 Good morning, good afternoon everyone and welcome to this panel discussion launching the paper on climate change migration and vulnerability to trafficking. The international community is now increasingly recognising that environmental degradation and climate change could potentially result in the displacement of people at an alarming to the alarming rate. The latest IPCC report noted that the greatest single impact of climate change could be on human migration. And the issue is that we're not equipped to address this issue in an effective manner. We do not have adequate policy planning and response frameworks in place to deal with it. And leaving this issue unattended is resulting in dangerous consequences of trafficking and different forms of exploitative working conditions and net bondage for the people in marginalised. To date, the issues of climate induced migration have largely remained on the sidelines of international discourse on climate. And although some action has been taken, but they're largely reactive by responding to the humanitarian crisis and by assisting developing countries after disaster strikes. So in the absence of preventative measures, the future for many developing countries and their vulnerable communities is likely to be to remain on the continuum of widespread land degradation, food insecurity, forced migration and exposure to trafficking. Migration and relocation are often viewed as last resort options by policymakers. But nevertheless, we do need to be giving them adequate attention with rehabilitation and recovery mechanisms in place and promoting sustainable livelihoods as these climates are shifting. So relocation programs rather than being a quick fix option are long term challenging solutions, but definitely require to strengthen livelihoods, build resilience and improve the living standards of those affected and reinvigorate communities environments. So proactive intervention is now essential. At IID our work on social protection and on the loss and damage with co-developing solutions with vulnerable country representatives to explore how early action through government plan support can help households move out of harm's way. And government supported relocation as opposed to disaster response strategy as well as supporting voluntary migration by household or individuals where they're moving towards opportunity. As an adaptation or risk minimization strategy. We have some good examples. The Uruguayan National Resettlement Plan has been hailed as a lighthouse relocation initiative that is aiming to support thousands of households and move out of flood prone areas and into secure housing on safe lands. At IID we're committed to work with our partners to really think through these types of solutions so they're fair and equitable and combine the appropriate support for adaptation for the very poorest and most vulnerable through early action. We've partnered with grassroots organizations like PHIA Foundation and Aid Action along with anti-slavery international who are equally committed to addressing these issues in a holistic manner. And we're particularly thankful to the UK government's FCDO for their support and funding which enabled us to carry out this research. The issue of climate change induced migrant and displacement and its nexus with slavery is high on our agenda. We'll continue to raise this issue at the relevant forum of national and international policy discourse and drawing on this evidence and research from the ground. This year is also 50 years since IID was established and I can assure you we'll continue to work hard hand in hand with vulnerable countries and communities to help them address the challenges of climate crisis. So I'd like to once again welcome and thank our keynote speakers, moderator, panelists and close to 400 participants have registered to join this event. We're humbled and at the same time enthused by your support and can assure you we'll continue to work on this issue and along with the local, national and international partners to drive this policy discourse. I'd now like to welcome Catherine Turner, the Head of Programs and Advocacy for Anti-Slavery International, with whom I'm co-moderating this session to say a few words. Catherine. Thanks so much Claire and thank you to IID for inviting anti-slavery to speak today. Jasmine O'Connor RCO sends her apologies as she's unwell unfortunately but I'm delighted to be here instead to celebrate the launch of another important report from IID. Anti-Slave International has been campaigning for over 180 years for people to experience a life free from slavery and exploitation. Slavery thrives where we call of law meets discrimination and poverty and catastrophic events can heighten this. Today there are more than 40 million people in modern slavery and the World Bank recently estimated that by 2050 over 200 million people might be forced to migrate as a result of climate change. As climate change threatens the very foundations of our society we are beginning to see that the heightened vulnerabilities people experience when they face losing their livelihoods and contemplate migration make them even more at risk of exploitation and slavery. We are proud therefore that our partnership with IID has brought two vitally important and relevant sectors together combining our expertise to shine a light on the true human cost of climate change. IID's latest report highlights this nexus and draws on our shared research from last year which showed how two geographic locations that experienced climate change in different ways, both slow and rapid onset, nevertheless reached the same conclusion about the heightened vulnerability to slavery. This in turn built on an important piece of research that anti-slavery international published by Dr Chris O'Connell of Dublin City University that initially drew attention to the nexus between climate change and modern slavery. This newly launched report from IID reinforces our conclusions. It is now clear that climate change must be acknowledged and properly recognised as a driver of modern slavery. However policy makers and governments are not recognising this yet. While it is widely acknowledged that climate change forces migration the resulting heightened risk of human trafficking and slavery is ignored. This report brings in further rigorous evidence that must be acted upon. It calls for this nexus between modern slavery and climate change to be recognised in the national and international climate change mechanisms and for investment in resources to build an evidence base on the best ways to prevent and respond to this injustice. By being led by those based in the countries of highest risk, elevating the voices of those who are or have experienced it and working with new allies, we are working to prevent people being forced into modern slavery as a result of climate change. Anti-slavery international will continue to work to realise freedom from slavery for everyone, everywhere, always. So it's now my pleasure to invite Sally Taylor to give the welcome address. Sally has previously worked as head of the UK's Department for International Development in Sierra Leone and Ghana. She is currently the Director of Development, Climate Science and Technology at the Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office. So I'd like to welcome Sally. Thanks very much Catherine and it's really a pleasure to be here and to see everybody and to welcome you all to the launch of this report that we've commissioned. I want to thank the research partners, IID and Fear, AD Action, who conducted this work. We think it's a really great piece of work and provides really compelling evidence on the links between climate change, migration, human trafficking and helps us to really think about what we can do about these issues. So as Claire and Catherine have already said, climate change is happening, it's causing a lot of effects and impacts for vulnerable people, for poor people across the world. And helping to address the impacts of climate change is a really central part of the UK's climate work. Our aim really is to help drive and accelerate the systemic shifts that we all need to make to achieve the Paris Agreement goals and the captured in the Glasgow Climate Pact. And as those of us on this call, I'm sure we know very well that one of the four priorities on that in the pact is to really accelerate and get more ambition around adaptation, loss and damage, including more finance. So we are really keen to sort of make this priority in Glasgow and to gain new agreements to take more action, give this more priority. And really targeting sort of our efforts towards the needs of people who face the consequences of climate change is really critical. There's lots of ways of doing this through expanding insurance, social protection coverage, investment in AD Action and AD Warning. These are some of the ways in which we can help people to think about your hope and to be able to manage the shortcomings and stresses that they face from climate change and to help reduce the stress migration. And the Glasgow Climate Pact also really recognised the importance of science, the importance of science to generating knowledge and to be embedded into decision making. So research is really critical and it's something that the UK has really invested in as part of our contribution to help tackling climate change and to improve our development efforts. We are really helping policy makers, decision makers to better understand climate impacts and shocks and how we can really make them do better to address them. We've supported several pieces of research that are to try to sort of contribute to getting a better deeper understanding of the underlying drivers of migration, its patterns, its consequences and what's the best way of helping communities to build their resilience. And that's true also here in India, so I'm placed here in Delhi. We really recognise that climate adaptation, helping to think about the way in which climate will play out in India is going to be very important for India's sustained development, and it's sort of focus area for our work here. We're keen to support India's efforts to ensure that communities, particularly marginalised groups