Recently, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) launched a 3-year, European Union (EU)-funded project which will provide new evidence for policymaking on migration, environment and climate change in six pilot countries.

A consortium of research partners met at IOM headquarters in Geneva to develop a common research design and methodologies for the six national assessments and country-level household surveys in the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Kenya, Mauritius, Papua New Guinea and Viet Nam.

The project entitled "Migration, Environment and Climate Change: Evidence for Policy" aims to contribute to the global knowledge base on the relationship between migration and environmental change, including climate change, and the formulation of related policy options with particular emphasis on migration as an adaptation strategy.

"The project comes at a time when there is an urgent need for comparable empirical evidence, in particular on origin communities,and to design and implement adaptation strategies which incorporate the migration dimension," declared Frank Laczko, IOM’s Head of Migration Research.

Project activities will include national level country assessments and household surveys; local research capacity building workshops; the first ever training manual on migration, environment and climate change; national capacity building trainings; national level consultations; creation of a global online information sharing platform; and a final comparative report.

The €2.4 million project will contribute to the overall framework and activities of IOM’s work on migration, environment and climate change (MECC) and the European Commission’s strategy on adaptation and climate change, and more broadly the EU’s holistic approach on migration and development. In particular, the European Commission’s 2013 Communication on Maximising the Development Impact of Migration calls for measures to further explore and address the links between climate change, environmental degradation and migration. The EU contribution will be €1.93 million.

Learn more about the research partners :

Research partners will include the University of Versailles Saint-Quentin, France; Center on Migration, Citizenship and Development, University of Bielefeld, Germany; Center for Ethnic and Migration Studies, University of Liège, Belgium; Research Center on Citizenship, Migration and the City,Erasmus University Rotterdam, The Netherlands; Institute for the Environment and Human Security, UN University, Bonn, Germany; and FacultadLatinoamericana de CienciasSociales(FLACSO),Costa Rica.

Associates include the Institute of Geography, University of Neuchâtel; The Centre for Research and Social Studies of the Iberoamerican University, Dominican Republic; and the Research Institute for Climate Change, Can Tho University, Vietnam.

HL/ HaitiLibre