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Climate Change
Environment & Migration
Security
Global Issues
01 February, 2017

Climate change and mass migration: a growing threat to global security

Jared Ferrie
When international leaders met in the Bangladeshi capital last month for ongoing discussions about a new global migration policy, they glossed over what experts say will soon become a massive driver of migration: climate change.
 
“The international system is in a state of denial,” said A.N.M. Muniruzzaman, a retired major-general who now heads the Bangladesh Institute for Peace and Security Studies.
 
The Global Forum on Migration and Development in Dhaka came less than two months after UN nation states committed to developing within two years a Global Compact on Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration. Climate change figured only as a sub-theme during one roundtable at the conference, which Muniruzzaman said was typical of similar events.
 
“If we want an orderly management of the coming crisis, we need to sit down now – we should have sat down yesterday – to talk about how the management will take place,” he said in an interview in his office in Bangladesh’s crowded capital.
 
Groups like the UN’s refugee agency, UNHCR, and the International Organization for Migration, are well aware of the risks, and say they are working to bring climate change to the forefront of policy discussions. During the roundtable in Dhaka, Michele Cavinato, head of UNHCR’s Asylum and Migration Unit, called climate change “the defining challenge of our times”.
 
See the full article on IRINnews.org, a news agency specialised in reporting humanitarian crises.
 
 
For more info on climate change and migration in Bangdladesh also see this interview with Major General Muniruzzaman (Retd):
Related Reading 
Navigating Complexity: Climate, Migration, and Conflict in a Changing World
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Climate Change and Migration in Bangladesh: A Gender Perspective

This publication by UN Women is part of the project 'Reducing Vulnerability of Women Affected by Climate Change through Viable Livelihood Options', which explores the impacts of migration on women caused by climate change-related phenomena.

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Climate Change
Climate Diplomacy
Global Issues
24 October, 2018

Towards Katowice: We’ll always have Paris?

Sam Morgan, Euractiv

As December’s UN climate summit in Poland rapidly approaches, it is shaping up to be a race against time to prepare the so-called Paris rulebook, which will govern how the landmark climate agreement will actually be implemented.

Climate Change
Sustainable Transformation
Europe
22 October, 2018

EU lawmakers support 55% emission cuts as IPCC spectre lurks

Sam Morgan, Euractiv

Members of the European Parliament voted on Wednesday (10 October) in favour of increasing the EU’s Paris Agreement emissions pledge by 2020. They also urged the European Commission to make sure its long-term climate strategy models net-zero emissions for 2050 “at the latest”.

Adaptation & Resilience
Capacity Building
Climate Change
Sub-Saharan Africa
Central America & Caribbean
Middle East & North Africa
Asia
19 October, 2018

The Double Burden of Climate Exposure and State Fragility

Josh Busby, Ashley Moran (UT Austin) and Clionadh Raleigh (ACLED)

A new USAID report focuses on the intersection of climate exposure and state fragility worldwide. It finds that the factors that make a country vulberable to large-scale conflict are similar to those that make it vulnerable to climate change. The report thus offers a way for global audiences with an interest in climate and security to identify places of high concern.

Climate Change
Global Issues
19 October, 2018

What difference does it make?

Dennis Tänzler, adelphi

A big difference. That was the conclusion the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) came to when it assessed the differences between a 1.5°C and a 2°C warmer world in a landmark special report published in early October. The leading scientific authority on climate change found that the world is likely to pass the 1.5 °C mark between 2030 and 2052 if current emission trends are not interrupted.