 Welcome to this briefing on the Migration, Environment and Climate Change Evidence for Policy Project. My name is Susanna Melder. I'm the Global Project Coordinator based in the International Organization for Migration in Geneva in the Migration Research Division. And I will start my presentation with the following points. I will start my presentation with providing you a short introduction on the topic of migration, environment and climate change and what the links between those two areas are. In the second part of my presentation, I will be looking at what are the key issues we want to address with the project and then look at the proposed solution through the project. I will mention what approach we're taking in Meclep and in the fifth point I will be looking at areas for collaboration. So what are the links between migration, the environment and climate change? Sudden onset disasters like tropical storms or flesh floods and slow onset processes of environmental degradation, for instance droughts, desertification or sea level rise may both result in population movements. However, slow onset events are expected to cause most environmental migration. But it's not just that the environment and climate change can have an impact on migration. Actually, human mobility can also affect the environment. For instance, if Haitians are moving to the Dominican Republic and they're settling close to forests or a national park and are looking for firewood and taking down trees, then this has an impact on this community of destination environment. In terms of the factors driving migration, it's usually not a single reason that determines the decision to migrate. It can be based on social, economic, political, demographic and environmental factors. There is no automatism between a specific climate change event and its response in terms of human mobility either. Many other issues such as governance, conflict, gender or levels of development intervene in determining the migratory consequences of environmental factors. Hence environmental and climate change factors are unlikely to be the sole drivers of migration, which makes migration in the context of the environment a multi-causal phenomenon. Migration can also be an adaptation strategy. It helps people to cope with changes in their environment that are having an impact on their way of life. This positive feature of migration is, however, rarely recognized. Migration is too often seen only as the result of a failure to adapt to a given environmental situation. But in reality, migration is and always has been an integral part of the interaction of humans with their environment. It should therefore also be recognized as one possible and legitimate adaptation strategy, particularly at the early stages of environmental degradation. Mobility can help to reduce risk to life, livelihoods and ecosystems. It can reduce the reliance on the environment for livelihoods and, for instance, for income diversification through remittances. And upon return, migrants can significantly strengthen the livelihoods of families and communities facing environmental challenges through the transfer of knowledge and skills. And this aspect of migration being a possible adaptation strategy, both in a positive and negative sense, is what the MACLAB project aims to address. IOM's portfolio on migration, environment and climate change includes a number of activities. We have a focal point. Our name is Adina UNESCO and it works with a team and they work on a variety of issues. For instance, in terms of knowledge and information sharing, there are over 30 publications that have been produced also by the research unit of the International Organization for Migration, UNESCO just co-authored a book on people on the move in a changing climate looking at the differences among the different regions. Another initiative that IOM has been undertaking with the Asian Development Bank is the so-called Asia-Pacific Migration and Environment Network, ATMAN. And there's also a publication in the pipeline which is called The Atlas on Environmental Migration seeking to depict what environmental migration looks like, what are the areas in the different parts of the world that are affected. In terms of capacity to building, IOM has experience in that area as well. There have been two trainings that have taken place at the regional levels, one for the Asia-Pacific region which took place last year in March in Seoul and another one that took place in Washington, Zanier in March 2014 which focus on the links between migration environment and climate change adaptation. And in terms of dialogue, IOM links up with many processes at the global level and there's engagement with processes like the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, the UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction or the Convention to Combat Desertification. There has also been an international dialogue on migration meeting and internal IOM meeting with the member states on the topic of migration environment and climate change in 2011. So what are the principal issues that we seek to address with the project? As you can see on this slide, there are three distinct policy areas. We have climate change and environment, we have human development and human ability. Now when we look at the links between migration and development, we've seen over the past 15 years that more and more discussions have taken place on their links, on the impact migration can have on development but also development on migration and how migration can be mainstreamed in development for. For instance, the Global Forum on Migration Development has been taking place annually since 2007. In 2013 the UN High Level Dialogue on International Migration Development took place for the second time and there are also discussions in the post-2015 United Nations Development