can adapt to the worst events of climate change. And we've been working, for example, with India's very large social protection scheme, the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Scheme. And that has enormous potential and capacity to really help all people to cope with climate change. It's got this huge reach and scale that really has the potential to help people make to be safer from climate disasters. And it was our engagement in that scheme that really led to this research. We could see distress migration happening, we could see the displacement that came from both rapid and slow onset of shocks and stresses, and realise there was a sort of lack of data, lack of knowledge about what was happening, and how big it had been, what scale, what the implications were, and it was the risks of it leading to the trafficking of vulnerable people. So we work with colleagues in our South Asia Research Hub. We do a lot of work to really support cutting-edge knowledge and to promote its use and commission this work to give us some better assessment of the extent to the impact of climate change on these issues, on migration, on human trafficking, and looking at that into particularly migration prone areas to see what was happening. So as I say, we're really pleased with the quality of this work carried out. We're really excited that we're all here to easily hear the findings of this to better understand these issues and to really think about how we can use this information to improve our efforts to help tackle climate change and to achieve the same development goals. So you're all very welcome. Thanks very much. Thanks so much, Sally. Wonderful to see you again and delighted you're now in India and able to champion these issues. I'd now like to welcome Siobhan Mulally, the UN Special Rapporteur on Trafficking in Persons, especially women and children, appointed by the Human Rights Council in August 2020. She is also the established professor of Human Rights Law and director of the Irish Centre of Human Rights School of Law, University of Galway, and is a member of the Permanent Court of Arbitration in the Hague. She was previously president of the Council of Europe Group of Experts on Action Against Trafficking in Persons and has worked with UN entities and international NGOs in many parts of the world. Please, Siobhan. Thank you very much and thank you very much to IID for the opportunity to participate here today and to have had the opportunity to read and comment on the report that is being launched. This is a thematic priority for my mandate as UN Special Rapporteur on Trafficking in Persons. I'm particularly keen to address the risks of trafficking in persons that arise from forced migration and displacement linked to climate change, as well as to look at those sectors that may be contributing negatively to climate change because of their activities such as intensive agriculture, fisheries, extractive mining, etc. My upcoming report to the Human Rights Council, which will be launched on the 21st of June and presented to the UN Human Rights Council, looks at trafficking in persons in the agriculture sector. And I've had the opportunity to benefit from the work of IID in preparing that report, which also highlights the risks of trafficking in persons arising from loss of livelihoods due to intensive agriculture practices, sudden onset disasters as well as slow onset climate change impacts. And my forthcoming report to the UN General Assembly in October this year will focus specifically on the intersections of trafficking in persons and climate change. So I'm particularly pleased to have had the opportunity to read this report and the analysis and recommendations. Just last week I attended and participated in the International Migration Review Forum in New York, which was looking at four years of the implementation of the Global Compact on Migration for safe, orderly and regular migration. And as you know, objective two of the Global Compact looks in particular at migration arising from disasters and climate change. And the progress declaration adopted at the end of the week, again, commits to expanding pathways for safe and regular migration for those who are displaced as a result of climate change. And that is critical to the prevention of trafficking in persons for all purposes of exploitation. This report I think is particularly important because it's helping us to build an evidence base. The empirical studies, the evidence gathered from Palomu and Kendra Para, the two areas that are studied and analyzed here in the report are really important in terms of bringing to the fore concrete empirical information around the impact of climate and the increasing vulnerability to trafficking arising from gaps in social protection, loss of livelihoods or reduction in incomes and displacement linked to those developments. And again, I think what is really important in the report is the analysis of the differences that arise in the two areas. For example, given the greater attention that we see globally to rapid onset events and their impacts, climate extremes, and so more attention, for example, perhaps being given to the kinds of impacts endured by Kendra Para. As compared to Palomu, where we studied in the report the impact of slow onset events and lesser attention being given to the consequences of that in terms of loss of livelihoods and displacement. Also important in the report is the attention given to socioeconomic factors and political factors and the impact of discrimination on particular groups. For example, with regard to the particular risks faced as a result of discrimination against those who are members of scheduled tribes or caste based discrimination that that exacerbates vulnerabilities to trafficking and because of that societal community discrimination endured for many years. So all of those combined to increase the risks. And importantly here I think there's also attention to the gender dimension of trafficking and my mandate as special rapporteur has a particular focus on women and children, but it is important to note that it is gender inclusive. It includes particular risks that may be faced by LGBT persons, persons of diverse gender identities, as well as by men and boys. And I think it's important here that we recognize the need for gender gender sensitivity in responses and the broader gender dimensions that women may be particularly impacted because they have less control over natural resources. Because of gender inequality in terms of land and property rights. And that those exacerbate the vulnerabilities that arise because of that inequality. And importantly here in the report. And I hope that I can continue to work with you to to achieve these recommendations is the attention to the need for greater coordination between all of the different actors and programs responding to climate change and to the climate crisis that we need to move beyond fragmented approaches and silo approaches. That when we think about climate justice, when we think about just transitions, that we are also paying attention to the importance of a human rights based approach to migration and displacement, and that informs our work to prevent trafficking as first and foremost, and to ensure effective access to protection for those at risk of trafficking, or those who are victims of trafficking. So again to conclude, I very much welcome the publication of the report congratulations to all of those involved. I look forward to hearing the rest of the contributions today. And I hope that I can continue to work with you. And jointly, as I said to implement and give effect to these recommendations that we work with all of the different platforms working on climate change on disaster responses, as well as on human trafficking and contemporary forms of slavery. And that in that way we can strengthen the impact of our actions. Thank you again. Thank you for your informative contribution. I'd like now to welcome our second keynote speaker Cecilia Silva Bernardo, who is director for cooperation at the Ministry of Culture tourism and the environment in the Republic of Angola, and is one of the leaders for the least developed countries under the UNFCCC process. She was previously the co-chair of the adaptation committee of the UNFCCC, and is a member of the committee since 2016, representing the least developed countries. Thank you very much, Catherine. And thank you all the organizers for inviting me to be part of this important event. We all can feel climate change is the defining crisis of our time and the stress, migration and disaster displacement, one of its most devastating consequences. Every part of the world is already suffering the impacts, but vulnerable people living in some of the least developed and conflict affected countries are more disproportionately affected. COP26, we were hoping that all parties will work together to deliver on securing a global net zero target, mobilizing finance for vulnerable developing countries and supporting them to undertake adaptation measures to protect communities and natural habitats. But we are far from realization of these ambitions. Furthermore, the developed countries are shrugging off their responsibility. So far, they have not even met their commitment of 100 billion target of climate finance support. Let alone the fact that a very miniscule amount of what they are providing us climate finance is available for climate adaptation that can help the communities better prepare or cope with climate impacts. The impacts of climate change are numerals and trig above displacement and worsening living conditions or hamper return for those who have already been displaced. Limited natural resources such as drinking water, food and food suppliers are becoming even more scarce in many parts of the world. Crops and life life life stocks struggle to survive where conditions become too hot and dry or too cold and wet, threatening livelihoods. In such conditions, climate change cannot as a treat multiplier, exacerbating existing vulnerabilities, pushing people into despair and adding to their probability of landing in trafficking, forced or exploitative work. Compounding the challenges of climate change are the recent dramatic