Climate Change and Environmental Migration: View from the IOM

This transcript was generated using AI and may contain inaccuracies. If you notice an error, feel free to email [email protected].

CHAPTERS

[00:01:29]: IOM’s (International Organization for Migration) Migration, Environment and Climate Change Division: role and priorities 

[00:04:09]: Defining environmental migration: scope, complexity, and terminology 

[00:11:27]: Global frameworks shaping climate and migration policy 

[00:14:39]: Building resilience: preparing communities for climate risks 

[00:16:40]: Regions facing climate-related migration pressures 

[00:20:02]: Regional examples: West Africa, the Pacific, and Central America  

TRANSCRIPT

[00:00:02.14] 

Hi there. Welcome back to another episode of Changing Climate, Changing Migration. This is the podcast from the Migration Policy Institute about how climate change is affecting migration. I'm Julian Hattem, I'm your host and I'm also the editor of MPI's online journal, the Migration Information Source. This podcast is being produced as part of our special focus on climate change and migration, which you can find more about online at migrationpolicy.org/climate. One of the biggest players in international migration is the UN's migration agency, the International Organization for Migration. The IOM has a whole division dedicated to migration, environment and climate change, which just recently got a new head, whose name is Manuel Marques Pereira. Manuel took over the division after previously serving with the IOM in Bangladesh where he was the Deputy Chief of Mission and Emergency Coordinator for the Rohingya crisis. And I am incredibly happy to say that he has agreed to come on the podcast today to talk about how he sees IOM's role in this area and what his priorities are. Manuel, thank you so much for coming on.

[00:01:10.08] 

Good afternoon. It's a pleasure being here. Thank you so much for having me.

[00:01:13.21] 

So let's start with some of the institutional basics. As of September, I believe you are the new head of the Migration, Environment and Climate Change Division at IOM. And what does that mean? What's the history of this division and what function does it serve within the broader IOM system?

[00:01:29.11] 

Thank you. It's a very interesting question and I'm learning the ropes of the trade. IOM has been confronted with climate change quite early on on these conversations due to our relation, our involvement in migration. So since 2007, the member states of IOM requested within the governing bodies that, you know, we work on the relations between migration, environment and climate change. It was very early on push for different member states, of course, with different perspectives to do that. And so in 2015, IOM established this division to address this nexus. It was established essentially as a division to connect the leadership of IOM, policy, evidence building, but also operational activities reflecting the relevance, the interest activities and partners in this connection and nexus between migration, environmental and climate changes. Right. It's very important to us that we strengthen the increase of the relevance of environment and climate change induced migration in the international and national policy agendas. The world is changing. Climate change is now on the forefront of the political agenda, but there are very significant challenges that are posed to individuals worldwide that need to be reflected in policy agendas. Also, IOM has a vast network of partners.

[00:03:04.13] 

The extended cooperation between its partners and this multilaterality of our activity is also one of the objectives of the organization creating this momentum. You know, the coalition of the willing to discuss some of these challenges. And also one of the things that we look to foster is increase the number of activities that have a migration, environment and climate change focus and components at the very operational level with communities. You know, we work directly with communities, but also with member states and civil society and private sector. So engaging directly with them on activities are another aspect. And these are the three main line of activities of the division.

[00:03:54.02] 

That's interesting. And so I believe IOM uses the phrase environmental migration and environmental migrants to talk about this connection. Right. What's the value? Why is it important to have a specific term like that? And what does that phrase mean?

[00:04:09.03] 

Well, the phrase is trying to encompass a very complex, interrelated and broad scope understanding of how environmental transformations and climate transformations are conditioning, speeding, slowing, inhibiting or enabling human mobility. Right? And so we see more and more that environmental and climactic factors in influence the population movements and IOM has for that effect had to create this very broad definition that reflects these diversities. We did not want to condition human mobility to a specific characteristic. Right? It's environmental migration can be forced or voluntary, temporary or permanent, individual or collective, of proximity or of distance, internal and sometimes even international. Right? But at the same time, slow onset processes as sea level rise, land degradation can contribute to increase rural urban migration and more permanent forms of migration because there is less livelihoods or living conditions are more difficult to those individuals leading them to migrate. But also, you know, it's more frequently seen in the news. We have disasters such as the impacts of cyclones or floods in very vulnerable population that trigger faster, sudden and very large at times movements that can be very short in time. When, for example, we have exercises of evacuating people out of harm's way.

