The emergence of a climate refugee norm : a genealogy

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MASTER’S THESIS

Sophie Schriever Student No. 11229187 In der Kümp 26 51465 Bergisch Gladbach Germany sophie.schriever@student.uva.nl

The Emergence of a Climate

Refugee Norm:

A Genealogy

23

rd

of June 2017

University of Amsterdam

Graduate School of Social Sciences M. Sc. Political Science

Track: International Relations Supervisor: Darshan Vigneswaran Second Reader: Jeroen Doomernik

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Abstract

Climate change threatens to displace people through rising sea levels, droughts, flooding and extreme weather phenomena – and it already does so at present. Climate refugees are a reality, but they are not covered by an existing legal framework. The research interest guiding this thesis was therefore to find out whether there is an emerging climate refugee norm, guiding states’ decisions to protect climate refugees. Instead, an emerging disaster displacement norm was identified, including both climate refugees and persons displaced by other natural hazards such as earthquakes or volcano eruptions. This broader norm stems from the UNFCCC climate negotiations and therefore emerged from the recognition that climate change is a driver of migration, which appeared for the first time in the Cancun Declaration at the COP 16 in 2010. The most important documents leading towards the Cancun Conference and following from it were analysed and put into context of the Norm Life Cycle concept by Finnemore and Sikkink, thereby tracing the process of a norm that initially emerged as climate refugee norm and, over time, took a turn towards a disaster displacement norm after Cancun. It can be said that although climate refugees do not have a legal status, states take measures to protect them, which are increasingly harmonised on the international level, an important instrument in this regard being the Nansen Initiative Protection Agenda. Besides contributing to the literature on climate refugees, this thesis enriches the research on norm emergence by showing how a norm can change its characteristics during the emergence process and work without an institutionalisation in the form of a legal status.

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Table of Figures

Figure 1 - List of Interviewees ... 23

Figure 2 – Timeline Key Events ... 25

Figure 3 - Timeline of Events Pre-Cancun ... 26

Figure 4 - Timeline of Events Post-Cancun ... 37

Abbreviations

AWG-LCA = Ad Hoc Working Group on Long-Term Cooperative Action under the Convention COP = Conference of the Parties

EACH-FOR = Environmental Change and Forced Scenarios project ENSO = El Niño Southern Oscillation

GHG = Greenhouse Gas

IASC = Inter Agency Standing Committee

IDMC = Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre IDP = Internally Displaced Person

IOM = International Organisation for Migration IPCC = Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change NIPA = Nansen Initiative Protection Agenda

NRC = Norwegian Refugee Council PDD = Platform on Disaster Displacement RCM = Regional Conference on Migration TPS = Temporary Protected Status

UN = United Nations

UNFCCC = United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change UNHCR = United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees

UNISDR = United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction

UNOCHA = United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs WIM = Warsaw International Mechanism for Loss and Damage

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Introduction

Small island states are often named as the most obvious examples of populations at risk of displacement due to the adverse effects of climate change. These populations are forced to move when sea levels rise – a realisation that brought small island states like Tuvalu, Kiribati and Samoa to the headlines of several newspapers in the recent past (Mathiesen 2014; Krales 2011; BBC 2013). "I have never encouraged the status of our people being refugees," (ABC 2014) Kiribati’s president Anote Tong said at the International Conference on Small Island Developing States in Apia, Samoa in 2014. His pledge was that people from the Pacific Islands should be able to “migrate in dignity”, as skilled and accepted parts of the receiving societies instead of coming as refugees. As much as Anote Tong may hope for a migration in dignity of his people, for many of those concerned this will not hold true. Climate refugees will be an important future issue – and they are already today.

According to the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC), 19.2 million people were displaced by disasters1 in 2015 (14.7 million of those due to weather-related events), while 8.6 million were displaced by violence and conflict (IDMC, NRC 2016). Climate change is adding a new level to the discussion, because it is likely to aggravate the situation by causing additional displacement. The exact prognoses differ, but most analysts predict that the figures of environmentally displaced persons will increase tremendously due to the changes to the climatic system induced by global warming. Rising sea levels, droughts, and the more frequent occurrence of extreme weather phenomena have an important impact on the livelihoods of millions of people who might be forced in consequence to leave their habitat:

“When global warming takes hold, there could be as many as 200 million people overtaken by sea-level rise and coastal flooding, by disruptions of monsoon systems and other rainfall regimes, and by droughts of unprecedented severity and duration." (Myers 2002, p. 609) However, the problem of climate-induced migration is already an ongoing one. It is impossible to distinguish how many among the 14.7 million people displaced by weather-related disasters can be attributed to climate change, but singular cases give evidence about the impact that global warming has on people’s mobility. The Guardian published an article about flood-induced displacement in Bangladesh, stating that an estimated 70 percent of the 400,000 Bangladeshis moving to Dhaka’s slums were displaced by environmental shocks related to

1_{A disaster, according to the IDMC, is a slow- or sudden-onset event causing displacement by the disruption of}

normal life and livelihoods among people pushed beyond their coping capacities, resulting in heightened protection concerns for people with specific needs and rendered homeless such as women, children, older people and people with disabilities. The IDMC names food insecurity through droughts, or the loss of habitable land and viable livelihoods due to desertification, erosion and sea-level rise as driving factors of disaster displacement (IDMC 2017).

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climate-induced flooding (McPherson 2015). In a household survey by Robert Oakes in Kiribati and Tuvalu, "23% of migrants in Kiribati and 8% in Tuvalu named climate change as a reason for migration decisions." (Oakes 2015, p. 1) This evidence is still very limited, but those examples might be indicators of an evolving trend.

Of course, not every movement related to climate change is forced, but in the existing examples where it is, a situation is created, which is comparable to the one of political refugees: people displaced by climate change are equally forced to flee, often losing all their belongings, and are then unable to return to their place of origin. The 1951 UN Convention on the Status of Refugees, however, concentrates solely on those individuals with a well-founded fear of persecution on the basis of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group or political opinion (United Nations 1951), leaving out those who are displaced by environmental impacts, even if this group outnumbers the political refugees significantly. Two groups of people who find themselves in a similar situation of distress are thus treated differently, resulting in a severe protection gap regarding climate refugees.

