Climate Change and Displacement

Environmental migration is not new. Nevertheless, the events and processes accompanying global climate change threaten to increase human movement both within states and across international borders. The Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change has predicted an increased frequency and severity of climate events such as storms, cyclones and hurricanes, as well as longer-term sea level rise and desertification, which will impact upon people's ability to survive in certain parts of the world. This book brings together a variety of disciplinary perspectives on the phenomenon of climate-induced displacement. With chapters by leading scholars in their field, it collects in one place a rigorous, holistic analysis of the phenomenon, which can better inform academic understanding and policy development alike. Governments have not been prepared to take a leading role in developing responses to the issue, in large part due to the absence of strong theoretical frameworks from which sound policy can be constructed. The specialist expertise of the authors in this book means that each chapter identifies key issues that need to be considered in shaping domestic, regional and international responses, including the complex causes of movement, the conceptualisation of migration responses to climate change, the terminology that should be used to describe those who move, and attitudes to migration that may affect decisions to stay or leave. The book will help to facilitate the creation of principled, research-based responses, and establish climate-induced displacement as an important aspect of both the climate change and global migration debates.

Few edited collections draw together scholarly contributions from different disciplines and manage to achieve a consistently well-integrated thematic narrative. This is one reason why Climate Change and Displacement... is such an impressive volume., ...the collection constitutes a concise reader of well-researched concerns and approaches that populate the broader literature. It also makes a novel contribution, in consecutive chapters by McMichael et al. and Loughry, by introducing health as an associated topic of concern to the central focus. The collection ... has value in that it is one of the very few on the topic, and thus constitutes a useful 'one stop shop' for anyone wanting to familiarize themselves with the tendencies of the literature on this increasingly prominent...area., McAdam succeeds in the long-overdue endeavour to bring together all disciplines relevant to climate-induced displacement that so far have only been analysed and published separately. While reading the compilation of essays, the reader understands the 'full picture' and develops true understanding of the overall topic when he reads about an issue raised in one essay within a specific discipline that he can relate to another issue raised within another discipline… This paves the way for the necessary next step highlighted by McAdam: to interrelate the different perspectives and conduct true interdisciplinary research. In addition to the multidisciplinary view, another great benefit of this book is the fact that most authors identify and describe misconceptions, wrong assumptions, dramatization and linguistic imprecision (the 'doomsday prophecies') without assuming the polarized 'defensive posture' described by Castles. This is of fundamental importance, since wrong basic assumptions, conceptual mistakes, and linguistic imprecision, as well as 'over scholarly' analysis, will necessarily lead all research and policy reactions in the wrong direction. Furthermore, the authors are very honest about identifying the restrictions of their research due to a lack of base research and respective evidence. In highlighting the many issues that require further research and how this could be achieved, the book encourages and indirectly contributes to the future development of the understanding of the relationship between climate change and displacement. The endeavour of compiling multidisciplinary perspectives bears a major challenge: the reader will not necessarily have background knowledge of all disciplines. Therefore, the different essays need to be addressed to an audience of laymen, who neither are familiar with the discipline as such nor have any background knowledge on the particular topic addressed. All authors succeed in this by providing the reader with a clear overview of the relevant aspects, which is remarkable given the complex relationship between climate change and displacement., The book's multidisciplinary approach to analysing climate-caused displacement provides the reader [with] a broad foundational understanding of the central challenges in this area. McAdam brings together a diverse group of scholars on the subject in order to give the reader a dynamic view and understanding of climate-induced migration. Her approach spans not only the breadth of the topic concerning climate-induced migration but also its depth. ...this book highlights the need for immediate action in this area. By approaching environmentally-induced migration from a multidisciplinary perspective, McAdam has greatly advanced the understanding of the intersection between climate change and displacement., Jane McAdam's collection of essays with its multidisciplinary approach is a welcome addition to the existing corpus of literature in the area. The contributors are leading experts in the field and their opinions are significant for guiding well-informed policy. Climate Change and Displacement should be read by anyone interested in this area. The book provides a good understanding of existing legal regimes and institutions and their limitations. It considers innovative solutions that could be turned into international responses.

Jane McAdam is a Professor in the Faculty of Law at the University of New South Wales, a non-resident Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution, Washington DC, and a Research Associate at the Refugee Studies Centre, University of Oxford.