Climate Change and Human Migration Series: Climate-Induced Displacement and Global Migration (TRN5-V52)

Transcript: Climate Change and Human Migration Series: Climate-Induced Displacement and Global Migration

[00:00:00 Video opens with animated CSPS logo.]

[00:00:07 Elizabeth Bush appears full screen. Text on screen: Environment and Climate Change Canada.]

Elizabeth Bush: Hello, welcome everyone to our event today on Climate Induced Displacement and Global Migration, the first event in a four-part series called Climate Change and Human Migration. This is an extremely important topic as the large attendance at today's event attests to. We know that Canadians have experienced firsthand the terrible consequences of extreme weather events, many of which are being exacerbated by human induced global warming. But we also need to be aware of, and plan for the consequences of climate related disasters that occur outside of Canada. We know that these, too, will impact Canadians, and that is why the topic of today's learning event is so relevant.

My name is Elizabeth Bush and I'm a senior climate science advisor in the Climate Research Division of Environment and Climate Change Canada. My work involves providing science information on climate change to support the development of climate change policy and the communication of climate change science to the public. I'll be your host this afternoon. Thank you very much for joining us.

I am joining you today from Toronto, and I would like to acknowledge the land I am on is the traditional territory of the Wendat, the Anishinaabeg, the Haudenosaunee, the Métis, and the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation. Some of you today may be joining us from various parts of the country, and I encourage you to take a moment now to recognize and acknowledge the territories that you're occupying.

Today we'll hear from three experts on the topic of climate induced global migration. A timely and important issue. In 2022, an estimated 32 million new displacements were recorded globally due to weather related disasters. And this year we've continued to see mass displacement, both in Canada from the record-breaking wildfire season and floods, as well as abroad from wildfires in Maui to floods in Pakistan and China, extreme heat in Southern Europe and North Africa and more.

These events impact many areas of work in the public service and are of a growing concern as many types of extreme weather are projected to increase in frequency and intensity due to ongoing human-induced global warming. I'm therefore pleased to welcome three experts to our event today to help us understand these issues and provide insights on how we can prepare for future challenges.

[00:02:26 Elizabeth Bush, Robert McLeman, Hélène Benveniste, and Manuel Pereira appear in video chat panels. Text on screen: Climate Change and Human Migration Series; Climate-Induced Displacement and Global Migration /Série sur le changement climatique et les migrations humaines; Déplacements dus au changement climatique et migrations dans le monde]

Elizabeth Bush: Robert McLeman is a professor in the Department of Geography and Environmental Studies at Wilfred Laurier University, where he specializes in research on the human dimensions of environmental change. He was also a coordinating lead author for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Working Group Two's most recent assessment of impacts, vulnerability, and adaptation. Prior to teaching, Robert was a Canadian foreign service officer and worked for Canadian diplomatic missions in Belgrade, Hong Kong, New Delhi, Seattle, and Vienna. In recent years, he has advised UN agencies, the World Bank and governments in Canada, the US and Europe, on issues related to climate change, migration, and security.

Hélène Benveniste, our second speaker, is a postdoctoral fellow with Harvard University Centre for the Environment, and Salata Institute for Climate and Sustainability. Her research focused broadly on human migration and inequality in the context of climate change as well as the global governance of environmental issues. Hélène has also been a visiting researcher at UC Berkeley's Energy and Resources Group; at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis; and at the National Centre for Atmospheric Research. During the year leading up to the signing of the Paris Agreement to the Climate Change Convention, she served as a research scientist and project manager of a scientific advisory group to the French Climate Negotiating Team. Prior to graduate school, Hélène served as Deputy Attaché for Energy at the French Embassy in Germany.

And our third speaker, Manuel Pereira, serves as the head of the Division for Migration Environment, Climate Change and Risk Reduction at the International Organization for Migration, a specialized agency of the United Nations. Prior to this position, Manuel served with the International Organization for Migration in Bangladesh from 2018 to 2021 as Deputy Chief of Mission and head of Office for the Rohingya Refugee Response. Other postings with this same agency include in Iraq, supporting displacement management coordination during the Mosul operations in 2016; capacity building for six Southern African governments on displacement management; shelter programming in the Philippines after Typhoon Haiyan; and in Pakistan where he worked on shelter and recovery programs. So, clearly, we have a really stellar set of speakers today. Thank you to them for their time and efforts today, and to all of you participating to hear from them.

[00:05:09 Elizabeth Bush appears full screen.]

Elizabeth Bush: Our plan is as follows, each guest will provide a short presentation and then we will have a panel discussion followed by a question-and-answer period with the audience. You are welcome to send your questions in the language of your choice by clicking the raised icon situated at the top right corner of your screen, and we will try to get to as many of your questions as time permits.

[00:05:30 Elizabeth Bush, Robert McLeman, Hélène Benveniste, and Manuel, appear in video chat panels.]

Elizabeth Bush: So, with that, I'd like to invite Robert to get us started. Robert, over to you.

Robert McLeman: Thank you, Elizabeth. And I am speaking – so it's a Zoom call or a, sorry, a Microsoft Teams call, so if you can't hear me, please let me know. Thank you everybody. Thank you very much to everyone who've joined us today from across Canada.

[00:05:47 Robert McLeman appears full screen. Text on screen: Robert McLeman, Ph.D. Wilfred Laurier University / Robert McLeman, Ph. D. Université Wilfred-Laurier]

Robert McLeman: I'm very pleased to be part of this series. I will also be joining you for future meetings that we have, talking about the impacts of climate change here in Canada and in the Northwest Territories as well.

So, let me begin by saying and building upon what Elizabeth said, that it's been a challenging year here in 2023, not just in Canada, but right across the Northern Hemisphere in terms of extreme weather events and evacuations and displacements because of them. And I should mention, I'm speaking to you from the Dean's Boardroom in the in the faculty of science at Wilfred Laurier University where I work. And after this meeting, I'm dashing down the hallway to give a lecture to my students on the impacts of wildfires on Canadian forests and on sustainable forestry. And that's one of the things that we've realized here in Canada, is it has been a very, very difficult year in 2023 with wildfires that began in northwestern Alberta and northeastern BC back in the month of May, followed very quickly thereafter by wildfires in Nova Scotia. Huge wildfires across much of northern Quebec this summer, and parts of Ontario. Then of course, the evacuation of Yellowknife later in the summer. And even those of us who are not living near the fire zones obviously experienced the extremely bad weather and the smoke and the warnings to stay inside, especially people who have challenges with respiratory conditions and so on.

Of course, we also had on top of that Hurricane Lee crashing into Atlantic Canada this year. And it's just generally been a really challenging year, but today we're taking a global picture. We're looking at the bigger picture. And Canada was not alone in 2023. It was a punishingly bad year across the northern hemisphere for extreme weather events. April, May, June, extreme heat conditions from the southern United States and Mexico, right through Europe, India, Southern China. There were wildfires that forced evacuations in Greece and Spain. Of course, the terrible wildfire in Maui that set a record for the number of Americans killed in wildfires and people still displaced now, and the whole community trying to recover.

And one of the things that people will inevitably ask is, well, is this just a bad year or is it part of a bigger picture? And scientists have, in what we call attribution science. So, this is where scientists specifically look at what are the probabilities of having these sorts of events and conditions in a typical year versus the impacts of climate change in exacerbating those risks. And what they have shown quite conclusively is that, for example, the massive wildfires in northern Quebec this year they were virtually impossible in a world where we did not have anthropogenic climate change increasing temperatures and increasing the risks.

And, as Elizabeth mentioned in her opening remarks, we have relatively good data in terms of the number of people each year who are displaced by extreme weather events. They're kept by an organization called the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre in Geneva. And as Elizabeth mentioned last year in 2022, there were over 32 million people around the world displaced by extreme weather, particularly floods and storms, but also by droughts and wildfire and other events. Here in 2023, we were almost certainly going to break that record.

