Addressing the Challenges of Climate Migration: Legal Protections, Resilience & Eco-Security

Abstract

As the 21st century advances and the global population rises, competition for water, energy and natural resources will cut across policy agendas, from trade and investment to agriculture, infrastructure and defense. Climate change, biodiversity loss, and ecosystem mismanagement reflect cumulative governance failures and act as a threat multiplier to economic and social sustainability. Citizens across developed, developing, and least-developed countries will find it increasingly difficult to rely on governments or insurance companies as systemic vulnerabilities escalate. In areas worst-affected by drought, flooding, declining crop yields, and health threats, “climate migrants” will leave their homes and land.

Predictions of climate-induced displacement are shocking – 200 million people by 2050. Since 1990, when the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) suggested that large-scale migrations might represent the “greatest single impact” on world security, scientists have scaled up their predictions and highlighted the risks associated with slow-onset disasters (such as sea level rise, droughts, and environmental degradation) and rapid-onset disasters (such as earthquakes, fires, and hurricanes). In 2014, the IPCC has acknowledged the multitude of climatic and non-climatic drivers of migration but says that there is no question that “human security will be progressively threatened as the climate changes.”

Salzburg Global Seminar is hosting a strategy session to design a multi-year program to connect and accelerate actions addressing the challenges of mass migrations resulting from climate change. Salzburg Global will convene top practitioners, researchers, and economic actors to crystallize what is known about the likely patterns and timeframe of climate-induced migration and assess practical options for refugee policy; urban demographics, absorption capacity, disaster preparedness and resilience; innovations for food and water supply systems; international and national legal, financial, and practical tools and frameworks; the interlocking long-term nature of trans-boundary and global climate and ecological risks and costs; and regional and national security.

For any further information, please contact the progam director, Charles Ehrlich, at cehrlich@salzburgglobal.org.

Session Overview

Salzburg Global Seminar, working with select international partners, is developing a multi-year program to connect and accelerate actions addressing the challenges of mass migrations resulting from climate change.
A strategy meeting will take place in December 2014, with the full program envisaged to start in 2015 – a landmark year of opportunity in which the international community has committed to finalize Sustainable Development Goals and a new climate change agreement.
The full multi-year series will include convening sessions in Salzburg as well as one or two in-region meetings each year.

Program Objectives and Outcomes

This program seeks to focus attention on:

1) The interlocking long-term nature of transboundary and global climate and ecological risks and costs;

2) The need to allocate responsibilities to prevent and manage disaster risks effectively and efficiently to protect vulnerable sectors of society and future generations;and

3) The legal, financial and practical tools already at the disposal of business, the international community, governments, local authorities and other stakeholders.

The goals of the strategy meeting in December 2014 will be to:

Finalize and prioritize program focal areas;
Frame key questions, ensuring that interconnected issues along the entire prevention-response continuum are included;
Identify first-movers and change-makers that must be at the table; and
Select strategically-significant geographical areas where in-country follow-up would gain maximum traction and visibility of efforts.

Building on the outcomes of this strategy session, Salzburg Global’s multi-year series will initially focus on three interconnected dimensions of climate-induced displacement: legal protections, planning for resilience and regional and national eco-security. Each presents major transnational, economic, and governance challenges that will directly affect the functioning and cohesion of societies in the future.