Displacement Development And Climate Change

This book focuses on three institutions: the United Nations High Commission for Refugees, the United Nations Development Programme and the International Organization for Migration.

This book focuses on one critical challenge: climate change. Climate change is predicted to lead to an increased intensity and frequency of natural disasters. An increase in extreme weather events, global temperatures and higher sea levels may lead to displacement and migration, and will affect many dimensions of the economy and society. Although scholars are examining the complexity and fragmentation of the climate change regime, they have not examined how our existing international development, migration and humanitarian organizations are dealing with climate change. Focusing on three institutions: the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, the International Organization for Migration and the United Nations Development Programme, the book asks: how have these inter-governmental organizations responded to climate change? And are they moving beyond their original mandates, given none were established with a mandate for climate change? It traces their responses to climate change in their rhetoric, policy, structure, operations and overall mandate change. Hall argues that international bureaucrats can play an important role in mandate expansion, often deciding whether and how to expand into a new issue-area and then lobbying states to endorse this expansion. They make changes in rhetoric, policy, structure and operations on the ground, and therefore forge, frame and internalize new issue-linkages. This book helps us to understand how institutions established in the 20th century are adapting to a 21st century world. It will be of great interest to scholars and students of International Relations, Development Studies, Environmental Politics, International Organizations and Global Governance, as well as international officials.

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 Inter-governmental 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 the 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 constructed. 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.

Displacements in the Asia Pacific region are escalating. The region has for decades experienced more than half of the world’s natural disasters and, in recent years, a disproportionately high share of extreme weather-related disasters, which displaced 19 million people in 2013 alone. This volume offers an innovative and thought-provoking Asia-Pacific perspective on an intensifying global problem: the forced displacement of people from their land, homes, and livelihoods due to development, disasters and environmental change. This book draws together theoretical and multidisciplinary perspectives with diverse case studies from around the region – including China’s Three Gorges Reservoir, Japan’s Fukushima disaster, and the Pacific’s Banaba resettlement. Focusing on responses to displacement in the context of power asymmetries and questions of the public interest, the book highlights shared experiences of displacement, seeking new approaches and solutions that have potential global application. This book shows how displaced peoples respond to interlinked impacts that unravel their social fabric and productive bases, whether through sporadic protest, organised campaigns, empowered mobility or; even community-based negotiation of resettlement solutions. . The volume will be of great interest to researchers and postgraduate students in development studies, environmental and climate change studies, anthropology, sociology, human geography, international law and human rights.

This timely text examines the causes and consequences of population displacement related to climate change in the recent past, the present, and the near future. First and foremost, this book includes an examination of patterns of population displacement that have occurred or are currently underway. Second, the book introduces a three-tier framework for both understanding and responding to the public health impacts of climate-related population displacement. It illustrates the interrelations between impacts on the larger physical and social environment that precipitates and results from population displacement and the social and health impacts of climate-related migration. Third, the book contains first-hand accounts of climate-related population displacement and its consequences, in addition to reviews of demographic data and reviews of existing literature on the subject. Topics explored among the chapters include: Hurricane Katrina and New Orleans Hurricane Maria and Puerto Rico The California Wildfires Fleeing Drought: The Great Migration to Europe Fleeing Flooding: Asia and the Pacific Fleeing Coastal Erosion: Kivalina and Isle de Jean Charles Although the book is largely written from the perspective of a researcher, it reflects the perspectives of practitioners and policymakers on the need for developing policies, programs, and interventions to address the growing numbers of individuals, families, and communities that have been displaced as a result of short- and long-term environmental disasters. Global Climate Change, Population Displacement, and Public Health is a vital resource for an international audience of researchers, practitioners, and policymakers representing a variety of disciplines, including public health, public policy, social work, urban development, climate and environmental science, engineering, and medicine.

Displacements in the Asia Pacific region are escalating. The region has for decades experienced more than half of the world’s natural disasters and, in recent years, a disproportionately high share of extreme weather-related disasters, which displaced 19 million people in 2013 alone. This volume offers an innovative and thought-provoking Asia-Pacific perspective on an intensifying global problem: the forced displacement of people from their land, homes, and livelihoods due to development, disasters and environmental change. This book draws together theoretical and multidisciplinary perspectives with diverse case studies from around the region – including China’s Three Gorges Reservoir, Japan’s Fukushima disaster, and the Pacific’s Banaba resettlement. Focusing on responses to displacement in the context of power asymmetries and questions of the public interest, the book highlights shared experiences of displacement, seeking new approaches and solutions that have potential global application. This book shows how displaced peoples respond to interlinked impacts that unravel their social fabric and productive bases, whether through sporadic protest, organised campaigns, empowered mobility or; even community-based negotiation of resettlement solutions. . The volume will be of great interest to researchers and postgraduate students in development studies, environmental and climate change studies, anthropology, sociology, human geography, international law and human rights.

Climate change, sometimes thought of as a problem for the future, is already impacting people’s lives around the world: families are losing their homes, lands and livelihoods as a result of sea level rise, increased frequency and intensity of storms, drought and other phenomena. Following several years of preparatory work across the globe, legal scholars, judges, UN officials and climate change experts from 11 countries came together to finalise a new normative framework aiming to strengthen the right of climate-displaced persons, households and communities. This resulted in the approval of the Peninsula Principles on Climate Displacement within States in August 2013. This book provides detailed explanations and interpretations of the Peninsula Principles and includes in-depth discussion of the legal, policy and programmatic efforts needed to uphold the standards and norms embedded in the Principles. The book provides policy-makers with the conceptual understanding necessary to ensure that national-level policies are in place to respond to the climate displacement challenge, as well as a firm sense of the programme-level approaches that can be taken to anticipate, reduce and manage climate displacement. It also provides students and policy advocates with the necessary information to debate and critique responses to climate displacement at different levels. Drawing together key thinkers in the field, this volume will be of great relevance to scholars, lawyers, legal advisors and policy-makers with an interest in climate change, environmental policy, disaster management and human rights law and policy.

This book examines how states in eight countries across Asia and the Pacific address internal displacement in the context of disasters and climate change. The Asia and the Pacific region accounts for the majority of global disaster-related displacement, but the experience of the millions of individuals displaced differs according to gender, age, ethnicity, (dis)ability, caste, and so forth and is dependent on the legal, administrative, social, and economic structures and processes in place to support them. This book adopts a human rights-based approach, investigating the role of law and policy in preventing displacement, protecting people who are displaced, and engendering durable solutions across cases drawn from Thailand, Cambodia, Indonesia, the Philippines, Nepal, Bangladesh, Vanuatu, and the Solomon Islands. The specific cases in the book also reflect critically on the term ‘displacement’ and the wider normative framework within which this phenomenon is conceptualised and addressed. The book will be of interest to students, researchers, and practitioners working at the intersection of human rights, human mobility, development, disaster risk reduction and management, and climate change adaptation.