But the important thing to note is that the number of people displaced by weather events in 2022 was actually larger than the number of people worldwide displaced by violence and conflict. And that is a trend that is emerging, that we are seeing more and more people being displaced by what we might consider non-traditional factors, non-traditional reasons. And we know where these displacements are taking place especially in heavily populated areas along the coasts of South Asia, Southeast Asia and East Asia, also in heavily densely populated river valleys in Asia and in the United States along the Atlantic coast, the Gulf Coast, in the large river valleys in the eastern part of the country, and in drought prone and fire prone regions in the west.

So, we know how many people are already being displaced, and we know where they're being displaced. And layered on top of that is the fact that we do have these slower emerging risks associated with climate change. These slow onset events of rising sea levels; of ambient average air temperatures rising to, in some parts of the world, dangerous levels in the summertime.

And so, it's come that the World Bank has projected that by the year 2050, if we do nothing to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions, and if we do nothing to meet the sustainable development goals by which Prime Minister Trudeau was in New York earlier this month to speak about, if we don't change our pathways, there will be hundreds of millions of people in low and middle income countries around the world displaced from their homes, by the impacts of climate change. And I reiterate, this is not Greenpeace, this is not Friends of the Earth. It's not the David Suzuki Foundation or an environmental group. This is the World Bank, a very sober and thoughtful organization that is saying that this will happen. And 2050 is not that far over the horizon, I hope to be around to see it. And so, we definitely need to change the pathways we're on.

So, with that sort of sobering note, what I would like to do is wrap up by saying that the goal of today's panel is to examine more closely some of these risks of involuntary migration and displacement to global scales and try to frame that information in a way that is useful for Canadian public service managers. And so, we'll be talking about things like, who are these people who are being forced to move because of climate events? To what extent is there international cooperation for dealing with it? And what is Canada's role in this climate displaced future? Thank you very much, thank you, and I will turn it back to Elizabeth.

[00:12:03 Elizabeth Bush, Robert McLeman, Hélène Benveniste, and Manuel Pereira appear in video chat panels.]

Elizabeth Bush: Thank you very much, Robert. That was a sobering opening as you said, but really sets the stage well, and I think has got everybody's attention because the consequences that people are already dealing with, the drivers of migration, they're clearly going to be exacerbated by climate change and global warming that we know is not going away and is indeed going to get worse. So, I look forward to hearing the next two presenters and for them to delve into some of the details about the drivers of climate change induced migration and how we respond to them. So over to you, Hélène. You're the second speaker.

Hélène Benveniste: Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you for inviting me and thank you very much to everyone. So, I thought what would make sense from my side today would be to discuss civil empirical aspects of the climate migration issue.

[00:12:56 Hélène Benveniste appears full screen. Text on screen: Dr. Hélène Benveniste, Ph.D. Harvard University / Hélène Benveniste, Ph. D. Université Harvard]

Hélène Benveniste: I'm going to say right away that I'm not just going to talk about extreme weather events related displacements, I'm going to place this conversation in the broader view of existing global migration patterns that are taking place also regardless of the climate change issue.

So, if you look at the media trying to understand how climate related mobility tends to be talked about, well, you see that it often tends to be talked about with a focus on one specific type of mobility, particularly cross-border displacement, and especially towards Western countries. Not only the media tends to frame this issue that way, but governments and non-state actors are also talking about climate migration often in those terms. Those actors have recently – so I'm thinking for instance, of the US White House that in 2021 published a report on the impact of climate change on migration – this actor and others have recently proposed a variety of measures to address climate related migration, ranging from measures that are meant to help people stay, for instance, in the form of development aid or climate adaptation finance, to measures that are also meant to help people who are already on the move, including humanitarian aid, for instance. And I'm sure Manuel will talk more about those in a minute.

But what I want to add here is that cross-border displacement is not just the omni mobility outcome that we should think about for this issue. It's one outcome amongst several. And when I talk about mobility, I also include immobility, and that's because immobility and migration really are two sides of the same coin. Both migration and immobility can be thought of as the result of two broader factors: the aspiration to move and the capability to do so. If both the aspiration to move, if you want to move, and if you are able to do so, then voluntary migration can take place. If people do not want to move, they can either stay immobile voluntarily or they can move involuntarily, which are those displacements that we've been talking about.

But finally, there's another category, which is that some people might want to move but also not be able to do so. And this is because migration, and in particular migration across borders, requires resources. Whether economic, or social, or health related, really the people who move are those who are able to do so. And this is true for any type of migration.

So, how should we think about the effect of climate on migration in this context? Well, actually, depending on the context, climate can affect both the aspiration to move clearly by changing conditions at origin where people are living, making them potentially worse, but also the capability to move resulting in either more migration or more immobility. And so displacement is often, again, the main mobility outcome that people think about when they think about the climate impacts on migration patterns. But it's not the only possible one. Migration is also a widely used adaptation strategy to climate impacts, but people might also have the option to adapt to climate impacts in situ without having to move if they don't want to. And finally, what we also notice is that climate effects, often what they do is that they deplete resources, which again, are needed to migrate, so climate impacts can also limit the capability to move in some places.

And so, from a policy perspective, since we have public servants in the audience, perhaps the situation that might be particularly relevant that might require most of the attention of policymakers would be both situations of involuntary migration, that is displacement, and situations of involuntary immobility where, for instance, climate change impacts would reduce the available income that would be necessary to pay upfront migration costs.

So, how frequent are those situations and can we identify them easily? Well it depends what kind of events we're talking about. Robert just talked about the IDMC estimates of people displaced by extreme weather events. Perhaps a very salient example of that, there were several that were named, but you can think about Pakistan, which in summer 2022 suffered really devastating floods during a particularly heavy monsoon season, which displaced many millions of people. And those kinds of extreme events, the causality between the climate impacts and the population movement is relatively obvious.

But it's not always true for other types of climate impacts. And I'm going to give you two examples here so that you can think about what that can look like.

First take what happened in Kenya, for instance, in 2009. So, if you look at weather data for Kenya for that period, what you see is that there was a big heat wave, and in particular a substantial drought that happened at that time. And if you look at the census data for Kenya for that time, what you see is that it registered a big increase in migration from some of its rural areas, where an important part of the population depends on farming and pastoral activities, migration from those rural areas towards Nairobi, the capital city. And so if you read government reports that talk about this event, they explain that due to this heat wave and this drought, agricultural production was lower, and so many people went to the city to diversify their source of income. And so, this is a plausible story that we can see happening in many different areas.

Now, conversely, another example might be the migration situation in a country like Nepal. In a lot of rural communities in Nepal people there do subsistence farming as their main economic activity, so often a family will put together some savings and send someone from the family, often a man, to work abroad, particularly in the Gulf countries, and that migrant sent abroad will send back some money from their income to the family, so as to diversify source of income for the family [that] stayed home in case, for instance, of a bad crop season. So that money sent back, those remittances are a hugely important part of many countries and particularly Nepal. If you want an order of magnitude, those remittances consist in almost 30%, three zero %, of Nepal's GDP, so it's a huge, huge share of Nepal's GDP. But to go abroad families often need this starting capital that they might not be able to put together if the weather has been terrible where they are, and local agriculture has taken a big hit, and so they might not be able to gather this capital and send someone away to diversify income sources. And so, in those cases, the effects of climate change would end up actually decreasing cross-border migration. So, I hope these two examples of what can happen in Kenya or in Nepal are hopefully illustrative of what can happen already existing migration patterns under climate stress. [[[[<crosstalk>]]]].

Now the question is, how generalizable are those examples? Well, the answer to this question depends a whole lot on the study that you look at. Actually, if you look at the academic literature, it describes a lot of variation in mobility responses to climate, with some studies showing increases in migration as a result of environmental changes, and some other studies showing decreases. But we still understand actually relatively little about why that's the case, why in some cases we see increases, in some cases we see decreases. So, can we actually attribute those differences across studies to differences in underlying effects of climate on the capability to move, as well as the aspirations to move for individuals?

While answering this question is really difficult empirically, because it's quite difficult to obtain good data on individuals' aspirations to move, and on the capability to move in the first place, especially at large scale, some researchers have been able to do this in more limited geographic context using survey campaigns.

