 Not only we have been providing humanitarian assistance to IDPs, to internally displaced persons that have been affected by natural disasters due to climate change and environmental degradation, also we have been working with governments on how to use human mobility as a resilience and an adaptation measure to the effects of climate change. At the multilateral level, we have also been quite active in trying to incorporate this reality and raise awareness of other entities dealing with global issues and discussions at the global level. And certainly in the New York Declaration and the Global Compact is something that we have been raising awareness of delegates and pushing forward to be included. And lastly, we have been also, and the Director General showed you yesterday, the new Atlas of Environmental Migration that came out from a collaboration with Sian Spo in Paris. We welcome very much the creation of the platform on disaster displacement under the chairmanship of the federal government of Germany and Bangladesh as a vice chairmanship. We're basically trying to strengthen the evidence and data collection to inform policy. Now, there are three main objectives of this panel today. The first one is to highlight some of the key issues arising from the links between human mobility and climate change and disasters and to discuss the ways forward to address them. The second is to showcase some innovative partnerships and joint efforts undertaken by states, other international organizations and the academic community to address these challenges. And the third one is certainly to affirm our commitment to address these issues in the context of climate change and disaster, but also to support the platform that member states have created. Without further delay, Excellency, I'll give you the floor. Thank you, Deputy Director General. Thank you for the honor to speak to this audience gathering for the sake of improving the response to the challenges of international migration. I will focus on the platform on disaster displacement, which, as you know, looks at the particular form of human mobility. That is, cross-border displacement in the context of disasters and climate change. As the platform on disaster displacement deals, at least with two of the major challenges of the 21st century, climate change and human mobility. Yesterday, during his keynote address, his Excellency, Mr. Peter Thompson, President of the UN General Assembly, asked us to look at the bigger picture and climate change. In his own words, you cannot stay in your traditional homeland if it is turned into a desert, and you cannot stay in your traditional rice delta if it is under one meter of water. Mr. Thompson asked us, therefore, to prepare better for the fact that some people will have to move and migrate in the context of climate change, and this is what the platform on disaster displacement seeks to do. It aims to address the challenges of displacement and other forms of human mobility in the context of disasters and climate change, both to prevent and prepare for and address displacement when it is unavoidable. To recall, the platform was established during a side event at the World Humanitarian Summit in Istanbul in July this year and constituted itself here in Geneva in early September. The platform followed the Nansen initiative, which both Switzerland and Norway created and promoted between 2012 and 2015. The goal of the platform is to implement the deliverables of the Nansen protection agenda, which many delegations here in this room, altogether 109 countries, endorsed during a global consultation in Geneva in October 2015. Germany as chair and Bangladesh as vice chair have established a steering group of 15 countries plus the EU, as well as IOM and UNHCR as standing invitees. We also created a small coordination unit that administers our proceedings, as well as an advisory committee that gives advice to the steering group and which contains academia, NGOs and other UN or international organizations. We have appointed as our envoy Mr. Achim Steiner, former UN United Nations Undersecretary General and Executive Director of UNEP, who represents the chair in high-level public events promoting the work and objectives of the platform. And an advisor to the chair, Professor Walter Kaelin, sitting on this panel and well known to many of you with this profound knowledge about the Nansen initiative and beyond and with an outstanding academic background on the legal implications of disaster displacement. The platform is a state-led process and we work towards enhanced cooperation, coordination and action to improve the protection of disaster displaced persons. Germany as future co-chair of the Global Forum on Migration and Development will also make sure that disaster displacement concerns are to be dealt with in the outcomes of the GFMD meetings. The links between the platform and other major ongoing processes such as the Sendai framework for disaster risk reduction, the UN framework convention on climate change and the Sustainable Development Goals are obvious. The merits and relevance of the Nansen protection agenda have also been highlighted in the New York Declaration for Refugees and Migrants. Fortunately, at the national and even at the regional level, many countries show interest in better cooperation, starting with the improving capacity of their own administrations and extending the range of activity across borders. Germany as well as the other steering group members are interested in practical work and the work plan is drafted accordingly. The 16 members from Africa, the Americas, Asia Pacific including island states and Europe aim for a collection of practical areas of cooperation, implementable projects, simulation exercises, the sharing of best practices and the development of guidelines. All aims at better protection for people displaced by disasters linked to natural