[00:05:57.20] 

In many countries that suffer from monsoon cyclonic storms and or short distance displacement where people move from one community to the other depending on the seasonality of the weather patterns. So it's this complexity. We wanted to have a very broad definition too. And it's, you know, a reflection also on how humanity, which is essentially a moving mass, has always sought better climatic conditions and adjusted to environmental change and disasters. We have for a very long time ignored environmental drivers on migration policy discussions and legal responses, compared for example, with conflict, violence or poverty. But the entire understanding of how the planet is changing by our influence, the so called Anthropocene, the era of transformations by men, has to have also a body of law that accommodates these, these transformations. And so to us is very important, as the UN Migration Agency, that we enable that the conversations around people on the move include these environmental impacts and these climate change stressors or these climate change enablers. Is very important that policy responds to the needs of individuals. IOM at a very large scale, works across mobility, supporting people that are on the move for one reason or the other, supporting individuals that that need to move, but also supporting individuals that want to stay.

[00:07:48.22] 

And this arc of mobility is one of the main reasons of the existence of MECC and is actually reflected on the institutional strategy that we will launch this year and that covers the next decade to synchronize with climate change and sustainable development agenda and how all of these also interacts with the social economical development, the SDGs, a series of conversations that currently exist so that we are better able to understand complexity and multicausality of migration and have adequate responses to the same.

[00:08:30.01] 

I think that's interesting, the complexity, the multi causality. You talk about the broad definition. I mean, is it the case that someone who is a quote unquote environmental migrant can also be a quote unquote labor migrant or a family migrant? Can people move for multiple reasons at the same time? And also, I guess, how do you feel? There's been some talk. I know you're IOM, not UNHCR or a refugee agency, but there's talk about this phrase climate refugees. How do you feel about that term?

[00:08:56.09] 

Well, I think that what is important is find the space to have a serious conversation on how we support individuals on their mobility. Right. It's a matter of choice. As I said before, our scope of work tries to highlight there are people that are on the move, there are people that want to move and people that want to stay. Ensuring that policies exist to support these choices. What's more relevant to us? Of course, the division within IOM highlights these environmental and climate change points, but that only complements the rest of the of the organization. So labor mobility is one of them. For example, in many European countries, for very large periods of their history, seasonal mobility for labor was a very recognized fact. Right. People that would go for harvests between different areas of the country according with the seasons and have a specific task on these farming activities. But it was all geared up according with the weather calendar and the year calendar. Right. And if the weather changes, this calendar would adjust. If the rain would come, the harvest would be faster so that they would need labor earlier on. So it's these interconnections that some point in time we have forgotten when we transit from rural to urban, at least global perspective of cities and these patterns have changed a bit our own behavior.

[00:10:39.04] 

So I think to us having this broader understanding of choice for mobility and being conscious that our interventions in the global environment may trigger and stress further consequences and we need to be realistic is the priority.

[00:10:59.19] 

You mentioned a new institutional strategy. I won't make you go through all of that right now, although if you want to offer a preview, I'm glad to take it. I'm being. But I guess can you offer in kind of. Or can you talk about in broad terms what role IOM and your division within IOM plays in kind of the broader global conversation? What kind of policies or frameworks are you hoping to advance and I guess also crucially, how do you advance them and what is your modus operandi, so to speak?

[00:11:27.04] 

Well, I think that one of the things that climate change is known for, or at least is the complexity, right? This cross cuttingness of the thematic touches many points. If we focus on migration and mobility, we have the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration that has climate change as one of its priorities, where all the stakeholders are effectively trying to think out mobility through the angle of climate change. It's a first ever negotiated global framework on migration, recognizes that migration in the context of climate change and environmental degradation or disasters is a reality and starts by making commitments to support climate migrants and states to cope with this evolution. But it's not alone, right? IOM is a part of the follow up of different other frameworks. The Paris Agreement on Climate Change also acknowledge human rights of migrants and urge states to respond, respect them when taking climate action. We have the SENDAI Framework for Disaster Risk reduction, also from 2015 that was adopted in that year in which states highlighted displacement as a consequence of disasters. IOM has a very large global footprint on emergency response, mainly one of the things that we are known to intervene in supporting states across the world.

[00:12:59.08] 

So we have a significant global presence also in supporting disaster risk reduction at community level. There is the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, also adopted in 2015, that when talking about climate action, enforces that there should also be safe and regular migration as one area. And lately, or most lately, in 2017 the Human Rights Council adopted a resolution that addressed human rights for environmental migrants. And thus with all the global developments, IOM continues to advance regional, national and local implementation of these frameworks and bringing to the table the voice of the migrants and the communities that are facing challenges vis a vis the global situation. And we use those voices in our technical expertise assisting member states to to pass recommendations and to try to help advance these policies and the protection of these individual in many different forms. It can be on migration policies that acknowledge drivers of migration. It can be, you know, these policies can, for example, include humanitarian visas, labor migration schemes, internal displacement policies, immigration acts and many others, including the Global Compact of Migration implementation plans. But it can also be from a more technical point of view, when there are climate change policies that acknowledge migration as a consequence of climate change, but also as an adaptation strategy in face of the same.