trends in storing food and fuel prices, which are poised to have a major impact on hunger and poverty in the developing world and have an immediate impact on our ability to deal with the worsening climate impacts. Hazards resulting from the increasing intensity and frequency of extreme weather events such as abnormally heavy rainfall, prolonged droughts, desertification, environmental degradation or sea level rise and cyclones are already causing an average of more than 20 million people to leave their homes and move to other areas in their countries each year. Some people are forced to cross borders in the context of climate change and disasters. We are currently seeing millions of people being forced to flee Ukraine, but if we compare that with no of climate induced migrants that we can expect in years to come, it would be many falls higher than this number. Refugees internally displaced people and stateless are on the front lines of the climate emergency. Many are living in climate hotspots where they typically lack the resources to adapt in new environment they move to. Supporting countries facing increased climate impacts and distressed migrants as a result of it is a matter of climate justice and solidarity, especially in context of vulnerability it creates to trafficking. Despite the serious development and humanitarian implications of large-scale forced climate migration, the interest of international stakeholders in dealing with this is limited. Both speeches and elaborate commitments to pursue noble goals like climate change, sustainable development, safe migration, typically fall prey to narrow geopolitical interest when the time for action comes. The result is that forced climate migrants fall through the cracks and exposed of the vulnerability of trafficking. We all need to realize that climate crisis is a human crisis. It is driving displacement and making life harder for those forced to leave their homes. In absence of any support, they are pushed to pursue risky coping strategies that exposes them to trafficking and slavery-like situations. There is an urgent need to combat the growing and disproportionate impacts of the climate emergency on the most vulnerable countries and communities. In particular, those displaced and pushed to undertake distressed migration and to support vulnerable countries and communities in their efforts to rapidly scale up prevention and preparedness measures to avert, minimize and address displacement and distressed migration. Time is running out. We can no longer afford to underestimate the disaster taking place before our eyes around the world. We have to ask the question, are we properly prepared for this? We can create solutions to tackle this issue of climate migration and trafficking, but it is going to take all of our combined efforts to prepare for and address it in a holistic manner. I thank you very much and congratulations for the publication of the report. Thank you very much. Thank you so much, Cecilia. It's always a pleasure to hear from you. And as you say, distressed migration is such a challenging issue for the most vulnerable countries and communities like the LDCs, the least developed countries. And as you've so eloquently said, time is indeed running out. So it is now my pleasure to introduce the moderator for the panel discussion, Josh Mayer. Josh is the security correspondence at USA Today. He reports on trafficking, counter-narcotics, organized crime, corruption among a host of other issues. Previously, while working at The Times, he's been recognized for his investigative reporting with numerous rewards at the paper, including two Pulitzer Prizes and an Overseas Press Club Award. Over to you, Josh, for taking forward the panel discussion. Thank you very much for having me. So I was honored to lead an investigative reporting project on the security threats posed by climate change worldwide and how they loomed particularly large for people in Bangladesh and India and the region. And during the next two generations, experts that we just we talked to, including government officials around the world, said that these problems are likely to grow worse if climate change as predicted raises the sea levels and temperatures and affects weather and other factors. By 2050, we reported rising oceans were projected to cost low lying country 17 to 20% of its land mass. That was going to render at least 20 million people homeless, ruin food production of rice and wheat and other key commodities, and have other devastating effects. The reason I mentioned this is we, and particularly why I mentioned it in the context of this excellent new report by IED is that our project was done 12 years ago, back in 2010, and things have not improved in the last decade. They've worsened, they've gotten a lot worse, both in terms of what's happening on the ground, but also in the acceleration of the projections of how things are going to get worse in the future. Over the past decade, there's been growing awareness of the security risks posed by climate change, of course. But at the same time, it's received, it has not received the attention and priority that it needs to receive from policymakers in any particular country, especially here in the United States, of course, but also from the international community. So I am honored to be here to moderate this webinar and to discuss this new and groundbreaking report that details the extent and the impact of climate change on distress migration and human trafficking. It'll be interesting and I believe very, very newsworthy to discuss these findings from the research that explores the nexus between climate change migration and vulnerability to trafficking. As the moderator, I will save the details for the experts. My role here is to stay out of their way and help keep things running along. But to briefly summarize the new report from IED and its key partners is among the first to provide an empirical and compelling body of evidence on the links between climate change, migration and trafficking. And it's in very easily understandable analysis even to a journal for a journalist like myself. It really unpacks the underlying drivers that should be targeted by policymakers needed to deal with this nexus. I was particularly impressed by the how the report provides the extent and impact of climate change on distress migration and human trafficking in two diverse areas, slow onset and rapid onset climatic events. And a particular note and I'll end with this, people migrating to escape slow onset climate disasters like drought are two and a half times more likely to experience trafficking or modern slavery than those people fleeing rapid onset disasters like floods or cyclones, according to the new research here by the International Institute for Environment and Development. In particular, India and Pakistan and the region have been experiencing record heat in the last few months, which of course is helping draw attention to the problem but making it worse. So, with that, I would like to introduce the panelists. Ritu Baradwaj, of course, senior researcher at the Climate Change Group for International Institute for Environment and Development. Johnson Topno, regional head of programs and for partnering hope into action or PHIA Foundation. Umi Daniel, director of migration and education for aid and action in South Asia, and Devanshu Chakravarti, a researcher and independent consultant. So first I would like to invite Mamta Kohli, senior social development advisor for the Foreign Commonwealth Development Office in the UK to share some opening thoughts on this issue before we move into the panel discussion. So thank you for having me. Thank you Josh. And thank you IID for hosting this. I think speakers before me have covered, you know, I've given you just what I'm dealing with and what the report really talks about. I just wanted to reflect on a couple of key takeaways for me, as someone who's been working in this area on social development issues. And then human trafficking for a while, but for my key takeaways that were sort of reaffirmed but also new insight. So the first one is around vulnerabilities. The need to understand the deep structural inequalities that exist, and how they play out and how they get even more accentuated because of climate change. And then vulnerabilities of people who move and people who stay behind. So I think our ability to understand and to see how these climate change impacts these two different groups differently. I think my second insight for me was the impact of slow onset, which we've seen on the ground ourselves, when we're going to the same village over and over the years. And seeing how people have been moving out, how fields have been drying up. But I think, so this report has also taught us how to link different to be able to see the big picture together. So I think this is a great insight for me personally to understand why these shifts are happening. Why are the fields drying up? Why is the water table really going so low? And what is it that the policy environment can really do about it? My third is of course at how you need to bring your understanding, our understanding of climate change and inequality together to frame the social protection or any other kind of government outreach programs that are out there. It's easy. It's just requires us to really give it a little bit more thinking, a little bit more nuanced understanding. And I think this report is important. Also in the context of all the conversations recently we've been having around climate change COP26 really really brought the issue of the limelight and like everybody said the heat we've been experiencing in India has again brought it home that climate change is very real. It's not just about two degrees here and there where it affects our everyday lives very, very deeply. So why do I think the report is also important because we've made commitments. The world has made commitments around thousand damages about adaptation and resilience have made commitments around locally led solutions. And what this report helps us is to really understand the local context very well because if we don't, if we don't understand who's being affected and how and how they're responding and what's