So, for instance, there is a study that is called the Mexican Migration Project that has been hosted at Princeton University since the 1980s, so that's a very long endeavour, and they have been gathering data – detailed individual level information– on migrants between Mexico and the US, which is the largest sustained flow of international migrants. So, that information includes all kinds of aspects and not just climate related.

Now, more recently, there is another team out of ETH Zurich in Switzerland that has been conducting survey campaigns in Bangladesh River Deltas asking, specifically, questions on aspirations to move and potential lack of resources to do so. But if you want to look at this from a more global perspective, at this point, there is kind of no cross-country data set that actually allows us to do that. So far, what we can use instead are imperfect proxies that can give us some idea of what the situation actually is on the ground. It's imperfect, but it does help us along a little bit.

So, for instance, in an ongoing project, some colleagues at Harvard and myself were using demographic characteristics of would-be migrants as proxies. Why do we want to use that information? Well, because the migration literature tells us that individual characteristics, such as education or age of migrants, are going to be key determinants of both migration wishes and migration ability. And so we can use age, education level and sex, which are information that is automatically collected in census exercises of all countries so we can get much better coverage. And with this information, we are able to show that climate change impacts do affect both the aspiration to move and the capability to do so, but with very contrasted effects on migration outcomes. And so, this suggests really that the effects of climate change on mobility are much more about who moves, and under which conditions, than about how many people move really.

And the last point I'll discuss, and this will probably lead into what Manuel is going to say in a minute, is what this heterogeneity of effects of climate means for actually how to deal with this issue of climate migration at the international level. Right now, there is no kind of global overarching international agreement that covers all aspects of climate mobility. There are a variety of agreements that are directly relevant. I'm thinking of the Refugee Convention; the Paris Agreement under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change; as well as the Global Compact for Migration, which we'll discuss more in a minute; the UN Sustainable Development Goals; the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reductions. Most of these international agreements focus on displacement across borders, whereas a lot of what might happen will actually be within borders. And many of those agreements also do not really include the risk of increased constrained immobility as a result of climate change.

Now the IM has been actually very proactive on this front, and again, Manuel will say more including about regional initiatives, but I think it's important to have in mind that we might want to be going a little further on the global front. And if we zoom in, and that's the last point I'm going to make, if we zoom in on the Paris Agreement on Climate Change – I want to share that here –the migration question is actually nested within what is called Loss and Damage. Loss and damage is one of the three main aspects of the climate change regime, along with mitigation, which means reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and adaptation to climate change impacts. Loss and Damage is still a relatively new concept, and it hasn't fully been fleshed out about what it's going to look like in practice. But you might recall that at last year's conference of parties to the UNFCCC, which happened in Egypt, there was a new fund for loss and damage that was decided, which was considered a big success for the international community. Now, we still don't quite know which actions will be eligible for financing as part of this fund, but I would encourage everyone to keep an eye out on developments on that front because it will have important implications for what will be done to address the various aspects of climate migration, as part of the climate regime, at least.

Now, I'll stop here, but I'm happy to get back to any point during the Q and A, and I'll give it back to Elizabeth.

[00:24:47 Elizabeth Bush, Robert McLeman, Hélène Benveniste, and Manuel Pereira appear in video chat panels.]

Elizabeth Bush: Thank you very much, Hélène, I'm sure you've given our participants a lot to think about there. So, thank you very much for that. Introduction and elaboration on the difference between voluntary and involuntary migration and the key factors that are leading to each of those. And for introducing the concept of loss and damage under the Paris Agreement, that's certainly an emerging topic of interest for many people.

So, let's turn now to our third speaker. Manuel, I'll turn the microphone over to you.

Manuel Pereira: Thank you, Elizabeth, and thank you everyone. I think this will be a dialogue <laugh> the second part, so I'll try to present here a bit of the construct of where IOM works on this space.

[00:25:39 Manuel Pereira appears full screen. Text on screen: Manuel Marques Pereira; International Organization for Migration / Organisation internationale pour les migrations]

Manuel Pereira: IOM is a multiple mandate agency. We have a development mandate that looks at migration under the global compact on migration, which is a global framework as was mentioned. But within humanitarian architecture system, we are also the custodians of what we call the cluster for camp management and camp coordination, which is the management of displacement with UNHCR. We lead on disasters, UNHCR leads on conflict. I will try to connect these two worlds because more and more with climate change, the interface between the two and the indication between what is humanitarian and what is the gap of the global inaction on mitigating the impacts of climate change is very important.

And I would like to start by saying that to us, people should be safe, empowered, and informed to make decisions about their mobility. No one should be displaced. And this is the fundamental premise where IOM works that derives from climate justice, which is people should be able to decide about their lives, about their mobility, vis-a-vis the impacts of climate change. They should have the safety, the information, and the capacity to decide what is best for them in the scenarios that they are presented. And they can only do so with the resources and with the support that enable those solutions, whether to stay or whether to move. And if they are on the move, to be protected. This is the framework that IOM works operationally, but also institutionally. And where we sit as observers in the United Nations Framework on Climate Change in different forums.

I will start by adding to this, that displacement, when managed, can also be a positive action because it saves lives. But it needs to be managed. And this is the problem that we face in many areas of the world where there is a disaster, there is displacement, climate is accelerating this, but management is missing. And so there's a series of issues with the following assistance that are extremely complicated. When individual protection in many of the Western countries is a viable option: houses, infrastructure, and a series of other constructs of the urban environment that surrounds communities, protect those individuals themselves, we don't talk much about evacuations.

But when the risk and the impact of a given asset, like the fires in Canada or floods in other places, are beyond the coping mechanisms, evacuation, which is displacement that is regulated to a place, to a facility or on a certain way, is a positive thing. And we need to start balancing this conversation about, what is negative displacement? What is displacement that is regulated? Because it saves lives. We shouldn't end at the point that that displacement, we should be okay with it, but is an in-between space. And why? Because displacement highlights inequalities and social asymmetries, in particularly in peri-urban or ethnic enclaves and informal settlements. We need more governments, more planning if we are to avert, minimize and address displacement, prevent displacement, manage displacement, and solve displacement. This continuum of mobility is extremely important on today's conversations on climate, and everything that Hélène has said about loss and damage.

Two, disasters and climate justice are on the forefront of government concerns in many different perspectives. If you're talking to planning people, if you're talking to disaster response people or climate people, we need to make sure that there is this policy coherence where the Disaster Framework of Sendai; the Paris Agreement on climate; the Desertification Conference; the Global Compact on Migration; the Global Compact on Refugees, are all aligned and work across each other so that we can de facto protect people of what is to come.

Climate change will continue to accelerate disasters, UNDRR estimates that by 2030, we may have up to 500 disasters per year. And the big risk, I will pick what Robert said, is these 32 million new displacements in 2022 were 32 million movements. They count for probably many people moving several times. So, a person that lives in an area with cyclones may have moved three times. It's not persons, it is movements. But at the end of the year, there is an assessment of how many people who are displaced, are still in displacement. And last year it was 8 million.

So, we have 32 million new movements, and we have 8 million people in displacement. People have moved somewhere because they have coping mechanisms, what Hélène said. They have assets, they have hope, they have things they can still do, an agency, so they go back. Who stays in displacement has very limited resources, so they stay. The big risk the world faces without disaster risk reduction and a more comprehensive understanding of why adaptation is extremely important – and human mobility must be included in the conversations of climate change – is that the day people that are displaced throughout the year lose hope or capacity, they will stay behind. And then the world will not have 32 million new displacements, the world will have another 32 million IDPs in protracted crisis, dependent on humanitarian assistance with grave concerns on protection. And these multiplied by the countries around the world, will start to implode humanitarian systems and make the lives of humanitarians even more difficult when we are stretching resources.

In 2023, the global humanitarian overview estimates that it's $53 billion are needed to address all humanitarian needs in the world. And many of them conflict with climate, I'm not going to disintricate them. But the world also committed on a hundred billion dollars on climate finance. So, we ask a hundred billion for mitigation, adaptation, and loss and damage. And in the middle we have an edge where 53 billion, sorry, a hundred billion, 53 billion are needed to keep people alive. And this dynamic will continue. This dynamic is extremely worrisome, and we need to make every effort possible in the next decade to prepare countries and communities, including through early warnings, diversification of livelihoods, hardcore infrastructures, so that people don't need to enter on humanitarian situation of displacement.

