The latest Intersections issue looks at the social impacts of global climate change and examines how people living in the low elevation coastal zones are adapting to global sea level rise by migrating. These living spaces are increasingly hit by storms and floods forcing people to find strategies to cope with these environmental threats. For many coastal populations, migration has become one means of adaptation and survival.

Download the issue No. 7/2009 here.

The report titled "Addressing the Challenge: Recommendations and Quality Criteria for Linking Disaster Risk Reduction and Adaptation to Climate Change" by Jörn Birkmann and Korinna von Teichman from UNU-EHS, as well as other contributing authors, reveals existing limits and challenges to link disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation.

Download the full report.

The report titled “In Search of Shelter: Mapping the Effects of Climate Change on Human Migration and Displacement” by Dr Koko Warner from UNU-EHS and Dr Charles Ehrhart from CARE International, highlights that climate change is already contributing to migration and displacement and that there will be tens of millions of migrants within the next few years. These findings were presented to the delegates and the international media at the Bonn Climate Change Talks in June 2009.

Download the full report In Search of Shelter.

“The Megacity Resilience Framework” by Carsten Butsch, Benjamin Etzold and Patrick Sakdapolrak, provides policy recommendations on how to increase the resilience and sustainability of megacities where more than half of the world’s population is living today.

Download the Policy Brief "The Megacity Resilience Framework" here.

"Linking Environmental Change, Migration and Social Vulnerability", edited by Anthony Oliver-Smith and Xiaomeng Shen, presents the articles of seven of the PHD researchers who took part in the third UNU-EHS Summer Academy of the Munich Re Foundation.

The researchers give a literature overview of environmental migration, concepts, and the legal and institutional frameworks. Using different case studies, they illustrate how vulnerable people are to environmental changes and how migration can be a coping strategy when responding and adapting to changing environments. In this context, the authors also discuss examples of resettlement and replacement patterns.

Download SOURCE No. 12/2009.

“Confronting Environmental Migration; A Framework for Research, Policy and Practice” is the first issue of our new Research Brief series. The authors, David Wrathall and Benjamin Morris, are two PhD candidates that participated in the UNU-EHS MRF Summer Academy on Environmental Change, Migration and Social Vulnerability 2008.

The research brief summarizes key findings of a series of events dedicated to forced migration organised by UNU-EHS. It aims to identify crucial issues on the subject to put together a research agenda in the field of environmental migration.

Download the new research brief, "Confronting Environmental Migration; A Framework for Research, Policy and Practice".