hazards. To this end, we join hands with IOM and UNHCR. We build on their institutional experience. We also support them to mainstream the targets of the protection agenda into their operations. We particularly appreciate that both organizations participate in key global frameworks like Sendai, COP 21 and 22, the World Humanitarian Summit and the Sustainable Development Agenda. And they are doing more. IOM has created the Migration, Environment and Climate Change Division, the Environmental Migration Portal, the Global Migration Data Analysis Center in Berlin, just to name a few of IOM's climate change and disaster related activities. UNHCR on its part has started an internal mapping exercise in order to determine where the organization already contributes to the implementation of the Nansen Initiative Protection Agenda. It also coordinated the advisory group on human mobility and climate change to ensure that human mobility was being taken care of in climate negotiations and actively participates in the UNFCCC Warsaw International Mechanism for Loss and Damage. Ladies and gentlemen, the platform on disaster displacement needs your attention, your interest and your engagement. High ranking experts have mentioned the importance of the work of the platform in relation to the two global compacts which are being developed over the coming two years. We as states should ensure that the content of the Nansen Initiative Protection Agenda and the implementation efforts of the platform are integrated into the future two compacts. I also call on IOM and UNHCR to sustain the efforts in promoting the inclusion of disaster environmental and climate change concerns into this preparatory work. Walter, you have the floor. Thank you, Laura. Dear Deputy Director General Thompson, dear Ambassador Dare, dear Professor Kelsram Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen, let me start with a word of thanks for this kind invitation to take part in this important discussion. The following minutes, I would like to say a few words on opportunities for policy development to address migration and cross-border displacement in the context of disasters and climate change. Allow me to highlight three points. First, such policy development is needed today. Second, in this regard, IOM has a key role to play, particularly within the framework of the regional consultative processes on migration, the so-called RCPs. And third, IOM's role is also crucial with regard to the global compact on migration. My first point, why is policy development to address migration and cross-border displacement in the context of disasters and climate change necessary today? The reason is simple. Today, every second on average, one person is displaced in such contexts, meaning that between 15 and 20 families had to leave their homes since I started to speak. While most of these people remain within their own countries as internally displaced persons, others have to flee across borders. Still others, particularly in the context of slow-onset disasters, slow environmental degradation, join the stream of irregular migrants when they are no longer able to cope with the impacts of, for instance, desertification or drought or rising sea levels or other consequences of climate change. This creates huge challenges, challenges for affected communities, challenges for countries of origin, transit and destination, and for the international community as a whole. This fact has been recognized by the 109 states that endorsed last year the Nansen Initiative Protection Agenda. The Agenda is non-binding. It highlights that humanitarian considerations and international solidarity with disaster-affected countries and communities should be key considerations to address protection needs of the displaced. Based on existing practices and principles, the Agenda presents a toolbox, a box of effective measures that states may voluntarily adopt and harmonize to manage displacement risks in countries of origin, but also to admit persons displaced across borders where needed. To translate the Agenda into reality, concerted efforts, including at policy levels, are necessary. Second, for efforts of this kind, regional consultative processes on migration, the RCPs provide a particularly important forum for discussion at regional and sub-regional levels. The Nansen Initiative found that in the past decades, more than 50 countries have admitted persons displaced across borders in the aftermath of disasters, whether or not these were weather and climate related. Such admission was granted sometimes based on ad hoc decisions, in other cases based on domestic law. However, such action was very often haphazard and predictable, and movements in most cases are taking place not long distance, but between neighbouring countries or within regions. For these reasons, the Protection Agenda identified the need to harmonize approaches to admissions, stay, return and non-return of cross-border disaster displaced persons at regional levels or sub-regional levels as a priority action area. The Regional Conference on Migration, RCM, it's also called the Puebla Process, it covers, as you know, Central and North America. This RCM has taken the lead. It developed a document entitled Guide to Effective Practices for RCM member countries, protection of people moving across borders in the context of disasters. This is the guide. It is based on existing practice and established humanitarian principles. It is intended to support a more effective and consistent use of existing law policy and practice in the region to enhance the response to the needs of cross-border disaster displaced persons in the region. It also covers foreign migrants affected by disasters and thus complements at the sub-regional level the work of the migrants in countries in crisis initiative, the MICIC. On the occasion of the 21st Regional Conference on Migration in San Pedro