Communicating the Complexity of Displacement in a Changing Climate
By Lauren Parater, Annie Neimand, Ph.D., and Ann Christiano
There is usually not one single event that causes someone to leave their home. People are on the move for all sorts of reasons. There are social, political, economic, environmental and individual factors that work in concert to create these dynamics. In such complex contexts, the difference between the need to flee (forced displacement) versus the choice to leave (migration) can be challenging to determine. Human mobility was previously believed to be a result of people choosing to move for specific reasons. But the effects of climate change have turned this analysis on its head.
We now understand human mobility as the umbrella term for three distinct types of population movement in the context of climate change and disaster: displacement (the primarily forced movement of people), migration (the primarily voluntary movement of people) and planned relocation (the process of settling people to a new location).¹
Increasingly, the adverse effects of climate change and environmental degradation interact with the drivers of refugee movement,² including conflict or violence, adding to the complexity of movement.³ Attribution science is evolving and much more research is needed to understand the effects of slow onset events like desertification and sea-level rise on people’s lives and movement.
Since 1994, when the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change first entered into force, the international community has attempted to come together to address the challenges posed by climate change, and undertake efforts to mitigate its effects. One of those challenges is communicating the complexity of factors driving displacement in the context of climate change. Doing so effectively is critical to ensuring comprehensive responses to diverse protection needs.
How do we communicate the complexity of human mobility and the drivers of displacement in the context of climate change in a way that moves civil society, governments and institutions to take ambitious action?
In parallel, how can we accurately represent distinct groups of people on the move who have different protections under international law? While the vast majority of them are internally displaced, we know that some who are fleeing across borders may be in need of international protection, which falls within the UN Refugee Agency’s (UNHCR) mandate.
We recognize the need to view the complexity of human mobility through a new lens. Just as we wouldn’t attribute discrimination to a single factor such as gender (we also consider race, class, citizenship, sexual orientation, disability within a particular context), we have to think about the reasons people move as a result of interconnected factors. The effects of climate change can act as a ‘threat multiplier’ aggravating conflict and compounding pre-existing vulnerabilities.
For example, in Somalia climatic shock is a recurrent issue. Storms, drought and flash flooding leave people more vulnerable to protection violations against a backdrop of protracted conflict. These sudden- and slow-onset events reduce access to vital humanitarian assistance and increase competition for scarce resources. As such, in Somalia, we can observe a ‘nexus’ relationship between three components: conflict, climate change and displacement — both internal and cross-border.
In 2018, UNHCR undertook the study: ‘In Harm’s Way: International protection in the context of nexus dynamics between conflict or violence and disaster or climate change’ to enhance its understanding of destination country responses to ‘nexus’ situations, and to identify policy and practical solutions to strengthen the implementation of refugee law in such contexts. The study looks at the types of protection provided to Somalis fleeing across borders to escape drought, famine and multifaceted conflict from 2011 to 2012, and to Haitians forcibly displaced by the effects of the 2010 earthquake that exacerbated pre-existing state fragility. Key findings indicate that refugee law frameworks can be applicable in ‘nexus’ situations where there is cross-border displacement, and should form part of a ‘toolbox’ of international protection measures available to states.
There are still data and knowledge gaps in this area and efforts are ongoing to understand how climate change and conflict can be interlinked. In a recent study titled ‘Climate, conflict, and forced migration,’, researchers found that severe drought in Tunisia, Libya, Yemen and Syria — worsened by climate change — fueled conflict during the Arab Spring. As a result, there was an increase in asylum requests from the Middle East and North Africa.
“Recent studies of the Syrian uprising have shown that growing water scarcity and frequent droughts, coupled with poor water management, led to multi-year crop failures, economic deterioration and consequently mass migration of rural families to urban areas. Rapid growing population, overcrowding, unemployment and increased inequality put pressure on urban centers and finally contributed to the breakout of political unrest. Should these mechanisms be in place, the effect of anthropogenic climate change on the frequency and intensity of extreme events is expected to affect the risk of violent conflicts by aggravating such drivers of conflicts as poverty, food insecurity and inequalities,” report the researchers.
At the 24th United Nations Climate Change Conference in December 2018, one of UNHCR’s key messages recognized this complexity: “Complexity and multi-causality are key features of climate change and disaster displacement. This means that the need remains for further research to build knowledge on the dynamics of climate change, disasters and displacement, and their impact on people’s lives, to analyze the complexity and multi-causality of the phenomena, and to progressively improve national and international responses in this challenging context.”⁶
By applying the best of what we know from behavioral, cognitive and social science we can build understanding and support for this approach in the international community. In this report, we share five imperatives to help the broader international community communicate more effectively. Each of these imperatives is separated into chapters.
These science and storytelling tools can be applied to other cases and we encourage you to experiment with them. These imperatives were drawn from a number of studies that did not necessarily focus on this topic, but collectively provided insight on how to communicate complexity.
This special publication is part of a partnership between the UN Refugee Agency and the University of Florida Center for Public Interest Communications. In an effort to move past communication strategies that simply “raise awareness” of an issue, this partnership aims to connect those working in the humanitarian sector with applicable insights from behavioral, cognitive and social science to make a lasting difference on the issues that matter most.
Thank you to Alex Randall, Erica Bower and Hannah Entwisle Chapuisat for their time and insight for this project.
This special report shares how we can apply behavioral, cognitive and social science to build understanding and support for complex issues. We focused on climate change displacement as it is one of the critical and most complex areas of work facing the humanitarian sector — and the entire global community. The special report is divided into five chapters:
Introduction: Communicating the Complexity of Displacement in a Changing Climate
Chapter One: Make Room for the Most Affected
Chapter Two: Use Visual Language
References
- UNHCR, Key concepts on climate change and displacement, https://www.unhcr.org/protection/environment/5943aea97/key-concepts-climate-change-disaster-displacement.html
- Global Compact on Refugees 2018, https://www.unhcr.org/events/conferences/5b3295167/official-version-final-draft-global-compact-refugees.html
- UNHCR, 2018, ‘In Harm’s Way: International protection in the context of nexus dynamics between conflict or violence and disaster or climate change’, https://www.refworld.org/docid/5c2f54fe4.html
- Humanitarian Country Teams, Humanitarian Response Plan Revised — Somalia, 2018 https://reliefweb.int/sites/reliefweb.int/files/resources/Somalia%20Revised%20HRP%20July%202018-FINAL.pdf
- UNHCR, 2018, ‘In Harm’s Way: International protection in the context of nexus dynamics between conflict or violence and disaster or climate change’, https://www.refworld.org/docid/5c2f54fe4.html
- This slow onset — as opposed to the attributable rapid onset of a disaster — and the resulting ‘causality’ challenge creates particular challenges to address climate change displacement from a holistic and intersectional approach.