What kind of protection do climate refugees receive? Policy makers have only gradually started to acknowledge the importance of the topic. In the Cancun Declaration, agreed upon at the 16th International Climate Conference of the Parties2 (COP 16) in 2010, migration as a consequence of climate change was formulated for the first time, inviting states in paragraph 14 (f) to take "[m]easures to enhance understanding, coordination and cooperation with regard to climate change induced displacement, migration and planned relocation, where appropriate, at the national, regional and international levels." (UNFCCC 2010a, p. 5) While this remains only one of nine strategies to enhance action on adaptation and carries no responsibilities for the states, the recognition of a climate change-migration nexus was a significant step towards a protection regime.

The research interest guiding this thesis is therefore focused on the development towards the inclusion of migration in the Cancun Agreement and its effects on following action by answering the research question: Is there an emerging climate refugee norm? Documents leading towards the conference in Cancun and documents that evolved from this point onwards were analysed to track a possible emerging norm process. The research finds that there is an

2_{The United Nations Climate Change Conferences are held yearly under the United Nations Framework}

Convention on Climate Change starting in 1995 with the first Conference of the Parties. Their aim is to adopt legally binding measures for states to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and thereby curb climate change. The most important agreements adopted at the COP were the Kyoto Protocol at the COP 3 in 1997 and the Paris Agreement at the COP 21 in 2015.

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emerging disaster displacement norm, which is broader than the pure climate refugee norm, but was initiated by the COP in Cancun and triggered by the idea to protect climate refugees. To come to this conclusion, this thesis will give an overview of the literature on climate refugees and on norm emergence, using the Life Cycle of Norms concept of Martha Finnemore and Kathryn Sikkink. It then utilises genealogy and framing as methods for the document analysis. Genealogy serves as method to trace the whole story of an emerging norm. Frame analysis is used in the singular moments of the timeline, to identify the discourse patterns in certain moments. This timeline of the process identifies Cancun as the important threshold, the tipping point of the norm emergence. Thus, the analysis contains two parts, the norm emergence phase before Cancun and the norm cascade phase after Cancun. Finally, the results are drawn together in a concluding section, discussing how this research relates back to the Life Cycle of Norms laid out by Finnemore and Sikkink.

Review of Literature

There are two fields of literature which are important for answering the question of whether there is an emerging climate refugee norm. First, the literature on climate refugees, including questions of terminology, causal relationships and the continuum between voluntary and forced migration. After discussing the existing literature on this topic, I am going to set up my own definition of climate refugee in order to clarify who belongs to the category I am concentrating my research on. Second, the literature on norm emergence is presented to create a conceptual basis for this research, especially focussing on the Life Cycle of Norms by Finnemore and Sikkink and the two historical examples of norm emergence of the refugee norm and the Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) norm.

Climate Refugees

Existing literature on climate refugees has mainly focused on the challenge to define this emerging category and has emphasised the difficulties of identifying causal drivers of movement (multicausality) and of drawing distinct lines between voluntary and forced migrants (continuum). As many different terms and concepts are used simultaneously, I am going to give an overview over the most important existing literature and thereby establish the definition of climate refugee that I intend to work with.

Academic interest in those displaced by environmental events started as early as 1976 when Lester Brown first used the term “ecological refugee” to describe migratory movements due to desertification in Sub-Saharan Africa (Brown et al. 1976). A couple of years later, Essam El-Hinnawi wrote about “environmental refugees” for the first time, setting up a definition which

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remains widely used: “those people who have been forced to leave their traditional habitat, temporarily or permanently, because of a marked environmental disruption (natural and/or triggered by people) that jeopardised their existence and/or seriously affected the quality of their life.” (El-Hinnawi 1985, p. 4)

In the following decades, political scientists disagreed on the topic of environmental refugees. The academic field has been mainly divided into two camps. The first standpoint is represented by Norman Myers, who warned about the enormous scope that climate induced migration might take (Myers 2002), attributing the responsibility also to the Global North to “reduce the motivation for environmentally destitute people to migrate by supplying them with acceptable lifestyles through sustainable development all round." (Myers, Kent 1995, p. 160) Opposed to this position, Richard Black takes a more cautious stance on environmental refugees. He laments that the discussion lacks “theoretical rigour” (Black 2001) and questions the relationship between root causes identified by other authors and consequential migration by calling a conceptualisation of environmental factors as primary cause of moving “unhelpful and unsound intellectually, and unnecessary in practical terms.” (Black 2001, p. 1)

Although the discussion about environmental refugees has been ongoing for decades, it has not lost its drive. On the contrary: since climate change has been publicly recognised as a major transformational factor, the nexus between global warming and migration has received increasing attention in academia. Given the heated debate about terms and definitions, I will map out in the following part, what exactly I mean when using the term climate refugee. By drawing on the existing literature on the topic, I treat the two important issues of multicausality and the continuum between voluntary and forced migration, acknowledge the criticism of the term climate refugee and afterwards constitute a definition, which is suitable for my analytical purpose and establishes the borders between climate refugees and other forms of migration. Multicausality

When trying to identify how much influence climate change has on the decision to migrate, one important topic among the authors writing about climate refugees is multicausality. Most scientists agree that it is hard to detect a single driver of migration when natural hazards, economic hardship and conflict are narrowly intertwined in some regions. The problem is the complexity of the climate change-migration nexus which consists of two steps: First, the relationship between climate change and environmental hazards needs to be proven. While sea level rise, extreme temperatures and changes in rainfall patterns are relatively easy to link with climate change, predictions about tropical storms and weather patterns such as El Niño are hard

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to attribute to it without doubt. (IPCC 2013) The second step in this nexus is to determine the causal connection between the natural phenomenon and a person’s decision to move. The Environmental Change and Forced Scenarios (EACH-FOR) project, financed by the European Union, has tried to investigate this nexus:

"The 23 EACH-FOR case studies provided insights about ways that environmental factors affect human mobility – from sudden natural hazards, such as flooding and storms, to slow-onset phenomena, such as desertification, sea-level rise and other forms of land and water degradation that often affect migration as a result of livelihoods being affected. EACH-FOR confirmed the observation that environmentally induced migration has the potential to become a phenomenon of a scale and scope never experienced in human memory." (Warner et al. 2009, p. 233) The International Organisation for Migration (IOM) conducted a similar study in Southeast Asia, with mixed results: "Many respondents in Bangladesh identified climatic hazards as causing increasing migration flows, while the respondents in Nepal and Maldives did not identify climate change as a major factor influencing current migration flows." (IOM 2017, p. 209) The researchers also noted, however, that big parts of the population in all three countries were not aware of the existence of climate change and the possible influences it could have on their livelihoods. Even in the case of extreme environmental events, the migration-environment nexus remains unclear, as Black et al. note, pointing to slow-onset migration-environmental degradation, which encourages migration, but usually cannot be determined to be the only driver of movement. (Black et al. 2013)

Continuum Between Voluntary and Forced Migration

Likewise, it is hard to determine, whether someone is forced to migrate or chooses to do so when the environmental circumstances are gradually deteriorating. Graeme Hugo argues, that climate induced mobility can be best explained by a continuum.

