Seminar on environmental migration and climate change

As part of the Migration and Development Series, IOM, UNITAR, UNFPA and the MacArthur Foundation will hold a seminar entitled "Environment Migration and Climate Change" at UNHQ in New York on 20 April 2010. As the number of extreme weather events has doubled over the past 20 years, from 200 to more than 400 a year, this seminar will look holistically at the role of sudden-onset disasters (storms, floods) as well as slow-onset environmental changes (desertification, droughts, land degradation, water scarcity) in propelling both internal and international migration.

Spanning the responsibilities of a range of actors and fields of intervention– from humanitarian assistance and disaster preparedness to climate change adaptation and sustainable development– the linkages between migration and the environment need to be better understood and mainstreamed into existing assessment and strategic planning tools.

Beyond speculative and sometimes alarmist scenarios of mass movements due to climate change, this one-day seminar aims to present a nuanced picture of the interrelations between migratory decisions and environmental degradation, and to raise awareness of the international legal instruments and policy tools that exist and will be needed to address the challenges posed by disaster displacement and environmentally driven migration.