Sula, just a few weeks ago, RCM vice ministers adopted a decision urging RCM member countries to implement the guide, according to their possibilities, to hold regional workshops with the platform on disaster displacement and to roll out the guide and train on its use. I hope that the guide serves as an inspiration to other regions, regions that are vulnerable to the devastating effects of disasters and climate change. There are already plans underway to commence with the support of IOM, a similar process in the context of the South American Regional Conference on Migration and I very much hope that other regions will follow and again I very much welcome IOM support for such activities. Third, the global compact migration will provide a unique opportunity to address among many other issues also the issue of migration and I'm talking about primarily voluntary migration as a mechanism to cope with climate change. Such migration may be temporary, allowing people to work abroad for some time, for instance during periods of flooding or increased food insecurity or to gain an income that helps their family to stay when the environment deteriorates. However, particularly where affected people have given up the hope to keep dignified lives in their country of origin they may opt for permanent immigration. As IOM has shown time and again and as the protection agenda highlights this kind of migration has the potential to allow people living in areas exposed to adverse impacts of climate change to make their own choices, to avoid situations that otherwise may result in a humanitarian crisis and displacement in the future. However, to have positive effects such migration must be well supported, it must be well managed. In fact, however, in many parts of the world, regular channels for such migration are few or they do not exist. Therefore, some affected persons may resort to irregular migration with all the negative consequences, particularly for women and children. Personally, I'm convinced that the global compact on migration would be incomplete, that the global compact on migration would lose considerable relevance if it failed to provide solid guidance on migration as a tool to adapt to and cope with climate change. It would be incomplete if it would fail to establish a consensus on how best to facilitate and manage such migration. Let me conclude by simply saying that presently there are several exciting opportunities to develop policy and practice to address migration and cross-border displacement in the context of disasters and climate change. We should not miss these windows of opportunity. I'm therefore grateful for IOM's strong support for and cooperation with the platform on disaster displacement and look forward to IOM's strong leadership at regional and global levels, particularly with regard to supporting regional consultative processes on migration and with regard to the global compact on migration. Thank you very much. Thank you very much Walter and I give the floor to Ms Ellen Hansen, Senior Policy Advisor on Protection. You have the floor, Matt. Thank you very much. Ladies and gentlemen, first let me thank IOM and the Platform on Disaster Displacement for giving you an HCR the opportunity to address the IOM Council on a topic on which we're very pleased to collaborate. I recently read a commentary that there are two kinds of political people in today's world. A minority who believe that climate change is the most consequential problem humans now face or have ever faced and a majority for whom for one reason or another the penny has not dropped. Climate change and disasters can no longer be considered solely as environmental issues and it's clear that this minority, the minority that understands this is growing. As Secretary-General-Elect Antonio Gutierrez told the UN Security Council in 2011, climate change is the defining challenge of our times. A challenge which interacts with and reinforces the other global megatrends such as population growth, urbanization and growing food, water and energy insecurity. It is a challenge which is adding to the scale and complexity of human displacement and a challenge that has important implications for the maintenance of international peace and security no less. I have two simple messages and I think they've already been touched on by other speakers. First is the need for collaboration and the second is the need to seize the political momentum we have from both the New York Declaration and also the Platform on Disaster Displacement. So first on the need for collaboration on climate change and disaster displacement. UNHCR believes the response to address the whole spectrum of human mobility from voluntary migration to forced displacement in the context of disasters and climate change requires consultation and coordination with different interagency or state-led initiatives that address climate change and disaster displacement. Of course UNHCR's particular role and expertise lies in protection of people displaced internally and across borders but as we know while the vast majority of people displaced in disaster and climate change contexts are internally displaced in some cases they may cross borders as we've heard from Ambassador Kaelin. In this case they are not normally considered refugees but are nevertheless in need of protection and assistance. UNHCR has been closely engaged in the Nansen initiative and supports the implementation of the protection agenda to better prevent and prepare for displacement and to respond to situations when people are forced to flee across a border. As we've also heard from German Ambassador UNHCR is formally involved in the coordination unit steering group and advisory committee of the platform that builds partnerships between policymakers practitioners and researchers and constitutes a multi-stakeholder forum for dialogue information sharing as well as policy and normative