[00:14:43.14] 

The policies may be included as part of the national adaptation plans and strategies or the national determined contributions or communications to the United Nations FCCC. Right. But if you go to a more direct work, the disaster risk reduction policies and work that is done, understanding that displacement and migrations are a consequence of the disasters created by natural hazards, we then work on disaster risk reduction, disaster risk management planning and strategies to help communities cope with this variation and with the changes that such events bring and how that relates to development. Resilient communities and communities prepared in which governance and the infrastructures of those communities allows them to cope with the impacts of exacerbated hazards or slow on set events, is very important to retain developmental gains. And so in countries that are specifically and very vulnerable to changes in climate, it's more and more important to work pro development, pro disaster risk reduction, supporting these communities, not to lose the development gains that have been made over the last few years if we all want to gear up to the 2030 agenda.

[00:16:20.17] 

So I want to talk about preparing for the future and that's a good segue, I guess. To what extent is the work that you're doing now as we believe climate change is accelerating as some of these threats you talked about and these crises become more pronounced and more regularized? How much of your work is preparing for an increasingly climate extreme, environmentally extreme future? And do you believe that countries particularly you talked about countries that are particularly vulnerable to impacts of climate change. Do you think that they are taking the recommendations, moving in ways that are beneficial to this future? And also I guess what countries in particular or what regions of the world are we talking about that are particularly vulnerable? These small island states or some desert countries?

[00:17:02.04] 

Well, let's start by preparing for the future and what that means. The last report of the IPCC is very clear, right? The ways in which climate change or environmental change will affect people in communities in the future is going to be massively influenced by the choices we make. Today, the urgency of COP26 and the conversations we are having is essentially that national and international commitments to mitigate climate change, reduce ecosystems pressures, investing in adaptation and risk reduction while promoting more equitable and resilient societies has the potential to drive us in a very different pathway way vis a vis these projections. And we need to make these investments on ensuring that we are reducing the vulnerabilities. A lot of these is multilateral action, right? The north south complementarity and support the intra regional cooperation of member states and the lands internally of the countries towards their situation. It's a significant requirement of interaction of all of these pieces for us to be successful in the future commitment from the countries we have. I think the Paris Agreement and the seriousness that has been transposed in the following cops and now to the COP26 elevates the political interest of all the countries.

[00:18:40.12] 

If we then are able to move on the ground, that is where the work will be more challenging, right? For example, at the regional level we need stronger dialogs and governance to facilitate policy coherence between the relevant frameworks. We cannot have a country adopting a policy in the region suffering from the same threats and another country having a completely different understanding. One of the works to prepare to the future is having this global, more broader vision of how we are all interconnected. Climate change is a global problem, is not an individual problem. There are countries more at risk, they are more exposed to hazards, but no country, wherever they are in the world, is above that. I think that as you pointed, small island states by their geographic nature are particularly at stress. We have countries on the fringes of the large tropical areas of the world that suffer from monsoons that are also extremely vulnerable. Let's talk about cyclones and how cyclones and floods will affect them. But the slow onset and water scarcity in desertic areas that is then augmented by deforestation, desertification will continue to be a concern to all of us.

[00:20:12.15] 

Or the melting of the snow caps in parts of Europe and in America there's many different forms where the global climate is being changed and it affects many countries. The melting of glaciers can affect multi countries depending on where the glacier drains and droughts have impacts. Let's take the case of Africa across different countries. And the pastoralist communities that move and are mobile between these different countries are impacted by these large extents of droughts and ecological degradation. So I think it's very much a global challenge, a multilateral requirement. I'm an environmental engineer, so I think the thinking locally, well, thinking globally, acting local, applies also to These questions because it's the individual, the household, the community, the country as, as a planet that needs to be involved on this, working towards the future and acting now. I think there are, and I don't know if you want to do a segue to these particular regions that have extra challenges.

[00:21:34.09] 

Which regions, which countries have particular challenges? I mean, you came from Bangladesh, you spent a lot of time in South Asia. That's one place people talk about.

[00:21:41.14] 

Yes, well, Bangladesh is actually a particular country. I would highlight that the countries of the Asia Pacific are countries due to their own weather patterns that have a significant challenge and they have particular concerns to us. Bangladesh, for example, is a country that is crossed by more than 300 rivers. Is a country the large coastal area low laying. So sea level rise, massive flooding and recurrent cyclones put 165 million people and 1.1 million refugees as at an exacerbated risk. But the same is repeated in the Philippines and other countries across Asia. And then we have the small island states of the Pacific that we all know are with the sea level rise at extended risk. I can give one further example because IOM is working in, in different areas and with different partners and especially for the Pacific, it has to be a broader perspective. We work with an alliance of countries in the Pacific to look at disaster displacement and we work with the Displacement Monitoring center and the platform on Disaster Displacement to try and generate evidence to better plan, prevent and respond to disaster displacement in the Pacific. At the same time, we also work in Africa with the government of France, with support of the government of France and the states in West Africa in trying to minimize displacement and facilitate regular migration pathways in the context of disasters, climate change and environmental degradation.