"Population mobility is probably best viewed as being arranged along a continuum ranging from totally voluntary migration, in which the choice and will of the migrants is the overwhelmingly decisive element encouraging people to move, to totally forced migration, where the migrants are faced with death if they remain in their present place of residence." (Hugo 1996, p. 107)

Similarly, Myers describes a continuum from economic migrants to environmentally forced migrants, in between which there is a “grey zone in which one category sometimes tends to merge into the other.” (Myers 2002, p. 610) While this is certainly true, the question remains of where to draw a line between voluntary and forced migration. The IOM proposes three types of environmental migrants: environmental emergency migrants, environmental forced migrants, and environmental motivated migrants (Renaud et al. 2011). Environmental emergency migrants are people who flee temporarily due to an environmental disaster or sudden

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environmental event, for example a hurricane, tsunami, or earthquake. Environmental forced migrants are those who have to leave due to deteriorating environmental conditions such as deforestation or coastal deterioration. Environmental motivated migrants are sometimes also described as environmentally induced economic migrants. This category comprises people who choose to migrate in order to avoid possible future problems. Especially slow-onset environmental degradation represents a challenge in this context, because it is hard to determine the point of time when a movement is no longer voluntary and becomes forced.

The literature on climate refugees therefore concentrates on the two topics of multicausality and the continuum between voluntary and forced migration. While it is true that these two issues are not easy to dissolve, it is clear that climate change is a driver of migration, even if its share in the decision-making process of the individual migrant is hard to determine. Moreover, it is equally certain that forced migration due to climate change is a fact, even though there might be multiple cases in a grey zone between voluntary and forced migration.

Criticism On the Term Climate Refugee

Many terms and definitions are being used in the academic debate, varying in their degree of inclusiveness of the group of people they define. I decided to use the rather exclusive term climate refugee for the politico-legal category I want to research in my thesis, drawing on a rather narrow understanding of who is to be included in this category, as I will specify in the next section. Throughout academic literature, this terminology remains a very unconventional choice, though. The IOM clearly refrains from the use of terms such as climate refugee or environmental refugee, because it fears that this may undermine the legal status of refugees as defined by the UN Convention of 1951 and thereby risk to lessen its protection. (Laczko 2009) The legal term refugee was coined after the Second World War as being related to certain causes, such as persecution for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group, or political opinion. Environmental drivers are thus not among these causes which can grant a person the refugee status. The definition therefore does not identify people according to their situation of distress, but according to certain causal factors that generate the distress. Another strand of criticism is connected to the climate change-migration nexus. Stephen Castles addresses the problem of multicausality by arguing that "the term ‘environmental refugee’ is simplistic, one-sided and misleading. It implies a monocausality which very rarely exists in practice." (Castles 2002, p. 8)

While acknowledging both the character of the legal definition of refugee as not including certain causes for displacement and the difficulty to attribute migration with certainty to the

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effects of climate change, I deliberately decided to use the term climate refugee in order to demonstrate that the people in question are in a similar situation of distress as political refugees while lacking, in contrast, the legal status. The term climate refugee reflects the need of the people in question more accurately than alternative terms such as climate migrants and environmentally displaced persons. As there is no consensus in academia about terminology, I am going to set up a climate refugee definition in the following, which might be a helpful contribution serving as narrow definition of those people who are most directly and severely affected by climate change.

Working Definition Climate Refugee

Who is a climate refugee according to my definition? This definition is supposed to include vulnerable people in refugee-like situations. To define those, two criteria should be met: The person is displaced by events related to climate change and the space where the person lived before has become uninhabitable, so that there is a well-founded reason to apply the principle of non-refoulement, not to send a person back to a place where he or she has to fear persecution. I am going to specify in the following how displacement by climate change and uninhabitability are going to be defined.

Displaced By Climate Change

The first condition for a person to qualify as a climate refugee is that climate change can be identified without question to be the main reason for displacement. Naturally, problematic border cases will appear. Climate science can be helpful to understand the relationship between climate change and certain disasters such as typhoons, hurricanes, and certain flooding. The only cases of environmental hazards or degradation that can definitely be linked to climate change are those of sea level rise, droughts, heat waves and heavy rainfall. Additionally, river flooding due to melting glaciers can be attributed to climate change. On the other hand, complex weather phenomena like the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and tropical storms cannot be attributed with confidence to climate change. Persons displaced by these phenomena will therefore not be included in the definition of climate refugees.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) judges the probability of increased incidence and/or magnitude of extreme high sea level as likely or very likely (IPCC 2013, p.7) which makes it a major concern for populations living in areas threatened by flooding, such as small island states. The case of droughts is already less straightforward, as scientists consider changes in the rainfall patterns to be differing from region to region. An intensification of current phenomena is most likely, though and Trenberth et al. predict that “human induced

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warming effects accumulate on land during periods of drought because the ‘air conditioning effects’ of water are absent. Climate change may not manufacture droughts, but it could exacerbate them and it will probably expand their domain in the subtropical dry zone." (Trenberth et al. 2013, p. 21) The IPCC furthermore judges that heat waves’ frequency and duration is very likely to increase in the late 21st century (IPCC 2013, p.7). As current phenomena intensify, heavy rainfall is also likely to increase in those areas which are already prone to it. Especially monsoon precipitation is likely to intensify, while the monsoon season is likely to be lengthened (IPCC 2013).

The situation becomes less concrete when it comes to more complex weather phenomena such as the ENSO. As it has a very fluctuating occurrence per se, scientists were not able to tell whether an increase of El Niño due to climate change can be detected. It is likewise difficult to assess whether the number of tropical storms (hurricanes and typhoons) has increased. Statistics suggest this trend, but they might be biased by increased reporting and better research methods over time. The IPCC grants this observation only low confidence (IPCC 2013, p.7).

