The European Union as well as some other environmental analysts and climatologists in the UK, USA and Canada have been carefully monitoring climate change and variability as an important global phenomenon. In this context the EU analysts have noted recently through their research that climate mobility necessitates strategic thinking about how people adapt to climate change and the role mobility can play in alleviating the adverse effects of climate change.
One has to appreciate their forthright assessment and observations. In this context they have not hesitated to make some interesting and frank comments.
They have pointed out that proactive thinking does not always come naturally to many political institutions, which may be preoccupied with advancing their policy agendas through short legislative cycles, gaining electoral support, or obtaining favourable outcomes in reform negotiations. This apparently is also the case for the European Union, where the age of perm crisis seems to be widening, rather than narrowing the gap between long-term priorities such as climate mobility and demographic change and the strategic thinking needed to confront such situations.
This scenario is apparently emerging despite a push by the Von der Leyen Commission to implement the European Green Deal created through her initiative. Many analysts are now observing that climate action is often accompanied by a sense that "not enough" is being done. The question of migration, on the other hand appears to be generating reactive and short-term responses and making it difficult to move beyond crises and deterministic predictions of future migration patterns.
Despite several agreements and disagreements, one must acknowledge that the European Commission has done a notable task of putting forward definition and explanation of certain terms - and these will help others to understand the denotations and connotations of each of them. It is also being hoped that this process will assist in finding the least common denominators.
The EU taskforce has drawn attention to the following:
" Climate mobility: The term 'climate mobility' is used to reflect the various ways in which climate change and human mobility interact. Climate mobility refers to different kinds of migratory movements, whether voluntary or forced, temporary or long-term and therefore encompasses a wide spectrum of mobility outcomes;
Climate-related displacement: Climate-related displacement refers to situations where people are forcibly displaced due to the impacts of climate change. Climate migration refers to situations where people move in part or largely because of sudden or progressive changes in the environment due to climate change;
Durable solutions: Can involve safe, voluntary return, local integration, or resettlement of refugees.
Gravity models: Gravity models examine historical trends and statistical information to investigate the effects of past climate-related events such as rainfall, temperature changes, or disasters on past mobility to then make projections about future movements;
Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs): IDPs are people who have been forced to flee due to armed violence, human rights violations, natural or human-made disasters, but who have not crossed an international border. Contrary to refugee status, IDP does not correspond to a legal status;
Rapid-onset disasters: As defined by UNISDR, sudden onset events can be linked to meteorological hazards including tropical cyclones, typhoons, hurricanes, tornadoes, blizzards, hydrological hazards including coastal floods, mudflows, or geophysical hazards including earthquakes, tsunamis, and volcanic eruptions;
Refugees: Refugees are people who have been forced to flee their homes and have crossed an international border to find safety in another country. Under the 1951 Geneva Convention, a refugee is defined as someone who is unable or unwilling to return to their country of origin owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group, or political opinion;
Root causes: In the context of EU development policy, root causes can refer to the EU's goal of eradicating the root causes of poverty guided by sustainable development across economic, social, and environmental realms. Over the years, the focus has increasingly shifted to the root causes of migration and/or displacement, paving the way for a stronger link between development cooperation and reducing irregular migration by, inter alia, increasing incentives to stay or curbing people's movement; and
Slow-onset environmental degradation: As defined by UNFCCC, slow-onset events include sea level rise, thawing of permafrost, increasing temperatures, ocean acidification, glacial retreat and related impacts, salinization, land and forest degradation, loss of biodiversity, and desertification".
There is more scientific evidence than ever before about the causes and effects of climate change. The latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report emphasises that as a result of human activity, the global surface temperature has increased faster since 1970 than in any other half-century in the past. Between 2011 and 2020, the global surface temperature reached 1,1°C above pre-industrial levels, already leading to more frequent and intense extreme weather events, heat waves, heavy rainfall, drought, and wildfires. This negatively impacts not just people but entire ecosystems, settlements, and infrastructure and causes heat-related deaths, species loss, reduced food security and water scarcity. All this underlines the need for reinforced action to address the adverse effects of climate change.
In addition, the movement of people within and across borders has been and will continue to be substantially shaped by these changes. Climate change, it needs to be understood, can negatively impact drivers of migration and exacerbate existing vulnerabilities. Now, displaced persons, migrants, and host communities are faced with constraints and difficult decisions that arise due to a changing climate. For some people, migration is a form of adaptation to climate change, while others are immobile in the face of climate change. This highlights the wide spectrum of mobility outcomes evident today.
These points have been specially highlighted in a "Discussion Paper" to analyse the EU's current efforts to address climate mobility. It begins with an overview of the complex relationship between climate change and mobilities and related challenges in modelling and projecting future scenarios. The second section maps out key multilateral policy developments related to climate and migration. The third section analyses EU actions on climate mobility and weak institutional coordination. Its fourth section refers to EU's funding landscape, focusing on the mainstreaming and monitoring challenges that arise in assessing how much money is being spent on this cause. The paper concludes with a set of recommendations for each of the sections- impacts, multilateral engagement, policy, funding- outlining practical steps that can be taken in the short- as well as longer-term.
It is clear that climate interactions with mobility present a significant governance challenge for the international community and the European Union (EU).
As a global and regional actor with considerable geographic reach and resources, the EU today has become a destination target for people from countries in North Africa as well as from several starting points in the Middle East. Their effort is guided by only one hope-- trying to land in Europe and seek asylum.
This scenario has generated a decisive stake among many European countries on how to respond to climate mobility together with like-minded partners.
It needs to be remembered that over the past years, the EU has shown sustained interest on this aforesaid topic in various multilateral processes and platforms. This is evidenced through its climate action and its commitment to well-managed migration and effective development cooperation with partner countries exposed to climate change.
The European Commission, and to a lesser extent, the European Parliament, are also increasingly paying attention to climate mobility, with the former developing policies and programmes that aim to address it through external action.
This paradigm is important because the EU is a key international donor of development and humanitarian aid. In 2021, for instance, it was the fourth largest donor to development projects relating to tackling climate change, worth US Dollar 5.7 billion (around Euro 5.2 billion). The higher authorities within the EU infrastructure know they have a decisive stake and opportunity to shape how to respond to climate mobility together with like-minded partners.
With climate change affecting countries and communities near and far, the EU correctly feels that it is well-placed to mobilise its knowledge and resources to provide support.
However, at the same time, the EU faces five considerable challenges in addressing climate mobility: "integrating scenarios and modelling into policymaking effectively; carrying out targeted and effective multilateral initiatives; strengthening its institutional coordination and leadership; overcoming silo thinking and misleading narratives, thereby achieving greater policy coherence, including via its funding; and developing a longer-term strategy that includes migration as adaptation".
Genaro Matias Godoy González, a youth representative from YOUNGO - the official children and youth constituency of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) has interestingly drawn attention to another dimension related to climate change. González has reiterated that there is a clear need for another transformative change - recognising the climate and ecological debt to the people and ecosystem. In this context it has been underlined that to rebuild and regenerate the lost livelihoods, international financial institutions have a moral imperative to be part of the transition and transformation of our global financial system.
Climate financing for addressing loss and damage must not come at the expense of other forms of climate financing to support comprehensive climate action. It must be new and additional and aligned with SDGs, conservation of nature and climate resilience development.
Muhammad Zamir, a former Ambassador, is an analyst specialised in foreign affairs, right to information and good governance.
muhammadzamir0@gmail.com