Why? Because on the other side, we also have mobility. When people believe – and they should have that right – that they need to move somewhere else, or because their place is no longer habitable, and we have an organized movement, we called planned relocation, or because people find coping mechanisms by moving to another city, another location. As Robert said, the majority of the statistics and the forecasts and foresights point that the bulk of mobility will be internal, and that is clear, and we should demystify these hordes of people that will cross continents in the search of something because people move by proximity; by next of kin; by language; by culture; by food; by practices; by skills. And so the bulk of movements will be in the regions. And it's very important to help countries within the regional frameworks of mobility, of advancing the capacity of states, governments, institutionals, and people to move and to know where to move. Governments all over the world will have to face the fact that urbanization will continue to drive people from rural areas to urban areas. And how cities grow and do not become more dangerous is an important aspect of city planning, of development, of governance and management of these populations.

But at the same time, climate will accelerate this process by the collapse of livelihoods of subsistence in many of the most rural parts of the world. It's not by default that the social constructs and the social economic transformation of more advanced economies has delivered the more agricultural jobs to migrants and other parts of society, because social economic empowerment and education move people to a higher stratum of the social economy. Migrants, internal or external, feed the machine of the agriculture and the processing. And this is all the news, the bad cases of exploitation, this will continue.

And so, regional mobility; internal mobility; planning for adaptation; how governments contribute to the growth of cities in ways that they are safe and they don't create other risks, will be some of the challenges that city planners, mayors, ministers and government at large will have to decide if we collectively are to survive this issue and the impacts of climate change on the current trajectory that we have. And the Secretary General pointed out last week that we are no longer pointing at 1.5, but at 1.8. And this means the worst scenarios that we are using are going to be much worse if we keep this trajectory.

Mobility should be safe; mobility should be a choice. And helping people to make this choice is an imperative of governments, because only local and regional solutions will deliver results to individuals, and not to abstract numbers. I think we can elaborate a bit more on the examples when we have the dialogue so that I don't talk too much about this, my apologies. <laugh> Thank you so much. Back to you, Elizabeth.

[00:36:16 Elizabeth Bush, Robert McLeman, Hélène Benveniste, and Manuel Pereira appear in video chat panels.]

Elizabeth Bush: Wow. Well, the strongest impression I'm left with is the passion from all of our panelists that clearly this is something that you all live and breathe every day, and you feel the urgency of trying to communicate the urgency of this issue in this critical decade that we have ahead of us to make real progress in both mitigating and adapting to climate change, and dealing with the challenges that you've talked to here to do with involuntary displacement. That's a message that I heard loud and clear. No one should be displaced and that we need to understand the social and economic vulnerabilities that are behind those involuntary displacements. So, I look forward to some more dialogue amongst you on that. So, at this stage, I think the intent was to have a bit more of a dialogue between the panel members, but first to remind those who are attending this course, that following the panel discussion, there will be an opportunity for you to submit questions. And, indeed, you can begin to submit questions now. Click the raised hand icon in the upper right corner of your screen, and then the course moderators will be looking through those and sending them our way. So, while you all think about what questions you have to ask our panel members, I'll get started with a couple of questions.

So, if I go back to what I heard Hélène talk about, I remember her focusing on, it's the who that moves. That is one of the most important questions and not so much the how many, although, Manuel, certainly you also stressed the potential for the numbers to increase, so it seems like we probably need to think about both. But I wondered if maybe in this panel section we could talk a little bit more just to elaborate on, do we understand who those most vulnerable groups are, and what are the barriers for them to be making empowered decisions about whether to stay or whether to leave?

So, I guess it's an open floor. Whoever wants to wade in first to answer that and certainly take a minute to collect your thoughts if you need to.

Robert McLeman: Should we let Hélène go first since she raised the topic? Go ahead, Hélène.

Hélène Benveniste: Yes, I think I wanted to really bounce back on what Manuel was saying, which I think highlighted really nicely a point that maybe I didn't put across that much, which is that when I'm saying we want to care about who, rather than how many, it's not that the numbers don't matter, it's that the numbers really don't tell you enough about what the actual situation is on the ground. What one might want to care about is whether the migration is chosen or whether it's a situation of displacement that's particularly denying people the agency in the circumstances they have to go through.

[00:39:39 Hélène Benveniste appears full screen.]

Hélène Benveniste: And the reason I emphasize the who is because often in the public debate you see an emphasis on numbers, which I think are only partly what policymakers need as information to figure out what needs to be done.

In terms of specifically who do we expect to have greater capacity to make choices, there are some usual suspects, that we see people with lower education levels, presumably lower levels of income, being less able to make informed decisions are being faced with alternatives that might be choices that they might not be very good choices among the choices that they might face, so that's definitely something that you see more for populations that might have a lower capacity to make those kinds of informed decisions.

Then, the question of gender, for instance, is quite interesting to what extent gender dynamics might affect vulnerability to displacement. There is a correlation between gender and capacity in the sense that often women tend to have lower levels of capacity than men, in many contexts. That being said, there are many contexts where migration patterns are gendered and not necessarily men moving more. In some cases it's going to be the woman who, culturally, are going to move to the city to get certain jobs and so on. And so, the point being, the vulnerability about who ends up moving more or moving less is not uniform across context.

So, I'm struggling a little bit to give you very clear answers about, this group is going to be the one that is going to be vulnerable that way across context, because that's really not how it works. And this is why I think from an academic standpoint, there is still a lot to be done, because the situation is so context dependent on the ground.

[00:41:36 Elizabeth Bush, Robert McLeman, Hélène Benveniste, and Manuel Pereira appear in video chat panels.]

Elizabeth Bush: Thank you very much for that answer, Hélène, and I don't think anybody was expecting a simple answer to this very complicated question, and I see Manuel would like to come in now.

Manuel Pereira: Thank you. No, I would just compliment Hélène to say that, on top of these lens, I think one useful lens is the issue of where. Because the where will be a determinant of public action. Coastal areas; flood plains; mountainous areas that, for now, have icecaps and snow.

[00:42:14 Manuel Pereira appears full screen.]

Manuel Pereira: Many of the places where there are more social economic fragilities. Informal areas, in large metropolis are all places because man settles where there are resources and resources are many times also threats.

I talk a lot about water as a resource and water as a threat. Excess water is bad, but if we are dealing with floods, cities need to be able to incorporate more of the water of floods in the future, because the water will come at a different period, it will pass by the city, and then is lost to the next dry period. We will need to start adapting cities to how to retain water from the peak rain events, so that the water is available on the low and dry events. And the where is very important because within the different locations people are affected differently. People with informal tenure of land tend to be much more evicted from locations that are perceived by governments to be at risk where people should not live, than people with tenure, because then tenure involves reparations. And reparations is a public good, while an informal tenure or someone that does not have a land contract can be evicted as long as there is not much press around or someone to defend. This is the crude reality of the world.

So, I think where, combined with the who of Hélène, are two of the main factors that will drive a lot of these conversations. We have seen during COVID who was on the streets incapable of isolating so that the machinery of the supermarkets would keep working. And this is very similar to that question. Some people do not have the resources to make certain choices. Over to you.

[00:44:16 Elizabeth Bush, Robert McLeman, Hélène Benveniste, and Manuel Pereira appear in video chat panels.]

Elizabeth Bush: Thank you, Manuel. I don't see Robert raising his hand, so maybe you're fine to proceed to the next question. Is that right?

Robert McLeman: Well, I suppose I could.

Elizabeth Bush: Or you want to come on in?

Robert McLeman: Yes, I could jump in on this one, and it's a question again of the who. And it's a question of, who are we as Canadians, because Canada's a very diverse country and we have social and family ties, Canadians do around the world.

[00:44:43 Robert McLeman appears full screen.]

Robert McLeman: And so, if we look at who are the key source countries for migration to Canada, we see China; India; the Philippines; Pakistan; the United States is invariably in the top 10. These are also countries that are extremely exposed to the worst impacts of climate change. When we talk about flood related disasters, when we talk about extreme heat related disasters, it's these same countries that we're talking about, these extreme storm events. And colleagues and I at the University of Ottawa and here at Wilfred Laurier, we did some research about 10 years ago with diasporic communities here in Canada.