Framework on Sustainable Development Goals looking at how migration can be integrated for instance as a target or an indicator. So the links between migration and development are increasingly recognised although some development practitioners still consider mobility as a failure of development because people are forced to leave whereas migration can also be a positive option and more development, there's a theory on it, actually leads to more migration in the middle term. Now when we look at the links between human development and climate change in the environment, actually you will see that most of the climate change adaptation plans are led by development actors like the United Nations Development Program helping to devise those programs, prepare background studies, etc. But what is often missing is the link between migration, the environment and climate change. There have been references to those links but they are hardly ever mainstreamed into an actually national adaptation plans for instance as migration in the context of climate change adaptation particularly is often considered a failure. For instance the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and its fifth assessment report of Working Group 2 which was just published in March 2014 referred to those influences of slow onset and fast onset events that I mentioned earlier on migration and highlighted that migration can be an effective adaptation strategy. So this is why the project aims to translate adaptation measures into policy actions. Other supporting policy frameworks is for instance the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. In the 2010 conference of the parties they agreed on a framework called the Cancun Adaptation Framework and in there you will see that there is a reference to migration in naming to enhance the understanding and cooperation looking at how migration, climate relocation and displacement are influenced by climate change. In the 2012 meeting of the conference of the parties in Doha there was a call for more understanding how the impacts of climate change are affecting patterns of migration, displacement and human mobility and this decision was taking in the context of loss and damage taking place linked to climate change. So what we have seen in the previous section is that at the international level there is a call for better evidence base and the need to better understand migration as an adaptation strategy and this is what the Michael Project aims to address contribute to understanding migration as adaptation so what are the obstacles, benefits and opportunities, what policy options are needed. But before I start explaining into how the project aims to address those challenges I'd like to provide you with a brief overview of the project itself. The project is foreseen to last for three years. It started in January 2014 and has a budget of 2.4 million euros of which 80% are financed by the European Union. The project has six pilot countries, Haiti and the Dominican Republic in the Caribbean, Mauritius in Africa and Vietnam and Papua New Guinea in Asia and the Pacific. They all represent very different environmental challenges and migration scenarios. For instance, Haiti is facing deforestation and mudslides, Kenya is facing droughts in the northern region, Mauritius is facing sea level rise and floods, Vietnam, salinization of groundwater and floods Papua New Guinea all types of challenges like sea level rise, earthquakes, tsunamis and floods. So to ensure that the research the project is carrying out is policy oriented we have established technical working groups at the national level in the six pilot countries. These setups are based on previous projects and experience that IOM has had with publications like the migration profiles which put together key data on migration and the African Caribbean and Pacific Observatory on migration which focuses on South migration. So in these technical working groups, policy makers have an opportunity to discuss with researchers what their findings are and to ensure that the research that is carried out is actually policy relevant and responding to needs of the government. The project has three components. The first is capacity building of government officials and researchers. The second is knowledge and evidence production and the third is dialogue. With regards to the capacity building component, we noticed that in the technical working groups at the national level most governments have not made yet the link between migration and environment and climate change. Many countries have climate change adaptation plans but if migration is considered at all it is seen as a failure to adapt. So what we have done is providing background on the links between migration and climate change and this is why we are working on the first ever training manual on this topic which will then be pilot tested in the six pilot countries at the beginning of next year in 2015. In terms of the research, before starting with the household surveys we are carrying out what we call national assessments based on the example of a publication called Assessing the Evidence that was produced by IOM in Bangladesh. It is basically a stock taking exercise looking at what studies exist, what policies and legal frameworks are in place, are there any climate change adaptation plans for instance. It serves to identify vulnerable populations and it seeks to identify gaps that need to be addressed through our research and those are ongoing at the moment. So what is the research question we end to answer with our household surveys? We want to know how migration can be situated in opportunities, constraints and barriers to adaptation. So what are the obstacles for people who cannot move after an environmental event or a flood for instance and what are some policy options for those who want to move and what options