[00:23:37.06] 

Because the last Groundwell report said that more than 50 million internal climate migrants can be or potentially predicted in West Africa by 2050. It's a region with a long history of human mobility that has these seasonal migrant workers, pastoralists and displacement due to floods and droughts, coastal erosion and land degradation or water scarcity. So this broader understanding and trying to advance this agenda is a priority to IOM. But there are others. The Horn of Africa, in the IGAD region, you know, we keep working. And we have also a joint program that is supported by the Migration Multi Partner Trust Fund that supports seven. I got member states to tackle the adverse impacts of climate change on human mobility is all around this broader large vision that we have about human mobility. And in the Americans, you know, the, the dry corridor, which is the. How to say these. The climatological region in Central America. It has a very large risk of drought and where the droughts are sometimes longer than four months, it covers a very large part of Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua and to a certain point a smaller part of Costa Rica.

[00:25:02.20] 

So this is a multi country, very large area with a very similar pattern that will influence human mobility and live a bit in the region.

[00:25:13.22] 

Basically. Have time for one more question, but I want to come back to you and your new rule. You just started a couple weeks ago, I guess. What are you hoping to achieve during your time as the head of MECC, the Migration, Environment Climate Change Division. And how do you think the global conversation about environmental migration, as we have just discussed it, is going to change over that term or over the next six years? Right. The divisions established in 2015, what will happen over the next six years, six years from now?

[00:25:40.12] 

Well, that's a tough one. I think my first goal is continue to contribute to these multi tiered approach of IOM. I'm going to go back to this helping people on the move, people that want to move and people that want to stay, ensuring that the organization continues to support choice, one of those choices and weather is motivated by an imminent disaster. And I've done a lot of my career in IOM in disaster response. I feel that throughout many countries where I passed, the governance and the systems that those communities had make a very large difference in their capacity to sustain and bounce of a disaster. Right. I have worked in supporting governments to be prepared to disasters from a displacement management point of view. And I've responded to displacement, helping manage displacement, pose an event in both situations. And I'm a very strong believer on the leadership role that communities and governments have to have in disaster response and the preparedness. So one of my goals is to transit all that work of emergency that IOM does into the language of climate change adaptation and preparedness. Because it's important that people recognize that all the efforts made to respond to disasters with aggravation of weather patterns will probably become much, much more recurrent.

[00:27:17.06] 

And we do not have global capacity or financing to do that. If not for other reason, the then to save lives. There has to be the imperative of helping communities to be prepared to what is to come. And I'm going to try as much as I can to ensure that we pass that message to the people that we work with, our partners, our stakeholders and try inside IOM to give this vision that we can contribute for climate action. Irrespectively of where is the field of work of each of my colleagues in this house because climate action nowadays intersects all the areas of work of IOM. We just need a common strengthen our common narrative. And I think that's one of the big things that we have to do. We have the operations, we have the resources, we have the people we now need to adjust and have the language that reflects these and pass it. Because it's important that communities and member states are able to articulate in country and in the global forums their concerns, their voices, their problems so that together we can work towards resolution of the same.

[00:28:32.15] 

That's great. Okay, that's about all we have time for, but this was such a great conversation. Manuel, thank you so much for spending time with me today.

[00:28:39.00] 

My pleasure.

[00:28:41.20] 

Manuel Marques Pereira is the recently appointed Head of the Division of Migration, Environment and Climate Change at the IOM. Thanks so much for listening to this episode of Changing Climate, Changing Migration. If you enjoyed this episode, I hope you will subscribe to the podcast and please give us a rating which makes it easier for other people to find us. We're on all the major podcast services and you can also go through our archives online at migrationpolicy.org/podcasts. To read some special analysis of climate change and migration, check out our dedicated collection of articles at migrationpolicy.org/climate and while you're there, you should subscribe to the Migration Information Source newsletter to get fresh analysis and data on international migration delivered straight to your inbox twice per month. And if you'd like, you can send me an email at [email protected] I'd love to hear your feedback and anything else you want to say. This episode was produced by Yoseph Hamid and made possible with the assistance of Lisa Dixon. Our theme music is called Touch by Patrick Patrikios. My name is Julian Hattem. Thank you again for listening.