So, we worked with Filipino Canadians; we worked with Haitian Canadians; people who had immigrated from French speaking West Africa; from the Horn of Africa, and from Bangladesh. And we were asking them, to what extent do extreme environmental events and conditions in your home country influence you in terms of either your decision to migrate to Canada, or your impacts just on the wellbeing of your community? And so what we got, for example, out of Bangladeshi Canadians was that the reality is that most Bangladeshis come to Canada through our general skilled worker and family reunification immigration programs. They're not refugees. They're often actually upper middle class people in Bangladesh. But they point out that displacements of people from flooding and from droughts and from extreme heat in Bangladesh increase the number of people moving into cities like Dhaka City, and place greater pressure on services, on housing, on the job market, and so on. And it creates a more chaotic environment.

The other thing is that when those extreme events happen over in Bangladesh, or happen in the Philippines, there's this need to remit money from Canada. And there's also the mental wellbeing of Canadians who have family ties in areas that are highly exposed to extreme weather events when their loved ones are displaced. Just as those of us who have loved ones who are in Yellowknife, or in West Kelowna, or in Halifax this summer. We're extremely concerned and worried about the welfare of our friends and relatives. It's the same thing for Canadians who have family ties abroad.

So, it's important when we're talking about the links between climate change and migration and displacement in other places, we're really not talking about other places. We're talking about part of the Canadian experience as well. So, what happens over there has implications for our wellbeing over here. Thanks, Elizabeth.

[00:47:20 Elizabeth Bush, Robert McLeman, Hélène Benveniste, and Manuel Pereira appear in video chat panels.]

Elizabeth Bush: Thanks, Robert. Okay, I see just one question coming in, so we'll just continue our dialogue for a little bit. I was just wondering, in looking or thinking back over the – I hear what Manuel was saying about, well, I think what Hélène and Manuel were saying was actually very much tied together because, Hélène, you really emphasized the fact that the who is context specific, and then Manuel spoke, at least a little bit, about the geographical aspects of the context specificity in terms of understanding what geographical regions might be more fragile; where climate change is experienced; where the ecosystems and the land systems and livelihoods are changing dramatically, that those things will feed into the where, which is part of the context to the who.

So, I think that's been very fruitful. I know you both touched also on talking about the barriers to making empowered decisions about moving. And I wonder, while we are giving people time to think again, if that's another aspect that you might want to elaborate on a little bit. I know we talked a little bit about the underlying vulnerabilities. Clearly there's many barriers to people being able to make decisions, but I wonder, how much of those barriers are within government control to overcome? And how much of them are systemic and how much can be dealt with, with reactive kind of responses to disasters when they occur? I hope that's a reasonable question, and I open the floor to you to respond to talking about barriers a little bit.

Manuel Pereira: You want me to start?

Elizabeth Bush: Sure. <laugh>

Manuel Pereira: I think that the first barrier, and I will take the space today to be a bit <laugh> militant about that is mitigation.

[00:49:28 Manuel Pereira appears full screen.]

Manuel Pereira: At this moment, this question is essentially in the hands of governments at all levels, and of societies on how to invest in mitigation. If we do not reach the 1.5 and we go above 1.5, the situation will be extremely complicated, not only to address the immediate consequences that will be very visible, but the more long-term consequences of that. I think that's the first thing that I would point [out].

The second is the lack of solidarity that exists. There has to be, and I am removing from this the notion of compensation and reparations. I will park that on the side, because it's a very complicated question. But there is a joint responsibility towards the most vulnerable that sits on the premise that pollution in the atmosphere is there because of social economic development of the planet in different areas, in different levels. The fact that all of us together continuing to contribute to that will impact some more people than others is a social injustice that needs to be addressed. So, every person on the planet has responsibilities, but as the Paris Agreement says, they are differentiated, and so the actions should be differentiated. Those are two key elements.

The second is mobility, and the Global Compact on Migration is about agreements on the regulation of mobility, especially for climate pathways. Questions around, what are the jobs needed for the just transition that may not exist due to social demographic? Profiles of different countries are needed. One obstacle is how to identify these skills? How to identify the labour needed to match this? Who will do the solar panels and the turbines that will allow us to disconnect fossil fuels?

So, some of the challenges that we have are about the regulatory part of this process, especially the process of migration. But there are also the regulatory powers related, for example, for disasters. The absence of social protection mechanisms; the absence of mechanisms to inform people to get out of harm's way; the absence of regulations to make sure that constructions do not happen in dangerous areas, or that there is insurance in case something happens.

So, these different elements are all obstacles that, combined, create a very, very complicated situation in some of the most fragile and vulnerable contexts around the world. The ones where governments and government structures have more limitations or more constraints. At least this is the way we see it and why we work so much on governance and with governments. Thank you.

[00:52:36 Elizabeth Bush, Robert McLeman, Hélène Benveniste, and Manuel Pereira appear in video chat panels.]

Elizabeth Bush: Thank you very much for that, Manuel. Did you want to come in on this question too, Hélène?

Hélène Benveniste: Yes, I'll just add something briefly, which touches upon what Manuel was saying a little earlier,

[00:52:48 Hélène Benveniste appears full screen.]

Hélène Benveniste: which is one of the obstacles is not just obstacles to move, is obstacles to being able to move somewhere and have a better situation where you end up than where you started. And that's often something that I think policymakers can have a very big role there.

We're thinking, for instance, of migration towards metropolitan areas. Often people might end up in situations in metropolitan areas that they might avoid some harm from where they came from, but they might be exposed to other types of harms. And that is something that can be dealt with from a policy perspective. It's a question of dimensioning infrastructure. Manuel talked about water, we can talk about sewage, we can talk about all kinds of infrastructure that would be needed in those cases. I don't see a pathway with our policy interventions on destination areas to make sure that whatever migration does take place is as successful as possible.

It's not just for the people who migrate, it's also for the origin communities and the home communities. Migration can be a benefit if you make it so. If you don't make anything easy for migration to be successful at destination, it's not going to be just by itself. So, there is a very big growth for policy there, and hopefully that's something that's helpful to hear for people in the audience. Thank you.

[00:54:19 Elizabeth Bush, Robert McLeman, Hélène Benveniste, and Manuel Pereira appear in video chat panels.]

Elizabeth Bush: I'm sure it is. Thank you very much, Hélène. Robert, I need to give you a chance too, so please, if you'd like to come in on this.

Robert McLeman: Well, I'll just simply echo what Hélène has said, is that migration is something that people do. It is neither inherently good nor inherently bad. It's like eating, it's like sleeping. It's something people do. We move.

[00:54:42 Robert McLeman appears full screen.]

Robert McLeman: The question of whether it becomes good or bad depends on the circumstances under which it occurs. And so, Manuel and Hélène both referred to the Compact on Safe and Orderly and Regular Migration, which Canada, I believe, has signed on to. It provides a perfect blueprint for how to manage migration policies and practices in a changing climate. Now, if only we could get countries to actually read the book, the blueprint, the roadmap, and follow it, that would be wonderful.

The second thing is that here in Canada, we have tended to think very much on the short term needs of Canada when we think about immigration policy. But I am afraid that the changes that are happening globally, socially, politically, economically, but especially environmentally, are going to force the Canadian government – at all levels, not just at the Prime Minister's level – but every government department to rethink what it is doing, in the face of a climate disrupted world. And in terms of, for example, immigration policy, how are we going to make sure that immigration to Canada works for Canada, for Canadians, for the migrants themselves, and for the countries from which they come? It can, and it often does, but we need to think about the new demands being placed upon it.

And then internally within Canada, all the different services that we need: health; infrastructure; natural resources. We need to think through how this is all going to be affected by the rapidly changing environment in which we live and the new demands being placed on Canadian society.

