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UNU-EHS Raises Awareness for the Humanitarian Consequences of Climate Change
A call for an explicit recognition of the humanitarian consequences of climate change, including migration and displacement, was made by key stakeholders at the “Climate Change and Human Mobility: Survival or Adaptation Strategy?” side event, organized by UNU-EHS at the Bonn Climate Change Talks, on 6 April 2009. This was a step towards the topic being recognized and included in an environmental international treaty dealing with climate change, the successive Kyoto Protocol.
To raise awareness on the subject, the International Organization for Migration (IOM), the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the United Nations University (UNU) and the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) wrote a joint-submission that identified legal gaps of protection related to migration and displacement, and that also presented operational activities of humanitarian response and adaptation. The compiled document was presented at the “Climate Change and Human Mobility: Survival or Adaptation Strategy?” side-event of the UNU-EHS.
The reason the joint-submission was presented at the Bonn Climate Change Talks was particularly to catch UNFCCC’s attention. The four stakeholder organizations are keen on seeing the environmental migration issue incorporated in the agreement that will be concluded at UNFCCC’s 15th Conference of the Parties (COP 15) in December 2009. At this conference in Copenhagen, stakeholders from all over the world will shape and agree upon an ambitious and effective international response to climate change.
If the submission is accepted as part of UNFCCC’s agreement on climate change, there will be more opportunities for research to be done on the subject and for the phenomenon to gain exposure. This is important because Prof. Janos Bogardi, Director of UNU-EHS, insists that it is necessary to strengthen the scientific basis and raise awareness on the subject to improve legislation and be able to provide adequate humanitarian aid, as well as policies and institutions to people dealing with environmentally induced migration and displacement. Jean-Francois Durieux, UNHCR, adds that it is the state of preparedness that is of paramount importance for disaster risk reduction, emergency response and post-disaster rehabilitation.
Until now, many governments remain sceptic when identifying climate change as a cause for migration. As Prof. Janos Bogardi explains, migration is a “phenomenon that is multi-faceted, with many push and pull factors influencing the decision to move“, making it often difficult to distinguish the exact role the environment plays in it. Nevertheless, scientists and experts have been identifying more links between them and insisting on the global recognition of the phenomenon, claiming it is a matter of time before governments will have to start dealing with the humanitarian consequences of climate change.