Uninhabitability

Relatable to the situation of political refugees, climate refugees cannot live in the place they originated from anymore. For political refugees, the fear of persecution is the rationale according to which they can apply for asylum and which obliges states to apply the principle of non-refoulement, of not sending back someone to a place where he or she has to fear persecution. Climate refugees, albeit lacking the characteristic of persecution, find themselves in a similar situation, where it would be dangerous or impossible to return home and where the principle of non-refoulement could be applied. In these cases, their place of origin would qualify as uninhabitable. In order to define who is a climate refugee, it is thus necessary to define uninhabitability. For this working definition, I identified four factors that determine a place to be uninhabitable: the absence of drinking water, temperatures above TWmax 35°C (a combined measure of temperature and humidity), the impossibility to construct sustainable infrastructure and the impossibility to sustain a livelihood through agriculture or farming. These factors will be explained in more detail in the following.

No population is capable of living in a place that does not have drinkable water resources. Even though the absence of drinking water can be countered by technical means (i.e. desalinisation of sea water) or water can be purchased from other states, these options are often unachievable for lower-income countries. A de facto unavailability of drinking water is thus a factor rendering a place uninhabitable under my definition.

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There is also a limit of inhabitability to a place regarding heat at a wet-bulb temperature, which is a combined measure of temperature and humidity, of TW 35°C. "[W]e estimate that the survivability limit for peak six-hourly TW is probably close to 35 °C for humans, though this could be a degree or two off." (Sherwood, Huber 2010, p. 9554) This figure could be reached in some parts of the world before the end of the century and is likely to be reached several times in the region around the Arabian Gulf in this period (Pal, Eltahir 2015).

It is hard to determine whether spontaneous environmental events can serve as a reason for long-term migration. Flooding, for example, usually occurs season-wise and makes a place uninhabitable for short times, but not for the rest of the year. I suggest defining a place uninhabitable through sudden environmental events when it becomes impossible to construct a sustainable infrastructure, so that houses, streets, and other buildings are destroyed on such a regular basis that reconstruction is not an option.

Finally, food security in low-income countries mainly arises from agricultural production and cattle farming. I argue that a place becomes uninhabitable, when the population has no longer a chance to sustain their livelihoods on the basis of agriculture and farming. This situation is obviously tied to the first factor of unavailable drinking water.

Summed up, a person is thus defined a climate refugee when displaced by environmental events that can be attributed to climate change with high confidence and when these events render his place of living uninhabitable due to lack of drinking water, temperatures above TWmax 35°C, the impossibility to construct sustainable infrastructure or the impossibility to sustain a livelihood through farming. I am choosing this very narrow definition of climate refugees, despite the fact that it risks excluding a certain number of people finding themselves in a very vulnerable position. However, I consider it to be useful for two reasons. First, I want to make sure that the people I am talking about find themselves in a comparable situation of distress as political refugees. The question of an emerging protection norm carries the implication that it is surprising that we do not find this kind of protection in our current international legal system. I therefore want to make sure that the people who I define as climate refugees are in an equally difficult situation while receiving different treatment. Second, choosing a narrow definition and thereby certainly leaving out an important amount of people who are in need of protection curbs the risk of overstating the phenomenon. A wide definition might potentially limit the credibility in the fact that every individual belonging to the category of climate refugees as defined here necessitates protection comparable to the one offered to political refugees.

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Norm Emergence

Having defined the category of climate refugee which I base my research on, I am now turning to the scientific framework in which the research is placed. As the research question aims at the emergence of a climate refugee norm, the concept of norm emergence which I use will be outlined in the subsequent part. Norms are commonly defined "as a standard of appropriate behavior for actors with a given identity." (Finnemore, Sikkink 1998, p. 891) In the case of an emerging climate refugee norm, it can therefore be expected that states agree on a common understanding of the migratory category of climate refugees and about how they ought to be treated. This is very important, as norms depend on an "intersubjectively shared set of meanings" (Guzzini 2000, p. 160) of what is appropriate in a given situation and they are constantly constructed and reshaped due to the interaction of different actors. It is not always easy to identify norms in an international system. They can only be derived indirectly, because state behaviour is not always in accordance with norms (Finnemore, Sikkink 1998, p. 892). Finnemore and Sikkink developed a systematic approach to better understand norm emergence which they call the Life Cycle of Norms consisting of three phases (Finnemore, Sikkink 1998). For the cycle to start, norm entrepreneurs are necessary who emerge with the objective to change a pre-existing norm. By using organisational platforms, norm entrepreneurs promote a new norm that they wish to be institutionalised. In the phase of norm emergence, some states adopt the new norm for reasons of domestic interests. Once a critical mass of states has adopted a norm3, the emergence process reaches a tipping point, and a norm cascade follows. This is the second phase of the Life Cycle of Norms. More and more states adopt the new norm due to international pressure, even if their domestic situation does not force them to do so. The reasons for this trend of adopting new norms are linked with the international socialisation as Finnemore and Sikkink note. This socialisation occurs through emulation, praise and ridicule and generates incentives for states to adhere to a certain norm (Finnemore, Sikkink 1998, p. 902). The last phase is finally norm internalisation. Universal adherence to a norm prevails and conformity becomes such a natural feature that a norm is not even recognised as such anymore. Usually, the internalisation of a norm is connected to the institutionalisation of it. In the case of climate refugees, this would imply the emergence of a legal category, as Helton argues:

3_{According to Finnemore and Sikkink, at least one third of the states in the system need to adopt the norm for it}

to reach the tipping point. It is also important, however, that the critical states, without whom the norm could not be achieved, adopt it in order for the norm emergence process to reach its tipping point (Finnemore, Sikkink 1998).

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"When we speak of 'protection,' we mean legal protection. The concept must be associated with entitlements under law and, for effective redress of grievances, mechanisms to vindicate claims in respect of those entitlements." (Helton 1990, p. 119, emphasis in original)

Several examples about norm emergence showcase nonetheless that it does not necessarily need to be linked to institutionalisation and the appearance of a legal category. Norms emerge in different ways and as I am examining a process which is still ongoing, the final development of the norm might not be predictable by now. In the next part, I am going to look at historical cases of an emerging protection norm, because they might give hints about what to expect in the process of an emerging climate refugee norm.