So, I think that if I can only emphasize one thing from this session, is that I hope participants listen very carefully to what Manuel and Hélène are telling us because they are people who are actually doing the work. IOM has done – I can't imagine, quite frankly, a world without the International Organization for Migration right now. They do the difficult work in the difficult places around the world. And so we really need to be paying careful attention to the guidance that we're receiving from organizations and from scholars like the ones on this call. Thanks, Elizabeth.

[00:56:52 Elizabeth Bush, Robert McLeman, Hélène Benveniste, and Manuel Pereira appear in video chat panels.]

Elizabeth Bush: Thank you very much. Before going to the next question, I wanted to thank Manuel, too, for starting by reminding us all that mitigation is urgently needed. That if we don't manage to reign in global warming, then we will be dealing with scales of problems that will far surpass those that adaptation will be feasible for. So, I think that's a really good reminder to all of us, that that is the sort of the first pillar of defense.

But also, this whole concept of solidarity. I think both you and Hélène spoke to that. That this isn't just about them, it's about all of us. It's about providing the right kind of support frameworks for those who want to move, but also for enabling that move to be successful, as Hélène said. That those who are ultimately making the decision to move, want to land somewhere which ends up being a better place. It's a traumatic event, I'm sure, to leave a homeland. And the extent that we can ease that transition is really important. And it gets at all kinds of issues of social justice, as you both spoke to. So, thank you for your fulsome responses to that question.

We have a number of questions coming in now on the chat, but I think we're allowed a little bit more time for you to have a little bit more just of the panel before we have the audience Q and A. So, I thought we'd take up some of the questions that were floated in advance of this course around what is there already. I'm sure you spoke to this in your presentations, but I'm having a hard time remembering everything, so maybe it would be good to refresh us on what is there right now in terms of a global framework for cooperation between states?

You spoke to the need for solidarity and the need for cooperation across different international frameworks and governance regimes, so maybe it would be good to hear about that again. What do we have now in place, and what needs still to be done? Who'd like to go first this time?

Manuel Pereira: <Laugh> I can start since this relates also to the global. I think that I'll say three things, and I'll try to be short.

[00:59:19 Manuel Pereira appears full screen.]

Manuel Pereira: The first one is, these frameworks, as I said, are not separate-able. There has to be policy coherence. They are all interrelated in one or the other. This notion that there are no natural disasters. All disasters are social economic constructs is very important because it's the vulnerabilities of communities that, when impacted with a hazard, created a disaster. This is exactly the same thing for climate. What we are doing in terms of climate change has consequential impacts in other parts of life and on migration. Migration has the global compact on migration. It talks about an objective to addressing the adverse drivers of migration, including displacement and disasters and climate change. And talks about <inaudible> on the legal pathways of mobility, which is what allows a person to go from country A to country B in a safe and informed pathway and not trafficked under the seat or inside the atelier of a car or a truck across borders, or the risky journeys that we see many times on the news. That difference is a political decision.

But we are on opposite sides, in many times, between these political decisions. To us, in IOM, it is regional cooperation that needs to continue to be advanced because the proximity of regions makes people much more willing to discuss this. The Los Angeles Declaration on Migration is a common approach to this issue that did not have climate, but may very soon have climate, so develop is on that. The Changan system already allows people within Europe to move for whatever reason they want. It's still needs to work out <laugh>, how it deals with people coming in. And we are not going to enter now, but for example, IOM supported this year and last year, the government of Uganda and the government of Kenya to create a regional agreement on human mobility and climate change called the Kampala Declaration on Migration Environment and Climate Change, where 12 countries of the Eastern Horn of Africa signed the declaration, and then three more from the continent. And this year, at the African Climate Summit, 35 countries out of the 55 subscribed to this. These are 12 to 17 commitments that the countries decided to have to address these, and five asks of the international community.

So, there is a framework for the continent of Africa that still needs to be endorsed by all, but that puts the dialogue on equal platform. It puts one vision, and from one vision, one common objective, we can start elaborating what does this mean at local level, L net implementation, including policy. So, issues around free movement protocols; the African passport; investments on just transition; labour market opportunities. All of these things come from this common agreement. What we, IOM, believe is we need more of these regionalization of views and approaches, and eventually one day we can create this global pact on climate mobility, which is a pact on a vision and a concern on the protection of people vis-a-vis climate, but then is implemented in countries and regions to match the realities of mobility and the profiles on these countries. So, that's what I think we need to keep reinforcing from this frameworks point of view. Thank you.

[01:03:07 Elizabeth Bush, Robert McLeman, Hélène Benveniste, and Manuel Pereira appear in video chat panels. Text on screen: Climate Change and Human Migration Series; Climate-Induced Displacement and Global Migration /Série sur le changement climatique et les migrations humaines; Déplacements dus au changement climatique et migrations dans le monde]

Elizabeth Bush: Excellent. Well, thank you for reinforcing that message, for those of us attending this course. Hélène, did you want to come in? Or Robert? If so, please proceed. Otherwise, I've now got about six questions from the participants.

Robert McLeman: I'll just briefly say that in addition to what Manuel was saying. So, we have this global compact on migration. It's a non-binding UN agreement. However, like I said, it provides a wonderful blueprint going forward. The other two key pieces of global international legislation at play here are the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change,

[01:03:43 Robert McLeman appears full screen.]

Robert McLeman: which Canada has signed onto and under which we have promised to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions. And I desperately hope we actually get on with it. And the second thing we have promised to do is to help vulnerable countries adapt to a changing climate. And there's this third obligation that we are going to be expected to compensate the most vulnerable people in the most vulnerable countries for the losses and damages that they have experienced as a result of climate change.

The third piece of legislation is the sustainable development goals. And this is critical. Our Prime Minister was in New York City just a couple weeks ago talking about Canada's commitment to those. If we achieve the sustainable development goals by the year 2030, a lot of the risks get reduced because the countries we're talking about, and the people we're talking about will have greater capacity to adjust and adapt to the risks that are coming to them. But so long as wealthy countries like Canada fail to invest in the SDGs and pursue them, and cooperate with other countries in achieving them, we create a world where there are just more vulnerable people. And so there are three key tools. In one sense, we have all the tools we need. We've already agreed to the policy tools. It's just a case of actually picking them up and using them.

[01:04:57 Elizabeth Bush, Robert McLeman, Hélène Benveniste, and Manuel Pereira appear in video chat panels.]

Elizabeth Bush: Yes, implementation gaps seem to be a challenge across multiple frameworks. <Laugh>. Okay, Hélène, did you wish to come in? No, they'll pass on this one and we'll see what questions come to you. Okay. I'm mindful of the time, and I see that there are a number of questions coming in from the chat, so I will turn to these now.

The first question that came in, so I'm just reading these to you as they've been provided to me. So, let's see. Question one: Right now, Canada's refugee and asylum system does not currently recognize climate related motivation as grounds for being granted protection under our legislation. Given the huge volumes of people on the move as a result of climate change and extreme climate events, what should Canada do, if anything, for these migrants, should they wish to come to Canada or if they are already here?

So, I guess this is around – yes, I'm putting the words into the question – the idea of climate refugees. Do we recognize these or not? And what should we be doing to enable such migrants to come to Canada?

Robert McLeman: Maybe I'll take that one. Thanks, Elizabeth. So, the person who asked the question is absolutely right. If we look at refugee law, whether that's international law or Canadian law, people who are forced to move because of environmental or climate related disasters do not qualify for protection under the Geneva Convention. That said, it is up to Canada to decide who we let in and who we won't. And we can interpret international refugee legislation as broadly or as narrowly as we want. And our visa officers, our immigration officers, our refugee boards have tremendous power for humanitarian and compassionate considerations whenever they're confronted with someone seeking entry to Canada. That's on the short term without even touching our existing policies. That ability exists.

[01:07:14 Robert McLeman appears full screen.]

Robert McLeman: And of course, the Minister of Immigration has tremendous leverage under our existing immigration Act to broaden those definitions if we wish.

