Exploring the climate change and migration nexus in Southeast Asia
Climate change is changing the way people move in the region and ISF is helping to understand these patterns.
Over the past few decades, the migration of people across the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Member States and other regions has expanded – aided by progress in transportation, communication, social networking, and technology.
Environmental factors including climate change is one many complex drivers of migration and displacement in the Southeast Asian region. The ASEAN Member States include countries most at risk from climate change, climate change-related extreme weather events, and other slow-onset climatic changes.
Migration is strongly shaped by economic, social, political, and demographic factors. As climate change increases and interacts with other factors, developing ways to support the safe migration of people within their countries, cross-border, and beyond the region will be a crucial part of addressing climate change in the ASEAN community.
To assist in this, the Institute for Sustainable Futures (ISF) is working with ASEAN and the United Nations International Organisation of Migration on a second edition of the Migration Outlook. The Outlook will provide a stocktake of available evidence on human mobility in the context of climate change, and map policy and program frameworks across ASEAN member states and highlight relevant policy examples from other global regions.
Building on its first edition, the second ASEAN Migration Outlook will concentrate on the relationship between climate change and human mobility. It will develop a comprehensive understanding of the climate-migration nexus in ASEAN – the complexities, challenges, and options for policy, including in cross-cutting thematic priorities of gender, human security, and migrant protection.
ISF Researcher Director Dr Samantha Sharpe says, “migration decisions are informed by many factors economic, political and social and we know that climate change and environmental factors are increasingly interacting with these other factors. The ASEAN region is one of the most vulnerable regions for climate change so it is important that we understand what might be the impacts on human mobility and how policy systems can ensure the safety and security of migrants.”
The need to integrate migration aspects into climate change policy frameworks is growing, and the Outlook provides a first opportunity to explore this in ASEAN. The collaborative process of developing the second Outlook aims build awareness and encourage policy dialogue for practical, rights-based, gender-sensitive migration policies.
Read more about the ASEAN Migration Outlook here.