happening to them and how they can be helped. Our, our, we'll just remain at a very rhetoric and a very, you know, at a very general level so this report actually helps us get into the granularity of it and to understand how different events impact people differently. And different geographies and how it how it builds on their underlying vulnerability. Finally, I think it's also important that an institution like IED is taking it out a core climate environment think tank, which again signals how people are beginning to look at issues in a connected way. And I think that's really important. It's really important because communities don't exist in silos they don't respond to various issues in silos. And you'll get more far more insights than I'm speaking from the great panel that we have people who have actually worked on the study have collected data, and I've gone out to the field I accompanied them on a couple of this thing but really heart wrenching deep stories, but also a lot of lessons in terms of what are some of the good things that didn't come out of it and how do we mitigate the risks. So, thank you, Josh. That's it for me. I know to the panel for what I hope you'll be interested in conversation. Thank you very much. First, I would like to introduce reintroduce read to who of course is the senior researcher for the climate change group at IED. And a big driver of course of this report read to the first question I think would be, what are the links between climate change migration and trafficking. Tell us about the findings of your research on the levels of climate vulnerability, the trends of distress migration, due to climate impacts and the extent of human trafficking induced due to climate impacts. Thank you so much, Josh. And just for the interest of all the participants as well. I'll just provide a small background about our program. So, in our research we tried to unpack the nexus between climate change migration and trafficking into contrasting geographies. One that is facing slow onset event like drought, and for that we picked up Palamo district in Jharkhand and second an area facing sudden onset climatic disasters like floods and cyclone. And for that we picked up Kenrapara district in Odisha. And the reason for picking up two different geographies was to understand how and what extent both slow and sudden onset events are different in terms of creating vulnerability to trafficking. What are the underlying drivers that are creating push and pull towards risky migration pathways. And finally, the gaps in the existing social protection program and how they failed to provide safety net to communities that are exposed to climate crisis. And we did that because we felt that a better understanding of these issues can provide an insight into strengthening the existing policy response framework to supporting anti-trafficking efforts in context of climate change. So, now actually going on to your question, Josh. So, coming to findings. For us, the most startling finding was the extent to which trafficking in the two areas differed. Trafficking in the drought area was almost two and a half to three times more than that in the flood and cyclone affected area. So the percentage of traffic migrants in Palamo, which is a drought affected area was 42% compared to 16% in Kenrapara impacted by flood and cyclone. So by no means I'm saying that 16% is less even 16% is a big number, but 42% is a number that should really raise a red flag for everyone. Now these traffic migrants face slavery like situations such as forced labor, bonded labor, debt bondage, wage withholding and exploitative working conditions. Now the dramatic difference in the extent to which these two locations are facing trafficking is because the current policy response tends to focus on impacts of sudden onset disaster that usually makes national headline. Rather than the consequences or slow disasters like drought. Now Palamo suffers from drought and does not get the same level of attention as flood and cyclone affected area. Now drought almost in many sense acts like an invisible slow poison rendering people gradually into a state of utter despair and helplessness. Now, surprisingly, one would be surprising to know that there's no drought early warning system in India to provide anticipatory support to communities exposed to it. Further, even after the drought occurs, like you're not even talking about early warning, even after the drought occurs, there's a lot of political economy around its declaration. Now only a drought of a severe category is entitled to get relief from the central government. So many state governments, they wait until the drought moves from moderate to severe category. As a result, many droughts either go unreported or declared so late that the communities are forced into distressed migration to survive and feed the families. Now in case of flood or cyclone, they are fairly well developed early warning system where communities are at least moved to safety before the event. I'm not saying everything is glorious and nice in the flood and cyclone affected area. You'll hear Daniel more about it. But beyond this, the, so beyond this early warning and a declaration of drought and other factors, the underlying social and class divide in healthy and marginalization. They also tend to compound the factors along with climate impacts leading to trafficking. For example, in Palamo, there is a huge social class divide and economic disparity. Now the upper caste Brahmins are economically better off and control most of the land in that area as well as the political institutions and lower caste origins are mostly landless and poor. Now recurring crop losses lead them into debt bondage and possession of their farm lands in most of the cases we saw was taken away by Brahmin landlords. Now as agriculture is becoming less viable due to climate impacts, even for those landlords who now have control of the lands, they are now giving it away to brick kiln owners. Now when we went to the research area, we saw there were 17 brick kilns in the vicinity of the research village. Now crop loss due to climate forces, distress migration leading for family background. And while men move away in search of work, women and girls as young as 16, 17 year old, they work in these brick kilns to make ends meet. And if anyone has ever been to a brick kiln, you can see you even if you're wearing your shoe and sandals, you'll see them virtually melting. It's so hot and it's so difficult to work in those areas. But you know, desperate to find work, these men and women have very little bargaining power making them vulnerable to trafficking, you know, so they're even willing. So they are mostly taken out by this of the of the state by the contractors and employed in life threatening work. And there are also often a lot of deaths which are reported, but in most cases contractors don't even inform the families to avoid paying compensation for the accidental death. Now many individuals from the village have been missing for months, and sometimes returning workers tell families that the relatives have died, but even in those cases the bodies are never brought back. So going beyond the trafficking, if you look in terms of migration trend and how much it gets impacted by climate change. Of course, the underlying factors as well, but overall about 85% of the respondent had at least one family member migrating. And more than 50% of the respondents said that the climate and environmental stressors have become more hazardous and frequent in the last 10 years, leading to crop failure. Livestock mortality and destruction of houses. Now Orissa Coast used to get one cyclone in two years. Now they get two cyclones in the year. So you can imagine the way in which the frequency and intensity of these events are increasing. Similarly in Jharkhand food and water scarcity is becoming a major issue because of the long dry spells and droughts. So and all this is pushing them towards distressed migration. There's help they helplessness and despair due to these events is such that even if they know that there's danger or risk involved in the jobs that they're going to take up in the destination style, they still take it up. And I remember having talked to one of the respondents in one of the village and he said to me that when we go out to work, sometimes we come back and sometimes our bodies and we are always under surveillance and fear and survive at the mercy of the contractors. We also found that the existing social protection schemes like MG and our EGS, which has been mentioned by speakers before me, and health facilities midday meals scheme, etc. are not effective and are inadequate in addressing vulnerabilities in the face of climate and environmental crisis. So typically you would imagine that when vulnerable communities are faced with climate impacts, they should be protected by some social safety net. But when they don't have access to shelter food, decent job healthcare, they become exposed to exploitation. And we in the research area in both the areas I would say we found that the coverage of most social protection program was very low. The job card coverage under the NREC schemes that provides employment during climate crisis was found to be low in both locations. So in Kendrapada only 33% and in Palamu around 42%. And this is when the scheme provides legal entitlement to every rural household to demand 100 days of employment during crisis. And if they are not provided that they are entitled to unemployment allowance, but still this program is not effective because people don't have access to it. Now these schemes also do not have the provision of targeting migrants, especially as there is no portability of entitlements under these schemes. So when people are forced to leave their native village, these safety nets are not available to them when they are on way or at the destination site. So this in on the whole is our key findings. And in the end I would only say Josh that that evidence from the research shows that climate change is worsening poverty and inequality and keep placing people who are already in precarious situation in position where they need reach their limits of coping capacity and are exposed to