The second thing is, I hate to always think of these folks as people who are refugees. Often they are people who want opportunities as well. And there's the leader of the country of Kiribati, Anote Tong, the former president of Kiribati, has talked about migration with dignity. And what he describes is this: I live in a small island state. My people are very much threatened by the impacts of climate change, which western countries like Canada, the United States or others, are causing through their greenhouse gas emissions. We don't want to be refugees. We don't want to be treated like refugees. What we want is an option for our young people to be able to come to your countries to move; to study; to work; to learn the language; to get the skills so that if the time comes that we need to move, that we can migrate with dignity, and that you will want us because we will be valuable contributors.

When you talk to people and leaders in countries that are at risk, that's kind of what they're looking for. And as Manuel pointed out very clearly is that a lot of migration and displacement that is taking place, and that will take place around the world for climate-related reasons, will take place within countries. So in that case, Canada's obligation is not to take people out of those places, but it's to provide the adaptation assistance, to provide the development assistance to help those people rebuild and recover in place. So, it's less of a refugee consideration and more of a development challenge. I don't know if any of the other two panelists wish to jump in on that?

[01:08:55 Elizabeth Bush, Robert McLeman, Hélène Benveniste, and Manuel Pereira appear in video chat panels.]

Manuel Pereira: I would add one thing, Robert. I agree 200% with what you said. We like to dissociate the two a bit more on the notion that humanity is a difficult animal and the refugees of the world, and the very large number of people

[01:09:18 Manuel Pereira appears full screen.]

Manuel Pereira: that are strictly dependent on humanitarian assistance as refugees, many times in countries that do not necessarily value their presence, which creates further complications, needs support. We need the world to absorb more refugees that are persecuted for the five reasons of the convention. That is an imperative.

But, at the same time, not conflicting the two is important. At the same time, as you said, the regulation of mobility; better opportunities for visas; regular visas for people to come and do jobs, temporary or long-term, are extremely critical. Argentina has a mechanism for humanitarian visas that supported also inclusive people that were leaving Haiti after the earthquake that is trying to push to the <inaudible> which is a very good model. In a humanitarian catastrophe, people should move with a certain period of time, with certain privileges, with integration, with access to the services, and being part of a society, which makes them bring the benefits of migration. Every time we discriminate someone, we force her through an irregular pathway of mobility, we are creating further stressors to society.

So, I think these two things need to come hand in hand. We need a refugee system to alleviate a lot of extreme suffering that we have, and those numbers are even higher than the numbers of displaced people. And then we also need these labour schemes and these visa mobility schemes that allow people to move for new opportunities.

[01:11:02 Elizabeth Bush, Robert McLeman, Hélène Benveniste, and Manuel Pereira appear in video chat panels.]

Elizabeth Bush: Thank you, Manuel. Hélène, did you want to come in or wait for another question?

Hélène Benveniste: I'll just add something that both other speakers would've added as well,

[01:11:18 Hélène Benveniste appears full screen.]

Hélène Benveniste: which is that strictly on the notion of the refugee convention, the whole convention is balanced on the notion of persecution. If you cannot make the claim for persecution, you cannot be recognized under the convention as a refugee. And when it comes to climate change, that's the case that's extremely difficult to make for a variety of reasons. And so that's why scholars tend to not see, and policymakers tend to not see, an obvious venue to include climate as part of the refugee convention per se. But I think Manuel was very helpful in explaining the broader landscape of institutions that can fill the gaps there.

[01:11:57 Elizabeth Bush, Robert McLeman, Hélène Benveniste, and Manuel Pereira appear in video chat panels.]

Elizabeth Bush: That's very helpful. And I think you've actually already addressed one of the other questions that came in, which was specifically about the UN Refugee Convention and was asking whether or not part of the solution is to update that convention to respond to the fact that there are new sorts of refugees, including those impacted by climate change and climate disasters.

So, maybe part of what I heard was that that may be a little bit of the solution, but there's all these other things that need to be done. But please expand if you'd like to.

Hélène Benveniste: The only thing I wanted to add is that sometimes people who work in this sphere are also a little bit concerned that the idea of reopening negotiations on the refugee convention because of the current political climate. There is a lot of worry that the convention would be weakened instead of reinforced to include a broader thrust of population that could be considered as having rights to this protection.

[01:12:59 Hélène Benveniste appears full screen.]

Hélène Benveniste: So, I think that's another reason why people might be worried to use the refugee convention as a tool here.

[01:13:06 Elizabeth Bush, Robert McLeman, Hélène Benveniste, and Manuel Pereira appear in video chat panels.]

Elizabeth Bush: Good point. Thanks for emphasizing that for us. So, there's another question that seems to be asking about particularly vulnerable groups.

[01:13:20 Elizabeth Bush appears full screen.]

Elizabeth Bush: So, I know we spoke about the need for creating opportunities for all of those who may wish to migrate to seek new opportunities, whether it be labour, or family, or leaving areas that are no longer providing livelihoods for themselves. But this question was really about is there any work being done, really targeting those who are particularly vulnerable and disadvantaged, especially women and girls? And they gave the example of the Rohingya refugees. And so I guess that's sort of a different question. Are there targeted efforts to allow those very vulnerable groups that are already displaced to come to Canada?

[01:14:09 Elizabeth Bush, Robert McLeman, Hélène Benveniste, and Manuel Pereira appear in video chat panels.]

Robert McLeman: I'll jump in just in terms of to come to Canada, not that I'm familiar with. I know that over the several decades now, Canada has had targeted programs for assisting women at risk, in particular women and children at risk in refugee and refugee like situations.

[01:14:28 Robert McLeman appears full screen.]

Robert McLeman: One of the challenges, and I used to be a visa officer, I used to work for the various ministries that were responsible for immigration back in the 1990s and early 2000s. And the challenge was not that we didn't have the programs or legislation, we just didn't actually go out, and deliver those programs. The number of women and children who were protected and brought to Canada under those programs were very limited.

So, in the Canadian context, I'm not familiar with anything in particular that we're doing right now, but we certainly should be, and perhaps participants can add in the chat any examples that they're familiar with. But maybe I'd pass over to Manuel, and ask at a broader sense, IOM and particular programs that might be targeted towards women, children, older people, people with disabilities and others who may be at higher risk than others.

[01:15:20 Elizabeth Bush, Robert McLeman, Hélène Benveniste, and Manuel Pereira appear in video chat panels.]

Manuel Pereira: Thank you, Robert, I will go back to what Hélène has said. Climate is gendered, and depending on the social economic opportunities that mobility is offering, then the migrant in itself will have a certain kind of gender. So, for example, in certain areas of the world, the labour that is needed is physical labour. So men leave, women stay behind, many of them in a very vulnerable situation. In other kinds, men can continue to still find agricultural jobs or menial labours, but women have skills for the touristic industry; to household chores; to other things, and they move. Importantly to us is this notion of inclusion. Gender equity, gender parity are very important issues in society. And it's looking at this lens of gender that we can make society transformations that remove the vulnerabilities.

Women die more in disasters because they do not know how to swim. They're not taught how to swim. Women have less literacy, so they do not have savings or financial literacy, or many times they don't have access to land, which exposes them to many of these challenges. Livelihoods. And in countries where the cultural context constrains women, mobility also inhibits the women to have different livelihoods that would be more beneficial. Access to education.

So, there are these root issues of gender challenge and gender discrimination and gender vulnerabilities that then have collateral impacts as climate change impacts women. And there has to be programs to tackle these.

[01:17:18 Manuel Pereira appears full screen.]

Manuel Pereira: For example, displaced people. IOM has a program called the Women's Participation Project, which is a program that in communities of people displaced, tries to help women to organize themselves, to empower themselves, to generate businesses, livelihoods, opportunity, but also a voice on the community so that they are part of the process of identifying risks, identifying solutions and opportunities. And this needs to be a continuous effort that exists to all.

And so, to us, this program that tackles this is very important. In Somalia, we create women management committees for the water wells because women managing the availability of the water and the quality of the water on the wells are safeguarding the resource for the future, but they are also eliminating tensions if the resource is available. And there's a plethora of conversations we could have on these examples. And these examples are extremely important to be scaled up. We are not yet on an equal world, a world of parity. And if we, in the western countries, discuss women receiving men less than men for the same job, imagine what this would be in a society that is essentially built around making women dependent on someone else or someone's property or someone's authority for any decision. And that is the root cause that we need to change. Thank you.

