How the World Is Learning to Respond Collectively to Climate Displacement

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CHAPTERS 

[00:01:15] Evolution of Global Displacement Policy 
[00:06:45] Climate Change Enters the Displacement Agenda (2004–2010)
[00:10:28] The Nansen Initiative and the Birth of the Platform on Disaster Displacement
[00:17:55] Lessons Learned: Bottom-Up Over Top-Down Approaches
[00:19:58] Navigating Declining Funding and Political Fragmentation
[00:24:30] Advice for the Next Generation

TRANSCRIPT
[00:00:03.540] - Julian Hattem

How can countries work together to keep people in their homes when natural disaster strikes and protect those who are displaced? It's a question that international leaders have struggled with for years. While there have been some successes along the way, there have also been challenges. This is Changing Climate, Changing Migration from the Migration Policy Institute. This podcast explores questions about the intersection between climate change and migration. I'm your host, Julian Hattem. And today we are exploring some of the international efforts to help countries manage displacement resulting from extreme weather and protect people. My guest today is Walter Kälin. He is a longtime humanitarian leader and human rights lawyer who spent years in the UN system. Currently, he is the envoy of the chair of the Platform on Disaster Displacement and he has previously served as a member of the UN Human Rights Committee and representative of the UN Secretary-General on the human rights of internally displaced persons, among many other roles. Walter, if I may, thank you so much for coming on the podcast today. It's great to have you.

[00:01:13.470] - Walter Kälin

Thank you so much.

[00:01:15.320] - Julian Hattem

So you have been reckoning with serious questions about displacement for roughly four decades. Uh, how has the global situation changed over your tenure, both in terms of displacement itself And how has the global community, how has the global community's response to that displacement changed over your time?

[00:01:35.080] - Walter Kälin

Well, I think displacement itself has not changed. It always has been a reality. There have been wars, civil wars, disasters, but up to the end of the Cold War, it was not really possible to talk about these issues at the global level. The discussion started in the early 1990s when the UN Human Rights Committee for the first time said, okay, internal displacement, it's happening. We have to put it on the international agenda. And they appointed a representative on internal displacement. This then led to the development of what is called the Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement. It's not a treaty, but it's a highly authoritative normative framework. So this was a step. But at that time, the focus really was on internal displacement in like the Balkans, South Caucasus, all these armed conflicts we had in the 1990s. It was only in 2004 when the Indian tsunami, Indian Ocean tsunami happened just after Christmas, that people really at the international level realized Okay, disastrous, that's not just something about feeding people, putting up some tents, evacuating them. It is a fact that natural hazards are displacing millions, tens of millions of people every year. But this was a discussion that was very much of relevance for humanitarian actors and humanitarian donors.

[00:03:18.990] - Walter Kälin

And there was, for instance, no talk about climate change and its adverse effects, sea level rise, droughts, all these kind of adverse effects and impacts of climate change. And it was only in 2010 that the states, the governments negotiating at one of the big conferences in Cancún in Mexico then adopted a very short paragraph, 3 lines, basically saying displacement, predominantly voluntary migration and planned relocation, are part of the challenge to adapt to global warming. So what has changed, as I said, is not so much the numbers. They are going up and down. But what has really changed is international attention and also the development of some of the normative frameworks. I mean, rules, provisions to protect these people, to help them, to assist. This is the big change.

[00:04:24.320] - Julian Hattem

And so if you— that's a great walk through history, thank you very much. Um, and but so if one has kind of only a narrow focus or has been in this space for less time, it's very easy to be defeatist, right? It's, you know, but if you zoom out, it sounds like your story is that, you know, the— in Is it the case that rights of displaced people and mechanisms to respond to them and forums to coordinate responses have improved over the years? I mean, it seems like this is a slow but steady story of progress, right? Is that fair?

[00:04:55.330] - Walter Kälin

Uh, that's very fair. I, I like that, a slow but steady progress. Of course, um, right now the world is not in its best shape, as we all know. So we'll see what will happen and maybe we can come back to the future. But one has to say that in the last 20 years or so, yes, 25 years, a lot of progress has been achieved. Of course, international documents, they are nice. But if they just stay on paper, well, then it's nice, but not more. And it doesn't really help people. But what is really encouraging is that Not everywhere, but in many countries, governments have made progress in terms of developing their own laws, their own institutions, their own capacities. What is encouraging is that in some regions they have come up with their own regional solutions. And what is also encouraging is that, yes, it's a topic that is on the international agenda. And without being on the international agenda, it's very difficult to get money from donors.