trafficking. Thank you that was excellent as expected so I really appreciate that overview. We're next we're going to go to Umi Daniel the director of migration and education for aid at action in South Asia and India and Umi we just heard the findings from the research and your organization works with vulnerable migrant communities and Odisha. Can you explain how communities are coping with rapid onset disasters like floods and cyclones and how that is driving distress migration and creating vulnerability to trafficking. Thank you, Josh. Good morning and good afternoon to everyone who have joined this wonderful conversation. Yes, we have been working for a very long time with migrant communities and different places and both at source and destination. We work with children we work with the infant and what we have seen I think the situation before the COVID and situation before after the COVID or the pandemic, it has changed the lives of people. And also like you know the tragedy is much more the vulnerability has increased on the people. The majority of the family that we work in Orissa and elsewhere a poor debt migrant unskilled and driven out due to economic hardship and effect of natural disaster. The current study where we have done in Kendra Pada is in the eastern part of India, the eastern Orissa is experiencing vulnerable like the people are more vulnerable to extreme weather conditions like cyclone flood and coastal erosion, which is really which is displacing large number of people. And in the Kendra Pada where we have done this study, the seven villages, which are known as Satbhaya in Oriya languages, the seven villages, which are submerged under the sea, because of the extreme sea erosion which has taken place. And 571 families from these villages were resettled by the government at the nearby places. And probably I think this is the first of its kind I think 571 families are the first the climate displaced people in Orissa or you can say like the so called I think we say the climate refugees who had to be provided some kind of resettlement by the government. And this is the case of the climate induced displacement which has taken place and also more to come. We have around 800 kilometers of coastline Orissa coast and the various hotspots are also coming up where there's a need to evacuate people urgently from the coast. I think we have such places in other districts as well on the coastline. Predominantly the coastal villages in Kendra Pada are hugely vulnerable to extreme weather, the cyclone and flood. As Ritu said last two decades Orissa has witnessed 10 deadly cyclone which hit the eastern coast of India and 50% of the high intensity cyclone hit Orissa coast in the last three years. It just imagine last three years there are five cyclones which has hit and that was also during the COVID which we had of two years of COVID pandemic. So you can know the kind of the situation you have the COVID pandemic going on the first wave and the second wave and you have three cyclones back to back hitting Kendra Pada and all these areas. And people have been migrating from this area and you know as we all know that there's no data is completely undocumented migrants. I think people are moving to different places. So the combined effect of cyclone flood and sea erosion has devastated the lives of the people on the coastal region of Kendra Pada and also the neighboring district. You know this marine incursion, I think into the coastal habitation is a major issue, which and a huge concern for the government even. And then we see that the Kendra Pada also had migration of workers, skilled worker, and we know the plumbers of those who are actually do the plumbing work. They're they're all over the world from the place the tiny district called Kendra Pada and the and the remit huge money to the to the district. But on the other hand of those who are living on the coast and mostly unscaled migrant and this migration trend is encouraging now more number of people are actually migrating. Basically the failing likelihood opportunity is pushing large number of people to various states for seasonal semi permanent employment. People are actually moving out according to local people around 80 to 90% of the household on the coastal region in the study area, either as one or two member of the family working as migrant worker elsewhere in the country. You know, during COVID, we have witnessed the large influx of people people started migrating back from the cities to the rural areas, and India has recorded around 10 million migrant workers who moved. They work back the cycle back and they became back in a very distressed condition to the villages and Urisa has reported around one million migrant workers who came from different states and the different cities, and the Kendra Pada has reported around 60,000 migrants who came back during the COVID to various villages in Kendra Pada. And this is the first time we have some data available during the COVID time, at least we have some figures to tell, yeah, there are 60,000 migrant have come. But within two years, many of these migrant workers have gone back to their work. And we don't have data again, we are square one now, we don't know how many people have migrated after COVID. Now, interestingly, you know, I think after COVID, a regular bus service between Kerala in southwest coast, I think you can know the southwest coast and Kendra Pada on the eastern coast covering 2000 kilometer. Now you have a regular bus services now, which is bringing migrant, who is taking migrant from Kendra Pada, and bringing back those who are coming home is faring migrant workers from source and destination. The mobility is now more explicit and organized due to large number of middlemen and traffickers who operate to facilitate supply of laborer to Kerala, and other other southern states. During the studies, some of the migrants have narrated the stories is how they were often like ill treated exploited at the work site at the destination. Somewhere, some went on to say as to how they were kept as a hostage, and the administration has to intervene and rescued all these people. Many also complain about overworked and ours of work is happening, but many of them are farmers, they're not tuned to the kind of what they do in the plywood industries and other industries, which is far away around 2000 kilometers away from the villages. But another interesting thing that we see that when men are migrating men are moving out the left bank are the women are the children are the disabled, who are actually staying back. And that's that is what we have been observing like in another district near Kendra Pada, it's said that around 600 to 700,000 people have migrated, even if 300,000 migrant are the men. So you can imagine the women are managing the household in a disaster prone area during their absence I think they also face the kind of disaster. But also like we found off late, the people who are moving into Kerala, I think they mentioned that many of them would also face floods in that area. So, you know, disaster is both at home, and also like no wherever they're going to the destination, the both the place they're also facing the same disaster. Coming back to some of the central laws which regulate migrants, which which provides some kind of no support to the migrant workers is grossly violated. We had a central law called Interstate Migrant Workers Act 1976, which is grossly violated and not being implemented or poorly implemented in various parts of India, the destination as well as the source. The anti trafficking laws and enforcement is yet it's not adequately implemented. I think that is one area that a concern that last scale labor trafficking is happening. But the understanding is something different like no trafficking is understood only for the sex work or the sex trade or for the commercial sex work, but the last scale, the trafficking which is happening in India are the labor trafficking. We are still waiting for a comprehensive trafficking or person bill, which is still at the parliament. I think it's last three years. It has not been discussed. I hope in coming sessions, this load we discussed, and I think we'll have a comprehensive law which will actually protect both all the migrant and also the traffic victim. So, thank you very much. I'll stop there with that note. Thank you. Thank you very much. That was a that was a great presentation. So this is for Johnson Johnson top note retu highlighted how climate change, excuse me climate induced trafficking in jacar and jacar and is almost two and a half times more than in Odisha jar cond I think if I pronounced that correctly. How are communities being forced into trafficking exploitative work conditions and bonded labor situations due to climate change induced drought and why do you think that these impacts are more stark in your region. Good morning, everyone, and good afternoon. Thank you ID and fcdo. Thank you, Joe's for moderating this session. I would begin with a quote to respond to this question, Josh, from a tribal traditional leader from under drive called but he says in the last 40 years entire landscape had changed dense forest to scrub jungle less biodiversity in terms of both flora and fauna in the area. medicinal plants have disappeared. Social structure is changing every day. Emergence of exploitative markets, taking control of the household economy. Women have to go far off places to fetch water naturally springs have dried up. People are getting trapped into high yielding varieties of crops with huge input cost against natural farming. Climate change in monsoon has reduced agriculture and minor forest produce productions every year. So I'm representing jar can which is lined up forest, which is known, and I represent fear foundation working very intensively on the migration and traffic for the past few years. And here people largely depend on agroforestry livelihoods interactions and which in the past ancestors have enjoyed much better than what they are enjoying. There has been a drastic change in climatic factors which has led to distress migration, trafficking unemployment, especially among the most vulnerable communities when we are talking about vulnerable communities. I'm