Podcasts about nansen initiative

As the planet heats up, where can people go? Learn more on this exciting episode: Increasing Migration Due to Climate Change: Conversation with Alex Randall and also awesome co-host Sarah Chang. On Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, etc.  With Study Guide - click on PDF: https://multi-hazards.libsyn.com/increasing-migration-due-to-climate-change-conversation-with-alex-randall Alex Randall's Bio Alex Randall is a leading specialist in the connections between climate change, migration and conflict. He is programme manager at the Climate and Migration Coalition. He has been working on issues around climate, migration and human rights for 15 years. He advises a number of key international agencies and governments on their responses to climate-linked migration and displacement. Alex has also served on the advisory group of the Nansen Initiative and Platform on Disaster Displacement. Alex has written extensively on climate change and migration for the Guardian, Le Monde Diplomatique, New Internationalist, Prospect and numerous other outlets. He is the author of a number of book chapters focusing on the connections between climate change and the rights of refugees and migrants. Alex is currently leading the course ‘Climate change and migration: predictions, politics and policy’. The course is the world’s first free online course focused on the politics and policy of climate migration.

Evidence matters. Yet even before “fake news” became a political weapon, it’s been notoriously difficult to get evidence into the policymaking process. How can we keep good evidence from being overwhelmed by bad politics? In this conversation, moderated by ABC Radio National journalist Eleanor Hall, three world-renowned experts talk about their experience from the front lines of research and policymaking in contentious areas – climate change, refugees and, where the two meet, climate change- and disaster-related displacement. Professor John Church is Australia’s most credentialled expert on sea-level rise and a long-time research scientist with the government CSIRO. He joined UNSW in 2016 as a professor in the Climate Change Research Centre, so he’s seen Australia’s approach to science and international obligations from inside and outside government. UNSW Scientia Professor and Kaldor Centre Director Jane McAdam is a pioneer in research on climate change- and disaster-related displacement, advising governments and international organisations including UNHCR. In 2017, her work in this field was described as 'transformative' by the jury of the prestigious Calouste Gulbenkian Prize for Human Rights, which she was the first Australian to win. Walter Kälin has extensive international experience as scholar and policymaker, most recently serving as Envoy of the Chair of the Platform on Disaster Displacement (and formerly of its predecessor, the Nansen Initiative on Disaster-Induced Cross-Border Displacement), providing strategic advice and leadership to this state-led process working towards better protection for people in the context of disasters and climate change. Professor Emeritus for international and constitutional law at the University of Bern (Switzerland), he has served the United Nations in various capacities, including as Representative of the UN Secretary-General on the Human Rights of Internally Displaced Persons and twice as a member of the UN Human Rights Committee.

More and more we are hearing stories about “climate refugees.”  U.S. Interior Secretary Sally Jewell used the term to describe the Biloxi-Chitimacha-Choctaw tribe, a community which this year became the first to receive federal funding to relocate in its entirety from their sinking island home on the Louisiana coast. Yet climate change-induced migration and displacement actually “falls outside of the more traditional protection regimes like the refugee treaty,” says Maxine Burkett, a public policy fellow with the Wilson Center’s Environmental Change and Security Program, in this week’s podcast. “Most of the migration that's going to happen as a result of climate change happens internally within countries,” Burkett says. Managing such movement is clearly the purview of national governments. The harder question is how to deal with those who move across international borders. The UN Refugee Convention was agreed to by states in 1951 and establishes clear protections and specific circumstances under which those protections can be invoked, namely political persecution and the threat of violence. Climate change – which researchers are finding can play a role in displacement, migration, and vulnerability, though not always as a clear, primary driver – cannot currently be invoked by asylum seekers in search of refugee status in another country. And since the legal definition isn’t codified, descriptive labels such as climate refugee do not bind states to any responsibilities. This is “a yawning gap in our conversation,” Burkett says. “What are we asking the others to do in order to meet our rights?” “Without the right name or legal nomenclature, the rights of those within country and especially those in foreign countries – their status rights – are uncertain...The importance of nomenclature in the advancing of human rights is significant.” The Nansen Initiative, established by Switzerland and Norway in October 2012, was created in response to the lack of legal frameworks for climate change-induced cross-border migration and displacement. It began with the aim of creating protections for those displaced by climate change, but pivoted to address all disasters. Its successor is now simply the Platform on Disaster Displacement. “What is paramount, I think they would argue, is to meet the needs of those who are migrating by assigning and allowing them to exercise their rights,” Burkett says. “Nevermind why they had to move.” Yet doing so has costs. Combining climate change-induced problems with other environmental issues, despite the difficulty in parsing causes, “scrubs” the downstream discussion of “significant rights language that would be more reparative than simply accommodating,” she says. “Climate change is not a random, thoughtless act of God, but something other,” Burkett says. The systems of rights and reciprocations we agree on in response should reflect this. In the meantime, the initial inequity of anthropogenic climate change – that those who are most vulnerable are by and large the least responsible for creating the problem – is perpetuated as, at best, the displaced can only hope that someone lets them in. Maxine Burkett spoke at the Wilson Center on June 22, 2016. Friday Podcasts are also available for download on iTunes and Google Play.

4 November 2014 - The Nansen Initiative on Disaster-Induced Cross-Border Displacement aims to build consensus on the development of a protection agenda addressing the needs of people displaced across borders in the context of disasters and climate change. The Nansen Initiative’s work plan focuses on three types of movement – displacement, migration and planned relocation. The panel examined each of these kinds of movement to identify how, why and when people may move in response to disasters and the impacts of climate change, and what legal and policy frameworks are needed to support such movement. Speakers: Professor Walter Kälin Envoy of the Chairmanship of The Nansen Initiative and Professor of Law, University of Berne Bruce Burson Independent expert and member of The Nansen Initiative Consultative Committee Professor Jane McAdam Director of the Kaldor Centre for International Refugee Law, UNSW and member of The Nansen Initiative Consultative Committee

In order to make progress on disasters, climate change and human mobility, it is essential to bring together different strands of the discussion to develop a comprehensive response that also anticipates future challenges associated with climate change. While the international community has already been addressing many aspects of disasters, climate change and human mobility, in order to really make progress it is essential to bring together different strands of the discussion so as to develop a comprehensive response that also anticipates future challenges associated with climate change. The Governments of Norway and Switzerland are contributing to the development of future responses to disaster displacement through the Nansen Initiative. - See more at: http://www.fmreview.org/climatechange-disasters/contents#sthash.ApuUh5PC.dpuf

The Nansen Initiative consultative process has identified a toolbox of potential policy options to prevent, prepare for and respond to the challenges of cross-border displacement in disaster contexts, including the effects of climate change.

The Nansen Initiative has highlighted significant questions about how the international community should collectively think about displacement and mobility issues relating to natural disasters and climate change, and how to improve the governance thereof.

The Nansen Initiative launched in October 2012 aims to build consensus among states about how best to address cross-border displacement in the context of sudden- and slow-onset disasters.