Comparison Historic Cases

While the protection of climate refugees has not overcome the hurdle to be written down in any kind of international treaty or agreement, two groups of vulnerable populations have made this step before. Refugees are recognised under the UN Convention of 1951 which guarantees them certain rights and obliges states to follow the principle of non-refoulement. Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) do not profit from the same legal protection, but the UN nonetheless acknowledged their situation of distress and published the Guiding Principles in 1998 (UNOCHA 1998). The literature on how the refugee and IDP norm emerged can therefore be helpful to understand which ways an emergent climate refugee norm would follow.

Refugees

Refugees gained a special legal status through the UN Convention of 1951 which carries the principle of non-refoulement, forbidding every state to send back a refugee to a country where he or she has to fear persecution. Defined as a refugee under the Convention is every person who

"owing to well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality and is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country; or who, not having a nationality and being outside the country of his former habitual residence as a result of such events, is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to return to it." (United Nations 1951, p. 14)

The emergence of a legal status for refugees is often seen as a result of the 20th century, as a reaction to the incapacity of the international community to react to refugees fleeing the Third Reich. This perception is flawed, though, as Orchard describes, because the emergence of a refugee norm dates back a lot longer, finding its roots in the 17th century with the flight of the Huguenots in 1685 through the French Revolution (Orchard 2016). Some parallels between the emergence of the refugee norm before its entry in international law and the emergence of a

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climate refugee norm might therefore be identifiable. These include the norm emerging in a tacit and informal way, states primarily working on an ad hoc basis and countless backlashes and inconsistencies during the emergence of the norm (Orchard 2016). Additionally, both refugee protection and climate refugee protection are norms that go along harmonically with already existent norms. Keck and Sikkink noted that transnational networks organise more effectively around the promotion of a norm when it includes "(1) issues involving bodily harm to vulnerable individuals, especially if there is a short and clear causal chain (or story) assigning responsibility; and (2) issues involving legal equality of opportunity." (Keck, Sikkink 1998, p. 27). This holds true in both the case of refugees and climate refugees. Bodily harm occurs or risks to occur in both the case of refugees and climate refugees and especially with the existent refugee norm, a lacking climate refugee norm seems to contradict the legal equality of opportunities. Understanding the emergence of the refugee norm makes it very clear that norm emergence is not the straightforward process that it often appears to be in retrospective.

Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs)

A second interesting process of an emerging protection norm is the one of IDPs. Like climate refugees, IDPs do not have a specific legal status. As they have not crossed an international border, they are not recognised as refugees, even if they are in a similar situation of human suffering. However, the UN adopted the Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement in 1998, thereby acknowledging their situation, and runs programs to support IDPs. Boano et al. argue that the decision to provide protection for IDPs did not lessen the UNHCR’s commitment towards refugees:

"Nevertheless, the parallel experience of UNHCR taking on new responsibilities towards IDPs suggests that accommodation is possible. Critics argued that the resource and operational challenges of IDP responsibility would compromise its primary responsibility for refugees. Yet the UNHCR is implementing structures and procedures to avoid such compromises." (Boano et al. 2008, p. 27)

The Guiding Principles for IDPs are important to climate refugees for two reasons. First, in many cases, climate refugees are internally displaced themselves. And as opposed to the UN Refugee Convention, the Guiding Principles do include natural disasters as a reason to recognise a person as an IDP (UNOCHA 1998). People who are displaced by the effects of climate change might therefore find protection within the borders of their country. But the IDP Guiding Principles are essential for another reason, because looking at how an international regime of IDP protection has emerged can give hints about how an international protection regime of climate refugees may emerge, which includes both people who are internally displaced by climate change and those who cross borders. Hannah Entwisle applied the Norm

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Life Cycle concept to the emergence of an IDP norm (Entwisle 2005). She argues that despite the lack of international hard law, the protection of IDPs became a norm, which cascaded after the issuing of the UN Guiding Principles in 1998. Several countries even adopted the main points of the Guiding Principles in their domestic law and the African Union issued the Kampala Convention for the protection of IDPs in 2009 (African Union 2009). As François Gemenne and Pauline Brücker argue, there are significant similarities between the IDP and the climate refugee case. They note that

"both types of displacement lack specific legal protection norms, notwithstanding international human rights framework and international humanitarian law: both types of displacees are provided with assistance from several national and international agencies, but cannot claim particular rights from any specific entity apart from their state." (Gemenne, Brücker 2015, p. 15)

They argue, however, that one of the main differences lies in the characteristics of the displacement itself, that for defining IDPs the question is where they moved (internally) and whether the movement was forced. For climate refugees, it is important to analyse why they moved, so the reason triggering the decision to move needs to be identified. (Gemenne, Brücker 2015) Altogether, the comparison with IDPs can therefore give an example of where the emerging climate refugee norm might be heading. However, there are differences in the nature of the displacement which might cause differences in the way in which a climate refugee norm emerges.

The literature on norm emergence is crucial for this thesis in two regards. The Life Cycle of Norms model by Finnemore and Sikkink offers a valuable theoretical basis and structure to trace the process of an emerging norm by providing an analytical framework. Moreover, literature on existing norms such as the refugee and the IDP norm is helpful to understand how norm emergence may play out in practice. As Orchard describes, the refugee norm took over 300 years to reach its current phase of internalisation after a process of different local regimes and setbacks. The IDP norm shows how different the result of norm emergence can look like – although refugees and IDPs share many characteristics, the norms that protect them are quite different: Refugees are protected by a legally-binding UN Convention due to the cause of their flight (persecution) and are granted a specific legal status coming with rights and responsibilities. IDPs are protected by non-binding Guiding Principles due to the situation they find themselves in with a broader set of causes that are accepted as leading a person to becoming an IDP. For my research interest, these aspects are vital. It is thus possible that the potential climate refugee norm also emerges in a process with multiple counter-movements and setbacks and that it takes a different shape than both the refugee and IDP norms. When addressing the

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question of whether there is an emerging refugee norm, I will therefore also focus on the question of what this potential norm looks like and what its characteristics are.

Methodology

My thesis will be situated in a constructivist theoretical framework as I concentrate on the emergence of a norm as a process, which is not purely explainable by sole state interests. Moreover, interactions of state and non-state actors are recognised by constructivists to play a crucial role in the emergence of a norm, which allows me to include non-state actors such as NGOs in my analysis. I consider a constructivist framework furthermore to be preferable to alternative ones, because it takes into account how identities and interests are shaped and reshaped in a process of negotiating norms instead of being fixed.