talking about schedule tribes schedule cast and specially primitive vulnerable tribal groups. Yes, migration is not bad but distress migration and trafficking is bad. Like up employment and vulnerability has led the poorest community from the community, very vulnerable and getting into the vicious cycle of poverty. They don't have basic choices to live with dignity. And often they are living in the mercy of employers feudal loads in the existing social structure in the form of distress migration and trafficking. I agree that migration trafficking is much more in jar can as compared to other parts of the country. And which is also very important from the data source that we have from the state migrant control room, which was managed by fear foundation on behalf of the department of labor and employment training skill development government of jar can. During the lockdown during COVID response, it was managed by fear foundation and almost we have been able to get back home more than a million people who are standards in different parts of the country. The neighboring country and within the state. And we during in the last one and a half years we have made registration of the calls have been 0.94 million schools on various issues pertaining to expanded condition delay payment accidental death atrocities trafficking issues, etc. This also tells that migrant laborers wherever they are working at the destinations. They are not safe and entire supply chain needs to be sanitized and therefore government of jar can has already launched very strategic intervention as safe and responsible migration initiative so that people are there. And they are safe and they are being respected acknowledged for the contribution they are making the nation building. And it is being implemented by consortium and we are doing that and fear is one of the partners along with PDAAC CMID ISP supported by media. And now when we are talking about Palamo which is a rain shadow area and people from the community says that we have not achieved freedom, despite being freed, this is the reality. The another person, another woman from the same community, Bhoomiya community says that our lives were much prosperous before nothing would finish them. Means they lived in abundance but you don't have the issue here is that the community from the schedule cast who are majorly landless and they complete they don't even have the very decent homestead land which Ritu has already spoken about it. And every household all the adult men are migrating and because they don't have choices and they they are forced to get into the traffic and jar can is known for trafficking instances largely among the tribal and civil caste community and majorly in the domestic workforce. They go to the multinational major cities, metropolitan cities as a domestic help and some get trafficked into the different trades as well. The situation here is that even in order to have a survival because agriculture is failing they don't have land they don't get the local employment in terms of the even in the agriculture fields. So they are as part of the coping mechanisms they are even depend on the forest landscape which is also I mean it is denuding every day and often these community depend on the they call it a Madhu Mahua tree. Mahua tree is basically Madhuka Indika where more than six months of their livelihood runs into these trees and which is also mortgages to the upper caste community and whatever they used to get it from these forest productions specially the Madhuka Indika and other tubers and fivers which are also being mortgages and they are running in households like that. And often these communities migrate to a very different places like like the other speaker was talking about Kerala where even I recently visited and I found that thousands of people are getting into the tea garden with the families with 10,000 to 15,000 rupees earning and somehow they are managing their course there. Apart from that while looking at the entire segment of migration and trafficking what we have found the while we were managing the state migrant control and we found that business condition among women is much, much higher. They don't have choices. The safety is compromised. The payments are not done at the destination locations and so on. And therefore one of the regions is that a lot of efforts as far as the national schemes like MJ and RHA is supposed to be happening but delay in payments always again sends them back to the peripheries. Not having confidence that whether these programs are really going to benefit them something access to social security also gets impacted because the documentation the government requires is not in proper conditions and they will therefore direct cash transfer becomes difficult. The documentation in different certificates are differently documented and which does not match with the bank linkages and therefore they are deprived of getting access to social security in the same time and therefore the only survival that they have is to get into the bondage kind of condition or migrate in a very distressed condition. That's how the people are living here in Jharkhand and it requires huge policy framework to be designed so that even if their people are migrating they should be safe and responsible in terms of the entire supply chains and so that they are able to support the family down and they have a better education, better nutrition supply and so on. So I end it here and if you have any questions I'll be happy to respond. Thank you. Thank you, Josh. Over to you. Thank you, Johnson. That was excellent. This one is for Devanshu and again Devanshu Chakravarti is a researcher and independent consultant and Devanshu we just listened to how climate is acting as a stress multiplier forcing communities to undertake. In some cases very risky coping strategies that land them in trafficking like situations. Can you explain the underlying drivers that create these vulnerabilities? Thank you, Josh. I think you have already said that climate change acts as a stress multiplier and for this current study we used a framework where we used five recognized drivers of migration to look at the underlying factors of both migration and trafficking. So we looked at economic, political, demographic, social and environmental factors to understand the situation why migration and trafficking is taking place. Now we have to bear in mind that in Kenderpara migration is a very recent phenomenon while in Palamu there are evidences that people have been migrating for more than three centuries. So also we have to understand that Kenderpara was a very fertile and prosperous region earlier. It used to attract migrants but today the situation is different. Labelhoods have become more vulnerable in the last few decades and this is more a result of the factors or as a result of climate change which has already been talked in detail by Ritu and I, Umi Daniel. And because the labelhoods are vulnerable in Kenderpara migration from there also takes place. But as you heard from the earlier two presentations you can see the kind of migration is also very different and the facilitating environment for migration is also very different. There are buses that are flying from Kenderpara to Kerala whereas we did not hear of similar experiences in Palamu. So one of the factors that we found that was driving migration and human trafficking was food insecurity. This was highly pronounced in Palamu but it was also found to be the case in Kenderpara. So among our traffic household families 81% of the families from Palamu shared that they were actually suffering from food insecurity. They were taking just one meal per day. The percentage was lower in Jharkhand and also there are economic drivers that is impacting migration and human trafficking. Debt is one of the factors that is impacting households in both locations. People are indebted to local money lenders and to repay that they have to undertake migration. Some of the reasons for which the debt was taken primarily it was taken for healthcare purposes for repaying old debts for agriculture, healthcare. These were few of the factors. Also when we look at the economic landscape or the livelihood landscape in the two regions it is very different. It is agriculture and sea based activities in Kenderpara whereas it is agriculture and forest based livelihoods in Palamu. Both have been impacted by climate change and we see that there is migration from both these regions. Literacy is also an important factor. Low levels of education in the employment opportunities of youth in sectors other than natural resources. Kenderpara has got a higher literacy rate than Palamu. It is around 85% in Kenderpara and around 63% in Palamu. The rates are much lower among the UBTGs and SE communities in Palamu. It is lower than 50%. Now if you see the nature of the vocations also taken up by youth are also different. Many people in the urban areas from Kenderpara are employed as plumbers especially the youth. Whereas Palamu contributes a large population to the construction industry. If you see I think at Ritu has touched on it, Johnson has also touched on it. That there is a history of feudal exploitation and bonded labor in Palamu of which we did not find any evidence in Kenderpara. In fact from among the migrants also we found that a high percentage of migrants from Palamu were from the tribal community. Whereas in Kenderpara the SE community was only was less than 10%. The rest comprised mostly forward caste that is a general caste or the OBC caste. So social drivers are also an important factor that is driving migration and human trafficking. If we look at the status of infrastructure and let us also say political drivers. Both locations actually reported that when they were not aware of the existence of institutions that can actually be very helpful. In addressing their vulnerability to migration. For example like Gram Sahabas, Village Panchayats and Village Vod Sahabas. There are in Kenderpara there were village board level disaster management committees. But people were not the general public was not aware about what was the composition of these committees where they were when these meetings were held. And the agenda was