Best Practices for Addressing the Legal and Policy Challenges of Climate Mobility
Background Paper | What does the policy and legal framework of climate mobility and migration look like?
Highlights
This paper considers some of the best practices for addressing legal and policy challenges in governing climate mobility and migration. It briefly discusses the global-scale context before focusing on the Pacific Islands region, where some of the world’s first substantive regional and national policy frameworks are being developed to directly address climate mobilities.
It should be noted that there is no ‘silver-bullet’ policy framework to address the complexities of climate mobility. Climate change does not cause people to move on its own; other factors are also at play, particularly socioeconomic vulnerabilities. Climate mobility can be both rapid and slow-onset, can range from local movement away from sites of risk to international migration, and is significantly shaped by the economic, social, political, historical and cultural contexts in which it takes place. In some instances, people with access to greater resources can move out of harm’s way, while the more vulnerable are left behind, but such patterns are also complicated by gender norms, insecure tenure arrangements, changing economic conditions, social networks, political forces, and attachments to place, amid other factors.