Nonetheless, the tracing of an emergent norm is very difficult. Constructivists usually take ideas that are deeply embedded and taken for granted and analyse how they came to life, such as for example the IDP norm, the chemical weapon taboo and women’s suffrage (Entwisle 2005; Price 1995; Finnemore, Sikkink 1998). In my case, I use the constructivist framework to explore the emergence of a yet inexplicit idea. The result will necessarily be more contingent and open to reframing. However, gaining these insights in an ongoing process is beneficial to understand which – sometimes contradictory – ideas are currently embedded in the discourse around this emerging norm and to predict which direction the further cascade may take.

In the following, I will outline the methods I intend to use, framing and genealogy, to answer my research question. I used both interviews and documents as sources for my research. After explaining my methods, I will specify how I conducted the interviews, chose interview partners and which technique I used to select the documents I included in my analysis.

Framing and Genealogy

The phases of the Life Cycle of Norms will serve as a structure to guide through my analysis. Norm emergence, tipping point, norm cascade and norm institutionalisation are the different moments in time in this process. In order to analyse these different stages, I make use of two methods, framing and genealogy. On the one hand, the concept of framing fits harmonically with the Life Cycle of Norms model and Finnemore and Sikkink themselves mention framing in the corresponding article. Nonetheless, frames are a relatively fixed concept. If an issue is framed in a certain way, that means that it is fixed on these characteristics. Due to the fact that I am examining a process, the framing of climate refugees may have changed over time throughout the different phases of norm emergence. I therefore consider it helpful to complement framing with genealogy, another method of discursive analysis which attaches

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more importance to the development of a discourse and its changes over time. Slightly varying frames do not necessarily mean that no coherent norm is emerging, so genealogy is a helpful method to take the whole process into account. I will now briefly outline the concepts of framing and genealogy and describe how I jointly use them for my analysis.

Framing

As mentioned before, I use the concept of a Life Cycle of Norms by Finnemore and Sikkink (Finnemore, Sikkink 1998) in order to understand the process of norm emergence until their institutionalisation. As Finnemore and Sikkink describe in their work, norm entrepreneurs frame an issue in order to convince states to adopt a new norm:

"The construction of cognitive frames is an essential component of norm entrepreneurs' political strategies, since, when they are successful, the new frames resonate with broader public understandings and are adopted as new ways of talking about and understanding issues. In constructing their frames, norm entrepreneurs face firmly embedded alternative norms and frames that create alternative perceptions of both appropriateness and interest." (Finnemore, Sikkink 1998, p. 897)

I therefore consider the method of frame analysis useful to answer my research question of whether there is an emerging climate refugee norm. The study of frames has been widely used and developed in social movements studies. Keck and Sikkink argue that "[n]etwork members actively seek ways to bring issues to the public agenda by framing them in innovative ways." (Keck, Sikkink 1998, p. 17) Frames are constructed when actors express their interpretation of a situation. Barnett describes that they are strategically deployed and different actors compete in the process of framing an issue, to engender a certain form of social action in consequence. In historical moments, when different interpretations exist about how the future ought to be, the importance of frames increases. (Barnett 1999) It might well be that for climate refugees, a historical moment has come. As their number increases and their presence becomes ever more evident, different actors try to frame the problematic in a way that aligns with their interests and identity.

Genealogy

As there might be several frames existing simultaneously and changing dominant frames, I will complement framing with genealogy. The emergence of a norm is a process over time, a genealogy seems therefore to be an appropriate method to answer this question for several reasons. First, genealogy is not directed at a causal relationship (why the norm is emerging), but interested in the way in which it comes to existence. It is based in the belief that a norm does not develop in a straightforward process maximising utility, but that it evolves in a process of changing discourse (Foucault, Rabinow 2010). Instead of relying on empirical facts,

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Nietzsche’s and Foucault’s genealogic argument is based on discursive regimes (Bielskis 2009). Following Friedrich Nietzsche, the aim is not to "bring to light what the ideal did; rather simply what it means, what it indicates, what lies hidden behind, beneath and within it and what it expresses in a provisional, indistinct way, laden with question marks and misunderstandings." (Nietzsche 2006, p. 109)

The two analytical tools which are necessary in this process are discourse and power (Price 1995). In a Foucauldian understanding, the production of discourse is already a form of power, namely disciplinary power, which defines the realm of the possible. In The Archaeology of Knowledge, Foucault describes the role of discourse in a society as following:

“I am supposing that in every society the production of discourse is at once controlled, selected, organised and redistributed according to a certain number of procedures, whose role is to avert its powers and its dangers, to cope with chance events, to evade its ponderous, awesome materiality.” (Foucault 1972, p. 216)

The enormous importance that Foucault attaches to speech as such becomes evident when he explains that its role goes beyond simply expressing conflicts and power relations. He perceives speech as "the very object of man's conflicts." (Foucault 1972, p. 216) While attaching much importance to the power of discourse, power is thereby not understood in the realist sense. According to Foucault, discourses are theoretical statements which are connected to social practices and thereby define what is “normal” (Foucault 1972). Norms, in this interpretation, do not only constrain, but are productive by constructing identities and interests. When looking at Nietzsche’s work, it becomes obvious that he is likewise opposed to a realist understanding of power, as he rejects the idea of self-interest. To him, the self is a construct of identities that is not stable over time (Price 1995). The actors involved in the discourse may differ from case to case, because the access to discourse is not necessarily indiscriminate. "[N]ot all areas of discourse are equally open and penetrable; some are forbidden territory (differentiated and differentiating) while others are virtually open to the winds and stand, without any prior restrictions, open to all." (Foucault 1972, p. 225) The advantage of genealogy as a methodological approach is that it is concentrated on tracing a process, which norm emergence certainly is, as opposed to analysing a fixed situation. Moreover, as it deals with the construction and reconstruction of identities and interests, it helps to explain single inconsistencies and developments without questioning the power and significance of the whole discursive framework. The emergence of a climate refugee norm is a process in which several actors have to construct the idea of who is a climate refugee first. Identities and interests are still to be

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shaped and the way in which this norm emerges is open for debate. Hence, I consider genealogy to be the most suitable methodology to answer my research question.

I assume that both framing and genealogy can be helpful for my analysis. I will use genealogy to build an overall timeline and to analyse the change of the discursive representation of climate refugees over time. Based on this timeline, I will identify different phases, including the phase of norm emergence, a tipping point, a norm cascade and a possible norm institutionalisation (it can be assumed that a norm internalisation has not yet taken place). Within these phases, I will concentrate on how the topic of climate refugees is framed. Framing will therefore be used within the phases and genealogy to identify a trend over the whole process of norm emergence.