never ever discussed in the Village Gram Sahabas. If you look at the infrastructure, infrastructure was also existing in Kenderpara too for addressing for I mean helping people during cyclones. But what we found was that the infrastructure was not sufficient because there was one center that was present in the seven villages that we support in four villages. Seven of the four of the seven villages the infrastructure was there but it was shared to be inadequate. While the road conditions were very good or the connectivity was good in Kenderpara. The connectivity was not at all very, was very poor in Palam. I will not touch upon the climate drivers as everybody has already talked about that and how it is impacted life on this thing. Social security programs also the access to social security programs was poor in both places. Didu has already talked about Manrega so I am not going to get into details about that. But for other schemes also for example like the BOCW card which is actually a labor registration card for construction workers. We didn't find many people or no one from Kenderpara actually registering under this scheme or having this card. And in Palam also there were few people who were having access to this. So and in Kenderpara also we did not find anybody who had enrolled for any vocational training programs that were provided by the government. The coverage for insurance was also very low at 6%. So in general I mean access to social security schemes can actually help address human trafficking and migration. But from what we found that both on rapid onset and slow onset context. The social protection mechanism could not absorb the climate shocks and efficiently cover all eligible households. So this is what we found from our study. Josh I'll be happy to take questions later. Thank you very much that was excellent very informative. So Ritu I wanted to circle back to you for a minute. We've heard about these issues and the challenges. I'd like to come back to you again and ask you what you think should be done by the policymakers in particular to address this nexus between climate change migration and trafficking. This is so evident from your research. I was particularly struck for instance by the fact that you said that there is no drought early warning system in India like there is for for rapid onset crises like cyclones. So that seems like an obvious place to look but over to you and thank you. Thanks Josh. I believe like this issue is not unsurmountable but what we really need is recognition of this issue and a collective response from different levels of governance. So we probably need action from the local or the state level national level and international level. And I'll just quickly talk about what we need to do at each of these levels especially for example if I talk about the local or the state level. The local government needs to focus they need to focus on program that support in situ adaptation that can make agriculture fishery or forest based livelihood more resilient to climate impacts and prevent distrust migration. But I'm not saying that all of those impacts will be because they are with increasing climate in climate impact intensity and frequency. Many of these impact may be beyond the coping capacity but at least let's try to undertake whatever in situ adaptation we can to make these impact as less disastrous for the communities as possible. Secondly there's a need to shape policy interventions based on local knowledge and evidence especially because we just saw that addressing risks to trafficking in a wide range of social context where it occurs requires need for inclusion of the affected communities in decision making and openness to local forms of resilience and adaptation. Thirdly I would say state governments need to ensure that all migrant workers are registered with the labor welfare board and use digital interface to track flow and status of migrants where they're employed and ensure compliance with workers rights and entitlements. And state governments also need to identify because we we heard from all the panelists that food insecurity becomes a big issue water insecurity becomes a big issue. So let's identify some of these hotspots and try to ensure that social protection measures and do step delivery of some key services are insured for those most vulnerable household. Then again like a lot of panelists also mentioned about women and children particularly being exposed so being more vulnerable. So we need to ensure that we pay special attention on them especially to use economic vulnerability of women family members who are left behind and link them with entrepreneurial and other livelihood activities. So that's what we can or the government can do at the at the local level or at the state level. At the national level probably there is a need to recognize and give priority to this issue in both development as well as climate policy and integrate these priorities and actions in climate resilience plan migration response plan as well as national development plan. NDC the national determined contributions are something where the governments talk about what actions they're going to take on climate action. There's a need to include trafficking in that as well. I doubt India and I'm not I'm not I'm sure India does not include trafficking either in the state climate change action plan or the national action plan. So there's a need to recognize this as an issue and start including that and addressing that there's also need to create a right based framework for climate risk management within the social protection program. Now these rights could be around access to appropriate shelter food grain decent job because if if communities have that right it can ensure that they have the safety like safety net even when they face any crisis whether it's climate or covid or any other crisis. And then again extend the portability of social protection implement and anticipate reaction as you mentioned in your opening comment that that could be a basic basic minimum action that government can take. Have proper early warning system take anticipate reaction to move people to safety before a disaster strike or take anticipatory measures to help them. And then finally very quickly I'll touch upon what needs to be done at the international level and purely because I come from the climate change fraternity. I would really urge that and Cecilia probably will second me on that that we need firm targets and action to be considered within the UNFCCC mechanism along the lines of sustainable development goal. A task force and displacement has been created in line with the Paris agreement. But this TFD this task force and displacement needs to recognize this next issue of climate migration with trafficking. There's also a need for coordinated international effort rooted in the existing initiative. We know there are a lot of existing international mechanism for example task force and displacement sustainable development goals and I framework. Nonsense initiatives and so on but each of these issues they're quite scattered across several sectors and actors. There's a need of a more joined up and an inclusive approach that complements and draws upon the work of existing bodies and expert group. So I'll just stop there. Josh and I know I probably we have gone over time so back to you. Oh no that was excellent I think that's very important. And so I wanted to I did my did my picture disappear here for a second. But yeah I wanted to thank you for that. One thing that I'd like to do is make a plug for for journalists in this. I mean I think that you know journalists can play a very key role in what's happening. And you know I'm an advisor for I wanted to give a shout out to the Journalism Center on Global Trafficking where I'm an advisor and a special thanks to Kara Tabachnik for founding and directing this group because I think that it's really important for journalists to help train a spotlight on these issues and helping train journalists in countries like India Bangladesh and so forth. So that they can help inform the you know the public's understanding of human labor arms drugs and wildlife trafficking. And particularly emerging issues like this slow versus rapid onset of climate change and how that's affecting human trafficking so you know hopefully we can raise some awareness of this and help train the journalists so that they can help you know inform the public of what's happening. So at that point we do I wanted to I guess we don't we don't have time for questions but I would like to get some closing comments from our keynote speakers and some other speakers. So first I would love to invite Siobhan Malali of the UN Special Rapporteur on trafficking in persons to share some closing comments on the findings shared by the panelists and what action you think the UN should be doing to address these issues. Thank you very much, Josh and thank you very much to all of the speakers and panelists. I think the key points have been made and my concern is really to try to move forward based on the recommendations in this report and the contributions that we've heard here today. Particularly I think it's important in terms of looking at UN action or state led actions or other programs at an international level that we break down the silos between the responses in relation to environmental degradation and climate change and the focus on human rights just transitions and safe open migration. As well as human rights based approaches to combat trafficking so rather than working in fragmented ways that we ensure that these concerns are integrated and addressed in the more traditional climate or environmental settings if you like and I think this event today is a very good example of that. And being led by the IED as an institute on environment and development but looking specifically at the concerns in relation to forced migration and displacement and increased risks of trafficking in person so I think it's hugely important that the evidence that we've heard today. The empirical data the case studies that these are brought to the attention of international actors and to states and that the recommendations in the report are integrated into the ongoing work of different