[00:06:05.620] - Julian Hattem

Yeah, we will talk about some of those money issues in a bit, certainly. But I mean, you get to kind of focus a bit more on the climate issue. You know, this podcast is about climate-linked displacement and mobility in particular, which, as you note, is a more recent concern over the last 20-ish years. You know, since 2004, 2010 especially were these big moments. I guess what happened? Why, why did the world— why has the world come together over the last 15 to 25 years kind of to pay more attention to the ramifications of climate change as a driver of displacement and other types of mobility? Is it simply that climate-related disasters are getting worse and are unavoidable, or what happened? What's the change?

[00:06:52.130] - Walter Kälin

Well, there are different, um, different, different elements, different also processes that led to at least some progress. It's certainly not sufficient, but as we said, there is some progress made. What is important is first the work of scientists, the International Panel on Climate Change. They started to look at the social impacts of global warming. And they came up with, yeah, simply findings and predictions that the number of people who will be forced to move because of impacts of global warming, such as sea level rise, droughts, etc. Tropical storms will increase. Second, the affected communities, the affected communities and their needs. For instance, if you're looking at the Horn of Africa where we had so many droughts since 2012 in Somalia alone, we had 3 periods of very serious drought. The first one amounting to famine and millions were displaced. Of course, that's a challenge. And this also helped to put the issue on the agenda. And the third element affected countries that came together. If you take the Pacific Island countries, very active. Most recently, we had this advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice on climate change and international law. How did it start?

[00:08:31.240] - Walter Kälin

A bunch of law students in Vanuatu said, why don't we go to the International Court of Justice and ask the court to tell us what obligations of states are under international law? Of course, it was not that easy, but the whole process got to what we have now. Big success in terms of clarifying many of the questions. It was a state's particularly in the Pacific, but also in other parts of the world, who came together and raised the issue at the climate change conferences, at the COPs, saying, well, this is not just about adapting to climate change. This is about loss and damage. If people are displaced, they can't go back. It's a loss. And someone has to pay for it. And it's not us. The whole climate change issues. And then I think we as PDD also can take some credit because we have really started to advocate for the issue, to put it on the agenda across all the relevant policy silos.

[00:09:46.750] - Julian Hattem

I want to talk about that in your current role in particular. So May 2026, marks 10 years, right, since the creation of the Platform on Disaster Displacement, which grew out of something called the Nansen Initiative. I mean, tell me more about what role the platform plays in coordinating responses to disaster displacement. I guess, how do you do it? What do you do? And how have those, those factors that you talked about, that the science, the affected communities, the national governments that have been more active in paying attention and getting the world to pay attention to the mobility and displacement ramifications of climate change. How have they impacted and presumably supported your work?

[00:10:29.550] - Walter Kälin

Okay, a little bit of history again. I like history. But it's relevant in this case. I already mentioned that in Cancún 2010, negotiators adopted this short 3 or 4 line paragraph acknowledging that displacement, migration, planned relocation are part of the challenge to adapt to climate change. But then the question was where to take it from there, because negotiators, these are ministers of environment, ministers of finance, foreign ministries. These are not people who know a lot about the issue of displacement. So in 2011, the then High Commissioner for Refugees, António Guterres, the present Secretary-General of the UN, put it on the agenda of UNHCR, the United Nations High Commissioner's Office for Refugees, because it was the 60th anniversary of the 1951 Refugee Convention. And at the ministerial meeting, he asked governments to give green light so they could start to really discuss how to transform that general kind of statement into operational realities. What was the response by states? No, no, niet, in all languages. States were not ready to discuss it within the framework of the UN at that time. It was too sensitive for different reasons. And it was at that time that Norway and Switzerland stood up and said, "Okay, let's take it out of the UN.

[00:12:24.490] - Walter Kälin

Let's try to build consensus. Let's go to affected regions and discuss with governments, but also with affected communities." and see whether we can try to build, reach consensus on what needs to be done. And then we can bring it back to the UN. And this is what the Nansen Initiative did. Regional consultations, the outcome, a document that was called the Nansen Protection Agenda, outlining exactly what could be done. Also identifying already existing good practices, a document that was endorsed by 109 states. And they then, for instance, these states brought it to the Paris COP, where the Paris Agreement was adopted. And the decision also set up a task force on displacement and climate change. And it was then that the government started to take it seriously within the climate change negotiations. Also at that time, And this was also what the Nansen Initiative PDD did. In 2015, we had the big conference in Sendai in Japan to adopt a new framework on disaster risk reduction. And disaster risk reduction traditionally was something for engineers to simplify. Stronger roofs, thicker walls, dams, et cetera. And our members, because the Nansen Initiative was not an NGO thing, it was a platform with around almost 20 states from north, south, all the different regions, kind of representing their regions and the problems faced by these regions.