Sources

For my analysis, I used both document sources, which were issued in the crucial moments of the development of a climate refugee discussion, and interviews with some of the key actors or representatives of important organisations. Through studying the existing literature and documents on climate refugees, I identified the Cancun Agreement in 2010 as an important threshold and therefore chose it as the tipping point for my analysis of a potential emerging climate refugee norm. The documents I used for my analysis were therefore sub-grouped in those issued before Cancun, leading towards the tipping point and those after Cancun, being influenced by the agreement.

Given the limited time and scope of this thesis, I was not able to analyse every document issued in the context of COP conferences, initiatives and projects which were potentially related to climate change and migration. I therefore had to find a strategy to systematically select the document sources for my analysis. For choosing the documents pre-Cancun, I relied on an article by Koko Warner, who upholds the importance of the Cancun Agreement and explains how it came to existence (Warner 2012). The documents she mentioned in this article as important served as my analytical basis of sources for the pre-Cancun area. For the phase after the Cancun agreement, I relied on my I interviewees to indicate the most important milestones, events and documents of this time period. The full chronological table of the analysed sources can be found in the annex. These documents were analysed by using frame analysis. Afterwards, the frames I found were put together to a storyline, making use of genealogy, to draw the whole picture of an emerging norm. I concentrated on identifying whether climate refugees were a topic, how they were represented and whether their representation changed over time. Koko Warner’s 2012 article was used as a starting point to understand how the issue

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might have been framed before Cancun and it has been analysed whether the protection gaps she mentions in it were closed in the post-Cancun phase.

Besides the document analysis, I also conducted interviews to support my research. I contacted the important organisations and institutions related to the topic of climate refugees and the process leading towards or stemming from Cancun and I got in touch with scholars who are also working in this field. Unfortunately, all my respondents were very involved in the UN or Nansen Initiative process, so their views of the topic were sometimes similar, whereas a more independent interviewee might have contributed a new perspective. However, none of the NGOs, which might have qualified for this position and which I contacted reacted to my interview request. Despite this shortcoming, the interviews were very constructive for my work. I conducted semi-structured interviews which were mainly focused on identifying which moments in time these actors attach importance to regarding the emergence of a climate refugee protection and which actors they regard to be crucial in this field. The answers were used to make a selection of the document sources analysed and to contact further interview partners. I inquired the importance of the Cancun Agreement with every interviewee and received the general approval of it being a crucial moment. I also asked for the interviewees assessment of whether there is an emerging climate refugee norm. In the context of the interviewees, I discussed the use of the term climate refugee with every interviewee, as none of them usually uses the expression. The nature of the interviews was therefore mostly investigative or verifying, depending on whether the person in question came up with new information or just helped to assert the importance of an actor or a document that I had already included in my selection.

Number Date Name Organisation/ Institution

1 13.04.2017 Ileana Sinziana Puscas Platform on Disaster Displacement (PDD)

2 02.05.2017 Walter Kälin Representative of the United Nations Secretary-General on the Human Rights of Internally Displaced Persons; Envoy of the Chairmanship of the Nansen Initiative

3 11.05.2017 Kees van der Geest United Nations University (UNU)

4 12.05.2017 Lena Brenn Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC)

5 19.05.2017 Robert Oakes United Nations University (UNU)

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7 02.06.2017 Koko Warner United Nations University (UNU)/ UNFCCC

Figure 1 - List of Interviewees

Analysis

The analytical part of my thesis is tracing the whole norm emergence process in order to answer the question of whether there is an emerging climate refugee norm. First, I am going to give a more detailed overview of the document timeline that I am following, then a chapter on each phase will follow: Norm emergence, the tipping point, norm cascade and norm institutionalisation. As we can already judge that there is no norm internalisation at this stage, I will leave out this phase of the Life Cycle of Norms.

Document Timeline

The study of the literature around climate refugees made one point in time emerge as an important threshold: the Cancun Declaration at the COP 16 in 2010, which for the first time mentioned a relationship between climate change and migration or displacement in a text signed by the participant countries. The Cancun Agreement invited states to take

"[m]easures to enhance understanding, coordination and cooperation with regard to climate change induced displacement, migration and planned relocation, where appropriate, at the national, regional and international levels." (UNFCCC 2010a, p. 5)

Migration as a consequence of climate change is sub-grouped in this agreement with other adaptation strategies. Koko Warner called paragraph 14 (f) a "modest but significant milestone in addressing climate-change-related human mobility." (Warner 2012, p. 1074)

Warner also mentions which documents have been ground-breaking in the way to the Cancun Agreement. These will be used in order to trace the process of an emergent norm until the Cancun Agreement in 2010. Then, her visions of gaps and future possibilities will be used to further trace whether the norm cascaded which has been evolving in Cancun in 2010. To select the documents for the period after the Cancun Conference, I relied on my interview partners to indicate which documents and conferences they considered to be milestones in the process of climate refugee protection. Figure 1 provides a timeline of the most important events and documents in the process that I analysed.

The starting point of this process is the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) Fourth Assessment Report in 2007, which for the first time stated that it is too late to curb all effects of climate change, that it will be necessary to take action on adaptation. Simultaneously, migration in the context of climate change was first mentioned in the Bali Action Plan in 2007

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and the European Union financed the EACH-FOR study to assess whether there is already a climate change-migration nexus. More and more international attention was brought to the topic by conferences, further studies and the launch of an IASC task force related to the issue. In 2008, migration and displacement were first mentioned in an UNFCCC assembly text, in 2009 there was a report to the UNFCCC Secretary General emphasising the security implications of climate change, including climate induced migration and during the COP in Copenhagen in 2009, the final text for Cancun was prepared.

After the tipping point in Cancun and the formal recognition of migration as an important topic in the context of climate change, two processes started to unfold. First, there was further action within the UN, including ministerial meeting and the subsequent COP conferences. In 2013, the Warsaw International Mechanism for Loss and Damage (WIM) was introduced, shifting the field in which migration was defined from adaptation towards loss and damage. Migration and displacement remained an important topic in both the Sendai Framework and the Paris Agreement in 2015, the latter having a special relevance as legally binding climate agreement of nearly all nations. Although the topic of migration took up a minor part in the Paris Agreement itself, it was decided to launch a task force on displacement under the WIM at this occasion. This task force met for the first time on the 18th and 19th of May 2017. Moreover, the New York Declaration for Refugees and Migrants mentions people displaced by climate change in the preamble in one line with other forms of migration and displacement and it has been decided already that this topic will be treated at the meetings for the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration taking place in 2018.