may need to be planned beforehand. The core part of the MACLAP project are the household surveys and why is that? Most of the studies that exist on the topic focus on qualitative approaches but there is no nationally representative data from several countries where conclusions could be drawn on specific case studies. So we are right now developing survey tools with our consortium partners to carry out household surveys in the six countries as of September this year. They will culminate in case study reports and then we will prepare a final comparative report to draw some conclusions which may be either saying that it was very context specific or that maybe certain experiences can be replicated in other contexts. Further tools we have been developing for the research component is a policy brief series that my colleague Sheen Lee is leading. So if you're interested in contributing please let us know. The aim is to provide easily accessible information building on key results that are interesting for policymakers and drawing out the policy implications. We are also looking into developing maps to both visualize migration and environmental movements, conceptual approaches, but we will also use GIS mapping and we are working together with the team working on the Atlas of Environmental Migration that I have mentioned before. In terms of the dialogue component of the MACLAP project we are developing a global online information sharing platform. It is building on the existing Asian Pacific Migration and Environment Network and will be extended to all six parent countries and all regions. It seeks to foster policy coherence and cooperation. For instance the members of the technical working group in the Dominican Republic wanted to exchange with the members of the technical working group in Haiti. This online sharing platform will live from the input by partners and technical working group members and will also include photo and video documentation. We will have someone working on it to feed it to generate discussions to keep it alive. The key venues for dialogue are of course the technical working groups at the national level. On this slide you see a picture of the meeting that took place in Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic on the 23rd of April this year. What we will also organize are so-called national policy consultations in 2016 once we have the results of the household surveys available. So they can be discussed and it can be discussed what the policy implications of that research is and what the next steps are that should be taken at the national level. This brings me to the part on what approach we are taking in the MACLAP project. We have an international research consortium and associate partners I mentioned the technical working groups. We also have focal points in the IOM offices in the six countries and we also work with other partners at the global level. IOM is implementing the MACLAP project together with an international research consortium. We have six partners which are mostly based in Europe but also in Costa Rica and our research coordinator is based at the University of Versailles in France. Each of the partners is covering one pilot country in a kind of twinning approach advising local research teams based on their experience and expertise on the topic. On this slide you can see a sort of organogram. You can see that my colleague Sheen Lee and I were based in IOM headquarters in Geneva. Most of the research partners of the consortium were also based in Europe and in Flaxo and Costa Rica and we have focal points in the IOM offices in the six pilot countries who are in direct liaison with the technical working groups. We also have three associate partners who have a more advisory role. The name associates and the distinction to the research consortium is the following. The research consortium is directly engaged in the implementation of the project where associates can only advise and these are categories that follow the kind of distinction by the European Union. Our associates are based in the Dominican Republic and Vietnam and in Switzerland. I also mentioned the role of the technical working groups. They are reviewing and commenting on the national assessments and they will guide the research questions for the household surveys so making sure that the research responds to their policy needs and feeds back into the work at the national level. In terms of collaboration with other partners, we're reaching out to a number of stakeholders. For instance, the Nansen initiative which focuses on cross-border displacement and protection issues has worked together with us on our policy brief and how to mainstream migration international adaptation plans. The internal displacement monitoring center which is also based here in Geneva and Switzerland has developed a model to simulate drought-induced displacement in northern Kenya. This will be used in our training manual and we will be collecting more information and data that they can use to improve that model. We've also reached out to the World Bank, the German Development Corporation agency and other research projects focusing on similar or the same topics to exchange and survey tools and comment on their survey. When it comes to areas for collaboration, I would like to propose the following to you. I am just reaching out to collaborate and find synergies with projects of a similar orientation but if you would like to contribute, for instance, to the training manual through the Policy Advisory Committee, the Global Online Information Training Platform Policy Briefs the Atlas of Environmental Migration and any of the other products, please let us know. With this I would like to end my presentation. You will find our contact details on this slide. Feel free to contact us and we look forward to hearing from you and collaborating with you.