pressure on their borders, and of national security under threat.

But these fears are based on many misconceptions about the duration, destination and composition of migrant flows.

There is a real risk that alarmism will divert attention from real problems, resulting in policies that fail to protect the most vulnerable people.

The longer it takes people to realise this, the bigger the true problems will become.

Firstly, the numbers of people likely to be moving have been exaggerated. Secondly, the notion commonly expressed in rich countries – that large numbers of poor people from across the planet will attempt to migrate there permanently – is clearly wrong.

Yes, hundreds of millions of people live in places that are highly vulnerable to climate change.

They face extreme weather conditions such as droughts and floods, or they live in low-lying coastal areas that are threatened by rising sea levels. Their lives and livelihoods are threatened in new and significant ways.

But this does not mean they will all migrate.

The poorest and most vulnerable people will often find it impossible to move, as they lack the necessary funds and social support. Those who can migrate will be more likely to make short-term, short-distance movements than permanent long-term ones.

Overall, long-distance international migration will be the least likely option.

Past lessons

What can we learn from the past? In northern Mali, the drought of 1983-5 affected local migration patterns, with an increase in temporary and short-distance movement and a decrease in long-term, intercontinental movement.

Similarly, recent research in Burkina Faso suggests that a decrease in rainfall increases temporary rural-rural migration.

On the other hand, migration to urban centres and to other nations, which entails higher costs, is more likely to take place after normal rainfall periods.

It is influenced by migrants’ education, the existence of social networks and access to transport and road networks.

In all cases, migrants make substantial contributions to the livelihoods of their relatives and communities, by sending money, information and goods back home.

A surprisingly large proportion of the income of rural people in Africa, Asia and Latin America comes from non-farm activities, and much of it as migrants’ remittances.

With climate change making farming more difficult, the need for these resources will increase.

Unfortunately, most governments and international agencies tend to see migration as a problem that needs to be controlled instead of a key part of the solution.

In doing so, they are missing opportunities to develop policies that can increase people’s resilience to climate change.

Room for new views

Policymakers must radically alter their views of migration, and see it as a vital adaptation to climate change rather than as an unwanted consequence or a failure to adapt.

This means that poorer nations need to prepare for climate change at home by building up infrastructure and basic services in small towns located in rural areas that could become destination hubs for local migrants.

Options include policies that promote access to non-farm jobs in small rural towns and a more decentralised distribution of economic opportunities.

To do so, they should first of all focus on increasing the capacity of local governments and institutions in small towns to support local economic development, provide basic services and regulate equitable access to natural resources.

Richer countries, meanwhile, need to stop panicking about a mass influx of migrants that is unlikely to happen and instead focus on helping the poorer countries to face climate change.

As the richer countries have emitted most of the greenhouse gases that cause climate change, they have a duty to address the problem.

This means providing poorer nations with financial support to help them adapt to climate change, which can either reduce the need for migration or enable it to proceed in a way that is sound and sustainable.

It also means taking drastic domestic action to reduce the emissions of greenhouse gases that are causing climate change in the first place.

People are talking about migration as if it were something new, but people have always used their mobility as a means to protect themselves and escape from poverty.

The problem is not that people want to move, but that many of the most vulnerable people do not have the resources or livelihood options that will enable them to do so in a way that maintains their security.

Ironically, the failure to recognise the role of voluntary migration in adapting to climate change contributes to crisis-driven movements that inevitably increase the vulnerability of those forced to leave their homes and assets as they flee conflict and disaster.

It is worth remembering that supporting migrants can ultimately help reduce the numbers of refugees.

Source: BBC News

Tacoli will publish a study, ‘Crisis or adaptation? Migration and climate change in a context of high mobility’, in October.

The numbers

Norman Myers, renowned environmentalist and fellow with Oxford University’s 21st Century School, who has just completed a study for the Swedish International Development Agency, said “hundreds of millions” of people could be driven from their homes by environmental crises and degradation by 2040.

NGO Christian Aid in 2007 estimated that up to 250 million people could be displaced by 2050 as a result of climate change effects. And in 2001 a World Bank study by Susmita Dasgupta predicted that sea level rises could force hundreds of millions of people to move within this century.

Up to 70 percent of people living in cities of 5 million or more live within 1km-2 km of seaways, according to the UN.

But the IIED’s Tacoli said the projected migrant figures are inflated, for they tend to be based on population estimates in areas most likely to be affected by climate change, rather than on the number of people most likely to move.

Koko Warner, head of the Environmental Migration, Social Vulnerability and Adaptation Section at the UN University, said too many variables make accurate migrant predictions difficult to impossible.

“When…predicting the environment, we can feel a bit confident – there is a lot of information out there. But when we are studying humans, it’s more dicey….Figures are almost always based on census information undertaken every five to 10 years, so all you get is a snapshot.”

These figures do not indicate why people have left or what the social dynamics behind their movements were, she added.

Myers defended his predictions. “These should not be taken to be gospel truth,” he said. “Rather they are informed estimates. If scientists kept quiet about numbers, then policymakers would say the absence of evidence [means] the absence of a problem.

Local solutions

To date research on natural disaster-related population movements indicates most affected people move within a country’s borders, with the most vulnerable populations the least able to migrate far, with long-distance international migration the least likely option available.

One-off extreme events tend to trigger short-distance, short-term migrations; while longer-term environmental changes tend to generate longer-distance, more permanent migrations, says a 2009 Refugee Studies Centre report by James Morrissey.

Tacoli and others are pushing for policymakers to speed up help to vulnerable states to prepare for climate change at home, for instance by building up infrastructure and basic services in small towns in rural areas that could become destination hubs.

“Small towns in agricultural areas are especially important to provide livelihoods to the poorest groups, who are often landless and do not have the means to migrate to larger cities,” Tacoli told IRIN.

“With many aspects of climate change mitigation it will be local governments that can make the most difference,” she said. “We will need the support of national governments in affected countries to promote this, but at the moment we are talking only about external governments when it comes to migration.”

Boosting local adaptation could also diminish the number of people forced to move in the first place, Warner said.

This must be at the heart of the migrant debate, rather than stirring up “fear-of-migration” rhetoric from policymakers and leaders, many of whom have framed climate change as a national security issue, researchers told IRIN.

Fear rhetoric?

An August report by the US Department of Defense said climate-induced crises and related mass people movements could topple governments, feed terrorist movements or destabilize entire regions. The UK Ministry of Defence’s Development, Concepts and Doctrine Centre (DCDC) has made similar predictions.

And the European Union High Representative for Foreign and Security Policy, Javier Solana, warned in 2008 that climate-change-related migration “may increase conflict in transit and destination areas. Europe must expect substantially increased migratory pressure.”

“It’s quite inappropriate for industrialized nations to build barriers – be they institutional, political or mental barriers – across the Mediterranean to bar would-be migrants from passing…if they don’t look at solutions for the numbers – both local and international – they will just get overwhelmed,” Oxford University’s Myers said.

There is some indication that EU member states are approaching a more nuanced picture on environmental migration. The European Commission is funding research in 24 vulnerable countries, to address the dynamics of environmentally-driven migration and examine lessons learned.

Rather than foment panic, leaders should apply lessons from the past to inform both migration and climate change mitigation policies in years to come, Tacoli said.

Source: IRIN