[00:14:15.650] - Walter Kälin

They started really to negotiate hard. It was difficult to get human mobility displacement into this Sendai Framework on Disaster Risk Reduction. Because that's very important to prevent reduction, but then also disaster management, what to do when people are displaced. So what we basically did then at the end of the Nansen Initiative and when it became the Platform on Disaster Displacement was to frame messages and feed them into relevant international processes. Also, for instance, migration, there was 2018, the adoption of the Global Compact on Migration. And again, our government governments together with others managed to really anchor migration displacement protection against being sent back, opening migration pathways for people affected by climate change impacts. All of that is in the document and it was these, these efforts. So there was kind of a first phase, but we also started to work very closely with regional organizations. For instance, the Pacific region, in '23 adopted a Pacific regional framework on climate mobility. And we have been supporting this process because we had good relations going back to our first regional consultation on Cook Islands. We were asked, for instance, by IGAD, that's a regional organization for the Horn of Africa.

[00:15:49.450] - Walter Kälin

They were developing a Protocol on the Free Movement of Persons, a binding treaty. It's not yet enforced. But this is free movement of persons, this is economic. Workers should go where there is work, these kind of things. But they asked us to help them to draft an article that would allow people to move across borders in anticipation of, during, and in the aftermath of disasters, particularly drought. And other regions in the Americas, it was very much about harmonizing their laws. They do have laws that allow for temporary protection or humanitarian visa. So to temporarily admit people who are displaced across borders, but it needs to be harmonized and lots of efforts have been made. They have started to learn from each other. We have conducted cross-border simulation exercises. Things like that, which then turn into standard operating procedures. We have done the same thing in the Horn of Africa. And then kind of the last element besides framing and feeding messages into international processes, supporting regional developments. The last one is providing technical assistance to states who ask for that. Panama, for instance, is in the process of developing a law on internal displacement. That, I mean, they don't have an armed conflict.

[00:17:23.680] - Walter Kälin

This is about people displaced in the context of disasters and climate change impact. And they asked us to help them to draft that. This is just one of the examples. So yeah, quite a lot of activities.

[00:17:36.920] - Julian Hattem

That's a great tour de force. Thank you very much for that tour d'horizon. I guess what have you learned? You talk about countries learning from each other. What have you, what has the PDD learned about helping countries to better prevent, prepare for, and respond to disaster displacement?

[00:17:55.640] - Walter Kälin

Well, what we have learned is, and that's a little bit unlike how international actors usually work, they work top-down. You adopt something in a big conference room somewhere, and then you expect states to act. What you have learned is, Bottom-up processes are important. You have to go to listen to what the situation is, how people perceive it, how they see the challenges, also what the capacities are, but also what the gaps are. And then bring it up, then to link it to the international processes. I think that's a very, very important learning we had. Second, what we also have learned is the real action is not happening at the global level. It's happening at regional levels. And that's also, I think, important just now in these present times and under the present conditions.

[00:18:58.200] - Julian Hattem

That is a great segue. I do want to talk about the present conditions. I mentioned at the top that it's easy to be defeatist. That's especially the case now, right? If you look globally, financial support and political support for a range of humanitarian issues, including disaster displacement in general, but also particularly disaster displacement, that's been sharply reduced over the last couple of years. And yet, you know, obviously the impacts of climate change are growing. Displacement has in recent years risen, needs are on the rise. I guess as you look to the future, how is it possible to both rally international support to enhance preparedness, bolster responses, develop solutions, in the case of declining funding and rising climate threats? Or I guess in other words, how can you maintain the relevance of something like the Platform on Disaster Displacement and other international coordination efforts at a time when many countries seem to be going their own way?

[00:19:54.080] - Walter Kälin

Well, I guess if I had the answer, I would become very famous because it is difficult times. It is very difficult times. However, I might have elements of an answer, meaning what is under the present conditions maybe not the best, but an optimal or also possible strategy. And it's three keywords. The first one is minilateralism. The political tensions between countries, between regions of the world are so high that achieving a lot at, be it the UN or be it big international conferences, has become so difficult. But what can be done is building coalitions of the like-minded. And like-minded, I think, in this context has to be states that share a common analysis of what the challenges are, states, both from the Global South and the Global North, and then come together and see what is possible. Where have we windows of opportunities? What can we do? The second is regionalization. First, the dynamics of displacement are very different from one region to another. I mean, you're not really displaced from a small Pacific island when the big tropical storm hits this place to another country because the other next country is 500 miles away. So if you're looking at the Pacific Regional Framework, it talks much more about instruments that allow people to migrate before harm hits them, to move out of harm's way in anticipation.