platforms. The upcoming COP and other arenas where we can really try to push forward on implementation of the recommendations and prevention of trafficking in persons being built into climate adaptation and mitigation strategy so thank you very much. And as I said through my mandate as special rapporteur I'm very happy to continue to work with you and to find opportunities to collaborate and hopefully to strengthen our work. Thank you. Thank you very much. I'd also I'd like to now invite Cecilia Silva Bernardo climate negotiator for the LDCs to share some closing comments as well on the findings shared by the panelists and what do you think are the key takeaways for you particularly from the perspective of developing countries vulnerability to climate change. Thank you. Thank you very much. Josh. It was a very good, very good points from panelists. I will be brief for the sake of time. Ritos have made very good remarks that I will not repeat some of them, but I think it's important. We should consider that despite everything the international policy discourse is still debating about the causal link between climate migration and trafficking. We have to see findings shared today by the panelists as a stark reminder that we can no longer afford to turn a blind eye to the issue of nexus on this issue. This climate in just the stress migration and displacement is delaying the development of the society and community in LDCs. That's a fact. And it's done by increasing pressure on urban infrastructure and services by undermining economic growth by increasing the risk of conflict and by leading towards health, educational and social indicators among migrants. Josh, I also, Josh, I also think that is the urgent need of having social support systems that have the reach to most vulnerable communities and households with automated triggers to support with slow onset events like drought or fast onset events like floods. And of course it's important to also pay attention and consider the gender aspect when dealing with these issues as women are left behind to manage their families as men migrate looking for work. I believe there is the need to support for the support to be particularly focused on the needs of women and the least developed and most affected communities. I thank you, Josh. I will stop here for the sake of timing to give opportunity to others to speak. Thank you very much. Thank you very much, Cecilia. So I would like to now invite Daljeet Khar from the Climate and Environment Advisor for the FCDO, the Foreign Commonwealth Development Office to share some closing comments. And, you know, the UK government supported this research. And so I would of course like to ask you what your takeaways are from the research and how, how do you plan to take these findings forward? Thank you, Josh. Good afternoon and good morning to everyone. And firstly, thank you to the panelists for a very enriching and insightful discussion. We all recognize the importance of best available evidence and science for effective environmental policy making. The evidence shared by the finalist just now suggests that climate-induced migration intersects with severe form of exploitation. While the evidence is clear, it is critical now to use this to inform our development plans and ensure that climate action gets integrated across all sectors to reduce intrinsic and acquired vulnerabilities of people, environment and economies. We heard earlier to talk about one of the study areas which experiences higher frequency of cyclones and flooding, a couple of sea level rise and sea water inclusion as well that actually damages livelihood assets, soil erosion and land degradation. While efficient social protection cover might potentially enhance people's absorptive and adaptive capacities, most of these social protection programs are not designed to anticipate climate shocks and thus they fail to provide a holistic safety net. Therefore, these social protection programs may need to be reinvented and they should explicitly include climate considerations in their design and delivery. Infrastructure for climate resilient growth is one such program that I am delivering with Government of India and our partners like IID, UNDP and FIA foundation who you also saw in the panel today. This ICRG program, this is an FCDO program, it's a TA program. It demonstrates how well designed programs within the framework of social protection offer a pathway to local economic growth inclusion and also contribute towards long term climate resilience for the most vulnerable community. So in line with our work under the ICRG program and this research, I would like to highlight three action points particularly today that need to be taken to help reduce extreme vulnerabilities that force people into migration and push them further into poverty and bondage. So the first one is to improve the outreach of social protection program. We've heard the panelists talk about that. The second one is to integrate trafficking issues into the nationally determined contributions, the NDCs and ensure climate finance commitments are made on these issues. And lastly, the policy should be designed on the back of local level research and evidence such as the one that we've heard today. Because empirical evidence can help develop need-based and area-specific policies that address climate change during these basements. I will end here and I would thank you. Thank you to Josh and I'll pass it on to Anirbhan. Thank you very much. So in closing, I would like to finally invite Anirbhan Ganguly, South Asia Research Hub under FCDO to share some of the next steps. And I wanted to thank everybody for participating in this excellent panel discussion and especially those who did the report. It's really groundbreaking work. And I hope it gets all the attention and response that it deserves. So over to you, Anirbhan. Thanks very much, Josh. I had jotted down some points honestly for the closing remarks and steps, but I believe that most of that has already been said in the discussion today. Just a couple of things. I think the study that was presented today is timely, especially because it comes a few months after the COP26 commitments have been made, which makes a special case. I would say for stepping up adaptation effort vis-à-vis mitigation. But equally, the IPCC Working Group II report is out focusing on impacts. It makes numerous references to climate-induced migration. I think the study is significant because it tries to fill critical evidence gap. We know that these links exist, but there is limited empirical data to say with confidence what the evidence means in practice. And I say this because even the IPCC Working Group report makes numerous references, but they also attach a medium confidence tag to most of these references, which perhaps means that much more needs to be done to establish empirically the links which we know notionally. So to that extent, I think the study is particularly relevant and significant. I would also say that some of the statements and observations that were made are actually quite thought provoking. If I may use the term provocative, for example, Ritu's comment that an area which is marked by slow onset changes actually has much higher numbers of traffic migrants than an area with slow onset, fast onset, the cyclone prone areas, which is quite honestly a bit counterintuitive. It's indeed thought provoking because much of the attention that goes to adaptation planning tend to focus on cyclones and those extreme events. It's important that such empirical observations are placed in the public domain so that we can look forward to more attention to these slow onset events and its consequences. Now in terms of the next steps, I would say that I mean I was told and I'm sure it's great that today in this virtual room we have as many as 400 participants, which is fantastic. But I do think that we need to take the report to a much larger audience to the entire community of climate researchers, climate policymakers, academics, government, international bodies and so on. And I entirely agree with Josh when you say that there's really a platform for the journalists because I think the media and indeed the social media as well would have an important role to make sure that research of this nature gets its due credit in the world of science and policy. But also I think equally that the point that Ritu also made in her last intervention. It's important that policymakers are made insiders to this process. We need to take this out to policymakers at the level of national governments at the level of global policymakers and the entire policymaking community, wherever they operate from, simply because while it's true that we need more of data and reports of this nature, fill crucial data gaps, policymaking can't really wait for all data to come in so it's important to take forward the conclusions of the report, the findings, the recommendations when IID and partners say that it's important that social protection schemes need to be made an integral part of adaptation action. I think it's an important policy message that we all need to invite and take forward. Finally, I think it's important to also note that report of this kind doesn't end with launch events such as this. There are questions that still need to be answered. There are dimensions of the problem that needs to be addressed. For example, I would say cross boundary climate induced migration and the geopolitics of that is something that needs to be looked at in more detail, building up from some of the observations that were made today. So there's a need lots to do, but honestly, I must say that this is a report which had promised empirical compelling evidence on an issue which affects the entire globe, in a way, and the report does a commendable job in addressing that issue. I would like to end here. In the interest of time, I'm not doing a formal thank you but thanks to all the panelists, thanks to the research team, thanks to the presenters. Thanks to, thanks to you, Josh for moderating. And thanks a ton to all the participants in today's virtual room. Please be with us in this journey. It was great to have all of you today. I hope we'll meet again. Thank you very much.