Climate change and displacement

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In response to growing pressures on landscapes and livelihoods, people are moving, communities are adapting. This issue of FMR debates the numbers, the definitions and the modalities – and the tension between the need for research and the need to act. Thirty-eight articles by UN, academic, international and local actors explore the extent of the potential displacement crisis, community adaptation and coping strategies, and the search for solutions.

The issue also includes a range of articles on other aspects of forced migration. This issue has been published in English, French, Spanish and Arabic.

If you would like to receive a hard copy for your organisation, or multiple copies for onward distribution or for use at conferences/workshops, please email us at fmr@qeh.ox.ac.uk. You will need to send your full postal address and indicate how many copies you require and in which language. (Please note that this issue of FMR will be distributed to our usual mailing list; if you usually receive FMR, you do not need to request it unless you require multiple copies.)

We encourage you to circulate or reproduce any articles in their entirety but please cite http://www.fmreview.org/climatechange.htm

We would like to thank the following for their generous funding and support of this issue: United Nations Environment Programme, the Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs, GTZ/German Federal Ministry for Economic Co-operation and Development and the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

Details of future issues of FMR are at www.fmreview.org/forthcoming.htm. The next two will include features on ‘statelessness’ and ‘protracted displacement situations’.

More about the cover image...

Stanislav Ashmarin is a Russian cartoonist. His original drawing came to our attention because it was listed as having won a prize, (read the story).

We tracked Stanislav down and wrote to ask for permission to use the cartoon for FMR. He readily said yes. When our colleagues and advisors suggested ways in which the cartoon might be altered to be more closely applicable to climate change and forced migration, Stanislav again graciously allowed us to do so.

The picture that we put onto the computer screen might be recognisable to long-standing readers of FMR – it was the cover image on FMR20, back in May 2004.

 

The latest research from the Refugee Studies Centre, Protecting environmentally
displaced people
, is based on evidence collected in four exemplar countries – Kenya, Bangladesh, Ghana and Vietnam. The overall aim of the study was to investigate the capacity of national legal frameworks to protect and mediate the rights of people vulnerable to environmental displacement induced by climate change.

You may also be interested in the Refugee Studies Centre Policy Briefing Environmentally displaced people. This policy brief provides an incisive overview of environmentally induced displacement, arguing for a more nuanced analysis of the problem that moves beyond the discourse of ‘environmental refugees’ and which is based on concrete data, as well as calling for substantial reform of existing protection mechanisms to incorporate the environmentally displaced in a meaningful way.