Making sense of movement in the context of climate change: Kaldor Centre Conference Report

As the impacts of climate change are felt more broadly, more people will need to move – this we know. In 2020, disasters displaced 31 million people within their own countries, three times as many as by conflict. Extreme weather events are growing more frequent and intense. Salination, desertification, sea-level rise and other slow-onset impacts are starting to bite. 

The pace of climate-related displacement is accelerating, but the public debate about it is still evolving. In law, there is no such thing as a ‘climate refugee’, though there are certainly refugees whose situation is made worse because of climate change. So, what laws, policies, data and action do we need to ensure safety for people forced from their homes in a warming world?

Our research in the area of climate mobility – led by a pioneer in the field, Centre Director Professor Jane McAdam – has been at the forefront of legal debates and policy development. Under her leadership, the Kaldor Centre gathered experts from around the world to sort through the most pressing issues on climate-related mobility at the cutting-edge Kaldor Centre Conference 2021, ‘Whose move? Addressing displacement and migration in the face of climate change’, held as a virtual event from 19–21 October 2021. 

Now, their expertise is available to share – in podcasts, videos and a conference report summarising discussions and highlighting solutions.

Find all the links to all these resources – with shortcuts to sessions focused on policy tools, litigation, data, planned relocations, and ways of advancing change – in our conference report, Making sense of movement in the context of climate change.

‘The effects of climate change … are not predictions for the future, but already being experienced in the present.’ — Merewalesi Yee University of Queensland

Image credit: UNHCR/Roger Arnold