development. UNHCR was very pleased indeed when the Paris Agreement adopted in 2015 provided for the creation of a task force to develop recommendations for integrated approaches to avert minimize and address displacement related to the adverse impacts of climate change. UNHCR was further pleased at the outcome of COP 22 recently in Marrakesh which included the adoption of the report of the Warsaw international mechanism on loss and damage which provides for the five-year work plan of the of the WIM. Significantly this work plan includes work on displacement. The report also requests WIM XCOM to advance the operationalization of the mandates ensuring from the Paris Agreement including the establishment of the task force to avert minimize and address displacement. UNHCR is also formally engaged in a process led by the UN environmental program, the Commonwealth and UN FCCC on developing a legal tool to support countries implementing the Paris Agreement and then nationally determined contributions and UNHCR is just back from a mission in London aim to design the tool and make sure displacement is considered as a thematic area in the tool in national legislation which brings me back to the political people and the need to seize the political momentum created by the adoption by consensus of the New York Declaration by the 193 member states of the United Nations on 19 September. In the lead-up to this summit and declaration the Secretary-General's report on addressing large movements of refugees and migrants mentioned climate change 11 times and the national initiative twice. The New York Declaration which followed from the Secretary-General's report for its part mentions climate change five times and the Nansen initiative once. There are also useful references to the need to address the drivers that create and exacerbate large movements including environmental degradation and the need to assist migrants who experience conflicts or natural disasters. The global compact on refugees will build on the comprehensive refugee response framework which contains a strategic shift in approach to bring humanitarian and development responses closer together with a specific focus on host communities as well as displaced persons. Addressing the root causes of forced movements will include consideration of climate change and food insecurity. The reality that many displaced persons are situated in climate change hotspots and the environmental impacts of large movements. For its part the global compact on safe orderly and regular migration requires us to look at migration more comprehensively including the links to development and humanitarian issues and while some gaps remain there are already many tools in place as we have heard from other speakers and I therefore don't intend to repeat them. Now in moving towards the development of the two global compacts I'd also like to highlight the importance of providing opportunities for input from civil society since without them responses and solutions cannot be sustainable. The Assistant High Commissioner for Protection for Kutur called the New York Declaration a minor miracle and we believe that the global compacts on refugees and safe orderly and regular migration represent a unique opportunity to incorporate climate change and disaster displacement into the international agenda at a time when there is strong political momentum to find better ways of responding to large movements of people. Thank you very much. Thank you very much and let me move to the last speaker Professor Kirstrom you have the floor. It's an honor to be here and you'll be glad to know I have no typed text to read. My background is as a medical doctor and actually at the same time a mechanical engineer may not make much sense but in fact it's a very interesting combination when you are analyzing technical and health issues like the impacts of climate change. And when we talk about developing policies I think it's extremely important to have the underpinning science in your mind or at least in your consultation groups in the different countries to realize that there are in fact a number of scientific issues where we don't know enough about the relationship between aspects of climate change and human health, animal health, you know extremely important for the economy in many countries and of course agricultural plant health. It's extremely important I think to strengthen those links between the scientific communities and the politicians that finally make the decisions and I welcome very much this initiative from IOM to also bring the climate change issue very clearly into the kind of work that you are doing very important work and let me put it like this what is more important in terms of the future protection of your target groups from climate change what is more important than finding ways to stimulate promote facilitate what we call climate change mitigation global action to actually minimize the climate change in the future we're already on a track which in fact will create large populations living in places where it's going to be so hot there's going to be such a lack of water it's going to be so difficult to produce food and of course in relation to sea level rice it's going to be under water so people absolutely have to move and even with the most let's say optimistic future trends for the 1.5 degree average temperature increase which is the rcp 2.6 which is recommended in the Paris agreement from last year even under those circumstances according to the estimates that my team is doing with the data that's available we will go in the hottest part of the world from 1 million people now living in really really really hot areas where actually most people can only survive if they have air conditioning and in at the end of this century under 1.5 degree increase we may have 100 million people living in such areas because the hot areas expand you know