Climate Induced Migration and Displacement Conference

A two-day conference focusing on climate induced migration and displacement will be hosted at the Whitney and Betty MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies at Yale on October 12-13.   His Excellency Anote Tong, former President of Kiribati, will give the keynote lecture on “Migration with Dignity.” (visit website for details and program)  Commissioner of Environmental Protection Rob Klee will also speak on state climate initiatives.

The purpose of the conference is to draw attention to the scope, complexity, and urgency of climate migration and displacement issues as the fall meetings on the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) approach. A key component of the program will be a gap analysis of climate science needed to support climate migration law and policy

“A recent World Bank report suggests that by 2050, 143 million persons will soon find themselves displaced by either slow moving weather events, such as rising ocean waters which will submerge entire islands, or dramatic weather events, such as Hurricane Maria,” said conference organizer Maya Prabhu, MD, LLB, Assistant Professor in the Division of Law and Psychiatry in the School of Medicine. “These events won’t just affect persons far away from the U.S. but close to home. The conference is to help connect the dots between weather events and migration within and over borders and to galvanize academic and policy responses to help communities and countries prepare.”

The conference speakers and topics include: Erica Bower, formerly of UNHCR, on “Gender Dimensions of Climate Displacement”; Edward Gardiner, Ph.D., NOAA-Affiliate, on the “Climate Resilience Toolkit”; Robert Brammer, Ph.D., American Bar Association, on “Climate-Induced Displacements and Systems Thinking”; Ayman Cherkaoui,  Executive Director of UN Global Compact Morocco, on “How Climate Migration Fits into the Paris Accord”; Kanta Kumari Rigaud, World Bank on “The Groundswell Project: Development planning for population displacement”; Benoit Mayer, Professor, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, on “Overview of the legal and policy architecture of climate-induced displacement”; Meredith Neiss, MD, MPH, Fair Haven Community Health Care and Marietta Vasquez, MD, Director Yale Children’s Hispanic Clinic, on “Responding to the Puerto Rican Diaspora after Hurricane Maria”; Mayesha Alam, Yale Global Justice Fellow, on “When Natural and Humanitarian Disasters Converge: A Case Study on the Rohingya Refugee Influx in Bangladesh, ” Christina Hioureas, on “The Legal Status of Submerged States,” Alexandra Harrington, Fulbright Canada Research Chair in Global Governance, on “Legal Protections of Internally Displaced Persons.”

The conference is sponsored by the Program on Refugees, Forced Displacement, and Humanitarian Responses at the MacMillan Center with generous support from the Edward J. and Dorothy Clarke Kempf Memorial Fund.