Those are thus the key events and documents related to the emergence of a climate refugee norm. In the following, I will go through the phases of norm emergence, tipping point and norm cascade and analyse how the topic of climate refugees is framed in the single moments in time. Afterwards, I discuss the phase of norm institutionalisation and then recapitulate whether the process of an emerging climate refugee norm can be identified.

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Figure 2 – Timeline Key Events

In tr a-UN / U N FCCC p ro ce ss Ex tr a-UN p ro ce ss ( N an se n In iti ati ve ) Can cu n A gre em en t

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Norm Emergence - Pre-Cancun

The norm emergence phase begins with the IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report in 2007 and ends with the Cancun Agreement, thereby reaching the tipping point. This part traces the phase of norm emergence according to the key events and documents mentioned by Koko Warner in her 2012 article (Warner 2012). For Warner, the mentioning of human mobility in the context of climate change is a result of a process of several steps: First, the realisation that climate change cannot be stopped anymore, but that a reaction to its effects will be necessary. Second, the recognition of a climate change-migration nexus. And third, a grouping of migration within the framework of adaptation to climate change (Warner 2012). In this first analytical part, I will trace back in how far these three frames developed over time until they finally led to the formulation of migration related to climate change that made it into the Cancun Agreement. Additional to these frames identified by Warner, a humanitarian catastrophe frame has been found in the documents, which will be discussed afterwards.

Figure 3 - Timeline of Events Pre-Cancun

Action on Adaptation

According to Warner (2012), the discourse around climate change was historically dominated by defeating the causes of climate change and sanctioning the polluters. Around the time of the publication of the IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report in 2007, a second strand of discussion emerged: The recognition that it might be too late to stop climate change and thereby the

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realisation that strategies of adaptation are needed (Warner 2012, p. 1062). An analysis of the documents previous to the Cancun COP makes the focus on adaptation become very evident. The starting point of the “action on adaption frame” is often described as the Fourth Assessment Report by the IPCC (IPCC 2007). In this report, the authors claim a certain irreversibility to climate change: “Anthropogenic warming and sea level rise would continue for centuries […], even if GHG concentrations were to be stabilised.” (IPCC 2007, p. 46) This recognition of human-induced global warming being already too far advanced to stop its effects, consequentially leads to the conclusion that “additional adaptation measures will be required at regional and local levels to reduce the adverse impacts of projected climate change and variability, regardless of the scale of mitigation undertaken over the next two to three decades.” (IPCC 2007, p. 56) After this initial mention of adaptation as necessary measure, a duality of mitigation and adaptation as the two big areas of concern regarding climate change began to emerge. Ever since, this partition has been respected in the climate negotiations. The IPCC states that:

“neither adaptation nor mitigation alone can avoid all climate change impacts. Adaptation is necessary both in the short term and longer term to address impacts resulting from the warming that would occur even for the lowest stabilisation scenarios assessed.” (IPCC 2007, p. 65) The first example making use of this new duality between mitigation and adaptation is the Bali Action Plan agreed upon at the COP 13 held in Bali, Indonesia in 2007. Mitigation and adaptation were named as the two essential strategies to cope with climate change in the final text issued at the conference (UNFCCC 2008). In the context of adaptation, the Bali Action Plan mentions that the least developed countries and small island developing states are most vulnerable and notes “the needs of countries in Africa affected by drought, desertification and floods.” (UNFCCC 2008, p. 4)

After the 2007 COP in Bali, the Inter Agency Standing Committee (IASC), a platform coordinating the cooperation of the UN with several humanitarian organisations, created an informal group on Migration/ Displacement and Climate Change. In a 2008 submission to the Ad Hoc Working Group on Long-Term Cooperative Action under the Convention (AWG-LCA), this task force highlighted the importance of adaptation, presenting it as the umbrella concept encompassing disaster risk reduction and risk management (IASC 2008b). While mentioning the role of human mobility in the context of risk management, adaptation is predominantly framed as a set of measures in order to prevent extreme events from happening and to focus on disaster preparedness instead of fully accepting their occurrence and developing

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coping strategies. Similarly, in the following documents, such as the report of the AWG-LCA after their fourth meeting in Poznan in December 2008, the duality of both mitigation and adaptation remained in place (UNFCCC 2009). Adaptation had thus by 2010 been accepted as a crucial element of the climate negotiations, which created the preconditions for it to play an equally important role in the Cancun Agreement.

Climate Change-Migration Nexus

Another important step in the process towards including displacement in the Cancun Agreement was that mobility was accepted to be linked to climate change (Warner 2012, p. 1072). In the analysis of the documents, it becomes very clear that migration is increasingly framed as an unavoidable consequence of climate change.

The IASC task force on Migration/ Displacement and Climate Change was an important actor in articulating the definite nature of the climate change migration nexus in 2008. Its creation is symbolic for the recognition of this relationship and its publications highlight the interconnection of these two phenomena. In October 2008, the IASC issued a working paper mentioning “complex linkages between climate change and human mobility” (IASC 2008a, p. 1), underlining the new challenges arising from that. (IASC 2008a; 2008b)

Most crucial for investigating the climate change migration nexus was the EACH-FOR project, co-sponsored by the European Commission and carried out between 2007 and 2009, in which scholars developed a methodology of how to examine the climate change-migration nexus and applied it to 23 case studies (EACH-FOR 2009; IOM 2009). While not distinguishing between voluntary and forced migration and while the individual case studies showed different results, the EACH-FOR project was an important step to bridge the knowledge gap around the relationship between climate change and migration and the authors could determine that environmental degradation played a role in people’s decision to move in several cases, albeit its tendency to work through indirect processes, for example the loss of livelihoods due to climate change impacts (IOM 2009). Despite the fact that the study could not conclude with certainty that climate change was having a big impact on migration patterns, it identified tendencies and maybe most importantly provided a methodological framework for further research. Moreover, its outcomes were spread through the network of international organisations which cooperated on the project and they thereby increased awareness for this topic among scholars, international organisations, and policy-makers.

A joint study of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) and the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC) in 2009 similarly focused

The emergence of a climate refugee norm : a genealogy

MASTER’S THESIS