more and more of the world is going to get that hot that's under the under the most positive optimistic aim from the Paris agreement if you go to the two degree increase of course it will almost double those numbers and if you go to the commitments that countries did last year it will increase the average temperature by about 2.7 degrees and then now we're talking about 400 million people now these big numbers they may be so big that they actually put people off and think oh what can we do hopeless and I would make a call for work at the national level both in small countries and in large countries to see what is the likely impact in our country of the various climate change risks or hazards you have extreme weather increasing in frequency increasing in strength we have the sea level rise of course particularly a big problem for the pacific island countries and other island countries and we have lack of water which is going to be a major problem for large parts of Africa we have lack of food because agriculture doesn't work any longer and finally we have the actual increase of heat which as a medical person I can understand the physiology behind it it's going to be so hot you can't actually live in the place and this will create tremendous migration pressures because people you actually really can't stay where they are at the moment so I am very grateful that IOM is taking this initiative to highlight the climate change impacts and I am certainly personally willing and with my team and with the collaborators we have inside Europe there's a project called heat shield which focuses specifically on the heat problems for working people and working people are actually at the highest risk why is that well you know it if you go bicycling or you go jogging inside the body a lot of heat is created and if you are in 40 degrees on the outside and you create 40 degrees on the inside you'll be in trouble so the the actions that need to be taken are at many different levels both for children both for elderly people of course that's what we hear about in the heat waves in Europe but also for working people did you know that in France in 2003 they had 15 000 additional deaths during a two-week period 15 000 people died more than normally would happen and 12 000 were over age 75 so we have epidemiologists like me calculating 12 000 old people mainly women and then they draw the conclusion this is the problem old people die when it gets too hot and of course they have installed air conditioning in lots of or most old age homes in France and they have prevented this problem to reoccurring but the interesting thing was you know that more than 1000 people in the age group 15 to 69 1000 people extra died so why would a 40 year old person in France die in a heat wave in 2003 and I think it was because they were actually working they were at risk extra risk because they were working they didn't stop when they should have stopped when their body was overheated and there's just one example of the let's say gaps in our application of existing psychological or physiological knowledge that is one of the areas I represent in my work so I'm going to stop there but it's extremely important that IOM text this initiative and I would welcome analysis studies collaboration within your own countries and between countries to really explore these problems further and of course eventually to drive the mitigation agenda stronger if we can show the impact in various countries even the biggest countries with the biggest greenhouse gas the contributions if you can quantify those impacts and with the effect on working people also quantify them in economic terms which has been done by the climate vulnerable forum four years ago in their marvellous report the climate vulnerability monitor 2012 that sort of analysis may drive the prevention agenda stronger and it will help reduce the migration pressures thank you very much thank you very much this is very interesting I am extremely sorry because I would have love to to open the floor for for questions for for the panelists unfortunately we are already at six o'clock and the problem with these panelists is that they are they're always too short in order to to have a proper discussion but I would like to thank all the panelists that Ambassador there has presented to us the new platform under his chairmanship the chairmanship of Germany and the objective that they have Walter Kelling has raised a very important matter of the urgency that policy is and the momentum that the global compact provides to us and also he had made a very interesting link with the RCPs that that IOM supports around the world we have 16 RCPs around the world and we support all of them at different levels and the importance that they would have in this process I think that that is a very important take over for us and and it was something that was recognized by the meeting of the RCPs itself when they met this August or September here and then lastly Professor Kiosthrom has raised I think a very very clearly for all of us the scientific uncertainties and gaps related to climate change and an impact on the health of people the challenges that all these represent the lack of knowledge that we have about it and the importance of bringing scientists into into the discussions and I think the people discussing climate change have done that a long time ago probably we we are moving into that direction as well to see how these impacts human mobility as well so thank you very much to all of you I'm sorry that I cannot give you the opportunity to respond to some of the questions that people I'm sure would have we will very much nonetheless if you have a specific questions you know you can send them to us and then we can pass it to the experts here and I thank all of you and the interpreters for the patients thank you very much and have a nice evening this session is adjourned thank you