Update on Environmentally Displaced Persons

It has been a while since my last update here and I intend to do something about it now. There have been many interesting things happening around the world on the issue of environmentally displaced persons. A side-event at the climate change conference in Poznan dealt with the issue, so did a conference hosted by the Refugees Studies Centre in Oxford in the beginning of January, the Parliamentary Assembly in the Council of Europe debated the issue and more.

Climate Change and displacement in Poznan

The side event “Climate change, migration and forced displacement: the new humanitarian frontier?” was hosted by the UNHCR and gathered many of the leading experts on the topic. You can find the video from the conference and some of the papers presented on the conference here.

Furthermore, the High Commissioner for Refugees, António Guterres, seems to have followed up on the issue by including comments related to it in an address the Security Council on 8 January 2009 and stated that:

“Conflict, climate change and extreme deprivation will inter-relate, strengthening each other as a cause of displacement”

Various conferences on the topic

• Conference hosted at the Oxford – The Refugees Studies Centre in Oxford and International Migration Institute hosted a conference around the same topic in the first week of January. I have not found any conference papers yet, but you can read more about the details here.
• Conference on climate change and displacement 20 January in The Hague - This week in the Netherlands, an event on the issue was conducted by the Society for International Development (SID), read more about it here. The author of the report “Climate Change, Migration and Displacement, Vikram Odedra Kolmannskog of the Norwegian Refugee Council and Franck Lazcko (IOM) was two of the key note speakers.  
• Conference in the US in February - The topic is “Global responses to ecomigration and environmental disasters: the role of US and International Policy” hosted by Fordham University School of Law, publishers of the Fordham Environmental Law Review. It seems quite interesting and you can more about here.

Blog on forced migration

I can also recommend you this very good blog. It is more frequently updated than my own, but it covers much broader topics related to forced migration.

Recent news, papers and presentations on the issue

The increasing interest in the subject of environmental displacement has really increased the number of conferences, papers and news related to the topic, just in the past few months. Here are just a few of the things that recently has been published:

• The Council of Europe debated a resolution in the Parliamentary Assembly right before christmas on the topic of Environmentally induced migration and displacement: a 21st century challenge.

• Anthony Oliver-Smith of the United Nations University just put his presentation on Displacements and Diasporas: Human Rights, Global Climate Change and Forced Migration in the 21st Century.

• Asia/Pacific: High tides, floods, storms force islanders to displacement. Much good research on the effects of natural disasters in this region.

• The climate change – displacement nexus, by Walter Kälin, Representative of the Secretary-General on the Human Rights of Internally Displaced Persons and Co-Director, Brookings-Bern Project on Internal Displacement.

Well, this is just some of the recent events that I have found, but if you have information about something else, please feel free to leave a comment on the blog or write directly to me.