[01:18:50 Elizabeth Bush, Robert McLeman, Hélène Benveniste, and Manuel Pereira appear in video chat panels.]

Elizabeth Bush: Thank you very much, Manuel. And for the question, obviously lots to say on that topic. We have another question here. I'm trying to pick questions that are going to get us talking about a few other things. So, one of the questions that came in was asking for your thoughts on the role of Indigenous peoples in mitigating and adapting to climate change in terms of migration. But maybe there's also a question there about, given Indigenous people's territorial lands, you would think that migration would not be a choice they would want to make to leave their ancestral homes. So, there again, I guess maybe similar to the question around targeted programs for women and children. How much effort is being made at the global level to engage with and talk to Indigenous peoples, and the extent that climate change is raising issues of displacement among them? Sure. Manuel, please jump in.

[01:20:00 Manuel Pereira appears full screen.]

Manuel Pereira: Very short to say that at least to me, and I will take [off] my IOM hat to say, the issue of Indigenous communities is the way we see the world. Nature and the planet for the majority of Indigenous communities are part of who they are, are part of their cosmography. It's not something that is there where they live in, it's part of them. And this philosophy is not compatible with our notions of private property, profit, boundaries, and individualism. And I think this is a shock of cultures that needs to be worked on by all of us. And I don't enter other more complicated issues, but the majority of the Indigenous people deal with the land on the notion that the land produces and can be exploited or used to a certain point and then needs regeneration. There is a notion of continuity over time. And many of our societies see the habitat as a resource with an end date and a capacity and no need after. That's why we discard habitats in many places of the world. This needs to change. And I will end here. Sorry, I'm an environmental engineer, so this to me is a little bit <laugh>. Sorry.

[01:21:29 Elizabeth Bush, Robert McLeman, Hélène Benveniste, and Manuel Pereira appear in video chat panels.]

Elizabeth Bush: Anybody else there?

Hélène Benveniste: I'll just add one thing, which is that thank you for bringing this up. This is a really important part of the conversation, in particular, because it raises this notion of what sometimes is called place attachment, to what extent people are very attached to the place they live in,

[01:21:50 Hélène Benveniste appears full screen.]

Hélène Benveniste: which tends to be really the case for a lot of communities, but definitely Indigenous communities in particular. And that highlights the case that the notion of migration or planned relocation, or however you want to call it, might not be something that a community would want to choose. And I think from a policymaking standpoint, it's really important to have that in mind. That if you are going to look at it from an economic optimizing perspective, you would want to say, oh, maybe it makes more sense to move this and that community somewhere else out of harm's way. I think this is particularly an issue where, in terms of policy making, a lot of those decisions will not be economically optimal, and I think we should be at peace with that. But that's a conversation that needs to take place also outside of strictly economic optimum metrics that are often used for policymaking decisions.

[01:22:50 Elizabeth Bush, Robert McLeman, Hélène Benveniste, and Manuel Pereira appear in video chat panels.]

Elizabeth Bush: Thank you. Thank you, Hélène, for adding to that. It's certainly, no decisions about us without us. That's one of the tenets and I think that clearly that's central to Indigenous peoples and their involvement in decisions around climate change. But I'm sure it's also true for others that, as you said, this place attachment is deeply held for many people.

I'm just looking again here at the questions. Okay, the last one that came in was, the panelists focus mostly on rapid onset disaster displacement. But slow onset impacts are much harder to tell straightforward, causal stories about in the sense that we might be tempted to class certain persons as economic migrants, even in cases where the climate impacts have contributed to some degree to the decision to move. So, these are like underlying slow changes that are increasing risk and increasing vulnerability. How can policy makers address this type of more invisible, is what the questioner asks, but maybe it's just like these slower drivers of increasing vulnerability and increasing risk. And to what extent do we need to keep both those things in mind? Both the response to disasters and extreme events as well as these underlying longer term drivers of change.

Robert McLeman: Maybe I'll briefly go first just by saying, yes, it's easy to identify those rapid onset events. We see a community that is, like [what] happened in Libya just in the last two weeks, where an entire community is washed away by a dam bursting because of extreme rainfall.

[01:24:27 Robert McLeman appears full screen.]

Robert McLeman: So obviously, the cause and effect is very clear to us. But you're absolutely right. These slower, gradual accumulating stresses, whether it's extreme heat that builds up to the point where certain communities are just physically unlivable for humans at certain times of the year, or in the case of droughts or other slower onset events.

Much of what I've learned over the years about the relationship between climate and migration comes from the North American story of the Dust Bowl migration, the dirty thirties, the 1930 droughts that occurred at a time of economic downturn where there were severe droughts for multiple years on the North American great plains. And people moved from Saskatchewan to British Columbia, from Oklahoma to California. And one of the things that happened was there's a lot of research done, and people would ask these folks who had migrated to the West Coast, why did you move? And often, their first response was, well, I was looking for work. In which case, we stand back and say, oh, well they're economic migrants. But if you ask them the follow-up question, well, why are you looking for work? Well, there were no jobs back in Oklahoma where I was. Oh, and why was that? Well, there was no crops in the ground. There was no farm work. Well, why was that? Oh, because there was this protracted drought for several years.

So, it's like an onion. If you only look at the outer layer, you only see one thing. But as soon as we start to pull apart the onion, we see this multi causality, these indirect effects as well as the direct ones. And so, the message for policy makers, people who are looking at long-term strategic policy, for analysts who are required to keep a running brief on what's going on in their sphere, is to be aware that sometimes the impacts are not just the ones that hit the front page of the news or that jump out of your computer screen. They're running in the background as well, and being sensitive to the fact that there are so many interconnected ways that people can be made vulnerable and ultimately displaced. They can come at us from different directions. Thank you.

[01:26:41 Elizabeth Bush, Robert McLeman, Hélène Benveniste, and Manuel Pereira appear in video chat panels.]

Elizabeth Bush: Thank you, Robert. And I've been advised we can maybe have two or three extra minutes if anybody else wants to jump in, but I know Robert has a class to teach, so maybe we'll just wrap it up.

So, thank you enormously for what I found an incredibly thought-provoking discussion. And again, your passion really comes through, so that made it for a really interesting hour and a half, which fled by.

So, on behalf of the School, I'd like to thank our three speakers,

[01:27:13 Elizabeth Bush appears full screen. Text on screen: Browse the learning catalogue! It includes courses, events and other learning tools. Visit Canada.ca/School. / Consultez le catalogue d'apprentissage! Il vous propose des cours, des événements et des outils d'apprentissage. Visitez Canada.ca/Ecole]

Elizabeth Bush: Robert, Hélène, and Manuel, as well as all of you from across the country for being part of today's discussion. I hope we will leave feeling inspired because as dire as the climate crisis is, we know that there are solutions to tackle with it, both for mitigating and adapting to climate change and for preparing in advance for the whole range of consequences that are coming. And as we've heard, climate change induced migration has the potential for widespread consequences and opportunities, I should say I heard that loud and clear, for the Government of Canada and its areas of responsibility. So, the fact that all of you have signed up for this course is already a sign that you recognize the importance of getting ahead of the coming challenges.

So, thank you very much to our three speakers. A few final notes. I was asked to remind everybody that there are more courses on offer. October 16th, there's a special event for Government of Canada executives on international perspectives on climate change and environmental issues. On November 3rd, you can catch the next event in this series, which will focus on climate related displacements in Canada. And we also wanted to use this opportunity to bring to your attention a suite of new climate literacy courses that are being offered through the School's course catalogue.

These were developed by Environment and Climate Change Canada. They're called: Applying Climate Literacy Foundations, there's a course code CHC101; Contributing to Net Zero Canada CHC102; and Adapting to Climate Change in Canada, CHC103, so please watch the website, look for updates.

And on my own part, I wanted to encourage you all to visit the website changing climate.ca, which is the home website for Canada's National Climate Assessment process, where you can find a lot of information as well about what Canadian experts have assessed in terms of signs of climate change, as well as impacts and progress on adaptation.

So, that's about it. We have no more time. Thank you for spending a wonderful hour and a half with us.

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