[00:21:55.100] - Walter Kälin

If you're looking at Central America, small countries, all very disaster-prone, and there is a tropical storm and you're living quite close to the border, then of course you go to the next country. So it is about admission in the case during the disaster of people who are displaced by the disaster admission to another country. So this is, as I said, about humanitarian visa, about providing temporary protection, very, very different from like the Pacific in terms of the big challenges. But regional organizations not only are able to better respond to their challenges and the dynamics, it's also much easier to achieve consensus because they experience the same challenges. And the third is localization. Localization is we should invest much, much more in building the structures, the institutions, and the capacities of national governments, of local governments, but also of communities to deal with what is affecting them. And again, there are very good examples We in the Global North have a tendency always to talk about vulnerable people, victims, and we have to go and help them. But these are people who are in charge of their lives. They have experiences, they have their own knowledge.

[00:23:30.660] - Walter Kälin

They need support, financial support. And very often, yeah, it is about lack of capacities and we can help to build those capacities. But then to have local actors National actors at the forefront, that's not only cheaper, it's also more efficient. So as I said, minilateralism, regionalization, localization, these are for me elements of a possible strategy.

[00:23:59.880] - Julian Hattem

That's, that's very helpful and I guess surprisingly optimistic, I guess, uh, which is always lovely to hear. Um, we are almost out of time, but I wanted to let you have one last As I mentioned at the top, you've been in this space for a while now. If you are speaking to the next generation, I guess what words of advice would you offer, especially facing a world in which the repercussions of climate change are becoming more extreme and the international support is becoming a bit more fractured?

[00:24:30.710] - Walter Kälin

Okay, when you said I'm rather optimistic, I'm not. But what I would tell the next generation is: Don't give up. Even in difficult situations, think about what possible strategies could be possible, what possible strategies you could adopt, and then work on them. My own experience, not only with this climate change thing, with other issues and topics I've done in my life, When I'm starting to get engaged with something new, my horizon is always 10 years, a decade. And in a decade, much can happen. And I mean, Nansen is a good example in that sense. We started 2012 and it's, yeah, it took a while till we got at least these normative instruments. A big challenge, of course, now is really implementation. But even when it comes to funding, I mean, situations might change. That's one advice. Don't give up, even if you feel we're in a bad, bad situation. But then also think out of the box. What we did back then with the Nansen Initiative, and this was not me, it was, as I said, a group of states who said, let's take it out of the UN. That's not what's usually happening.

[00:25:59.690] - Walter Kälin

It's not what's usually happening that from the beginning on they said, we shouldn't just look at climate change. We also have to look at migration. We have to look at disaster risk reduction. We have to look at so many different things, which was at that time quite, quite new. Now it's much more mainstreamed as something that needs to be done. And then Get inspired by what people do in affected countries and regions. From the bottom, small local community, up to the regional governments or traditional leaders, up to national governments. And you might find quite a lot of good practices, and then you can build on them. Because the big challenge is always not to identify good practices, they exist everywhere. Even in the worst of situations, but then to scale them up. And that's where you simply need to be persistent, not to give up, and see the light at the end of the tunnel, or at least to hope to see that light at the end of the tunnel.

[00:27:11.250] - Julian Hattem

That is a lovely note to end on. Um, thank you so much for your time, Walter. I really appreciate it. This has been a great discussion.

[00:27:17.920] - Walter Kälin

Thank you.

[00:27:19.520] - Julian Hattem

Walter Kälin is Envoy of the Chair of the Platform on Disaster Displacement. Thank you for tuning in to Changing Climate, Changing Migration. If you liked this conversation, please make sure to subscribe to the podcast so that you stay on top of all of our upcoming episodes, and please leave us a nice review. Scroll through our archives to find conversations with dozens of experts on climate change and migration. We're trying to cover every facet of the nexus between climate change and human mobility, so please check out our growing a growing range of topics. You can find all of MPI's podcasts online at migrationpolicy.org/podcasts. And while you're on the site, please subscribe to the free twice-a-month Migration Information Source newsletter. It features a range of accessible, engaging analysis about migration issues worldwide. And of course, follow MPI on social media to keep tabs on our latest publications, events, and insights. This episode of Changing Climate, Changing Migration was produced by Daniella Espacio. Michelle Mittelstadt provided editorial oversight, and Lisa Dixon offered additional assistance. Our theme music is "Touch" by Patrick Patrikios. Until next time, my name is Julian Hattem. Thanks again for listening.