From Cancun to Paris: An Era of Policy Making on Climate Change and Migration

Abstract

Policy making on climate change and migration has become a routine agenda point of global climate change politics. In particular, the period between the Cancun climate negotiations of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in 2010 and the Paris negotiations in 2015 was very important for the emergence of the nexus of climate change and migration as a policy priority. This article conducts a genealogy of policy making on climate change and migration and finds that the period between Cancun and Paris constitutes a distinct era of policy making. This analysis is structured around four areas where shifts have taken place that contribute to delineating this era from others, either through shifts in relation to the eras preceding or succeeding it, or in terms of substantial shifts and dislocations that have taken place during this era. These areas are: (1) the institutional settings for policy making; (2) the actors involved in policy making; (3) the language employed; (4) the mobilisation of knowledge. This analysis is an important undertaking for denaturalising policy making on climate change and migration and promoting understandings of it as contingent, as well as historically, socially, politically, and institutionally situated.

Climate Change, Security Risks, and Violent Conflicts

“…With respect to climate-related policies and their discursive foundations, two aspects have received particular attention. One is geo-engineering (Brzoska, Link, Maas, and Scheffran 2012;Link, Brzoska, Maas, Neuneck, and Scheffran 2013;Maas and Scheffran 2012), the other migration policy (Baldwin, Methmann, and Rothe 2014;Nash 2018). Overall, researchers from the group have attempted to link empirical research with a critical theoretical perspective, working with concepts such as complexity, tipping points, cascades, and risk multipliers (Scheffran 2016), resilience (Boas and Rothe 2016;Schilling et al 2017;Balbo et al 2016), and the Anthropocene and sustainability transitions (Brauch, Oswald Spring, Grin, and Scheffran 2016).…”

Not a Security Issue: How Policy Experts De-Politicize the Climate Change–Migration Nexus

“…The climate change-human migration nexus has been widely discussed. Policymakers have discussed the potential link between climate change and migration as a matter of conflict and security (Bettini et al 2016;Burrows and Kinney 2016;Nash 2018). The Dutch supreme military, Tom Middelburg, for instance, claims that climate change is the root of tensions and armed conflict, such as in the Middle East; and that global warming endangers safety in Europe (De Volkskrant 2016).…”

Human mobility and environmental change: a survey of perceptions and policy direction

“…We have taken a less-travelled path (cf Moriniere and Hamza 2012), focussing not on the (im)mobile subjects, but on those who take an interest in understanding them and who are increasingly seeking to address a multitude of issues associated with their movement. Inroads into capturing and analysing the unfolding shape (and implications thereof) of narratives, discourses and framings emerging from those engaged with human mobility in the context of environmental change have been made in recent years (see Baldwin 2014;Mayer 2014;Ransan-Cooper et al 2015;Nash 2018aNash , 2018b. Our contribution is to situate our survey participants' characteristics and perceptions within the context of policy preferences or priorities they propose or propel, directly or indirectly.…”

“…Moriniere and Hamza (2012):795) were motivated to survey academics, policy-makers and civil society actors in 2009, given there was 'little concrete evidence […] of efforts or policies that support the management of environmentally influenced mobility' then, despite the fact that debate and research in the arena had 'been increasing exponentially'. While much work, particularly research, had indeed been done in the area of human mobility in the context of environmental change since the mid-1990s (Hugo 1996;Foresight 2011;Black et al 2011a, b), it was only from about 2010 onwards that the management or governance of human mobility in the context of environmental change emerged concretely in international and domestic public policy (Warner 2012;Nash 2018a).…”