The Climate Change and Displacement Initiative is a four-year year Initiative (2009- 2012) designed to find practical and viable housing, land and property solutions for climate displaced persons.

Through rights-based and innovative policy and strategy development, targeted workshops, network building, awareness raising, publications, original research and other activities, the Initiative seeks both to inform the world of the massive scale of displacement which will affect forced climate migrants in the years and decades to come, and to advocate for rights-based solutions to this form of displacement, both within the nations affected and through regional and international resettlement initiatives.

The Initiative will achieve these aims through:

1. Examining the precise scale and circumstances confronting present and future forced climate migrants within an initial focus on four countries: Bangladesh, Kiribati, Maldives and Papua New Guinea;
2. Examining existing adaptation measures in each of the four focus countries and the extent to which these are adequate in addressing the displacement challenges ahead;
3. Examining the extent to which local housing, land and property remedies for forced climate migrants are available, and conversely, the scale of inter-country forced migration likely to affect nearby safe countries, with a focus on New Zealand and Australia;
4. Developing detailed contingency plans, resettlement feasibility studies, institution-building proposals and other steps to ensure the HLP and other rights of forced climate migrants; and
5. Raising the public profile of the issue of forced displacement due to climate change, through the production of unique films, publications, training and other public relations materials.

Activities of the Initiative

Publications

Climate Change Displaced Persons and Housing, Land and Property Rights: Preliminary Strategies for Rights-Based Planning and Programming to Resolve Climate-Induced Displacement, December 2009

This publication is one of the first of its kind to examine the specific housing, land and property rights issues arising within the context of climate-induced displacement. It contains a series of recommendations to policy-makers and others for the prompt resolution of this particularly complex and large-scale form of displacement.

Download (1.1MB)

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Climate Change and Displacement Reader – forthcoming June 2010

This 400 page publication will bring together a wide cross-section of writing and research findings on the links between climate change and displacement.

Meetings and Network

Joint statement on Climate Change, Human Rights and Forced Human Displacement.
December 2008
Joint statement on Climate Change, Human Rights and Forced Human
Displacement by Co-Chairs Displacement Solutions and UNHCR on 10 December
2008, the 60th Anniversary of International Human Rights Day.

Download PDF (56KB)

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Report of the Displacement Solutions and UNHCR Meeting on Climate Change
December 2008
Report of the Displacement Solutions and UNHCR Meeting on Climate Change,
Human Rights and Forced Displacement, held in Canberra, Australia on the 60th
Anniversary of the Universal Declaration on Human Rights, 10 December 2008.

Download PDF (284KB)

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Report of The Bougainville Resettlement Initiative
December 2008
Report of the Displacement Solutions hosted meeting entitled The Bougainville
Resettlement Initiative, held in Canberra, Australia on 11 December 2008. This unique
gathering brought together community representatives of the world’s largest mass
resettlement programme due to climate change from the Carteret Islands in Papua
New Guinea, Government officials from the island of Bougainville, private landowners
from Bourgainville, private sector investors, AusAid representatives, UN officials,
resettlement and human rights experts, various NGOs and representatives from
various other small island states threatened with rising sea levels, including Tuvalu,
Kiribati and the Maldives. The meeting developed detailed and concrete proposals to
facilitate, in a rights-based manner, the resettlement modalities of the 6000 atoll
dwellers who will relocate to Bougainville.

Download PDF (220KB)

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Background paper for joint meeting on displacement and climate change co-hosted by DS and UNHCR in Canberra, Australia – 10 December 2008.
Download the meeting paper (244KB)

Interviews

Download as .mp4 (4.73MB)

Download as .mp4 (11.2MB)

The Climate Change Land Solutions Fund

Displacement Solutions is in the process of establishing a Climate Change Land Solutions Fund to generate funds for the purchase of new land resources for climate displaced persons.

For further information on any of the activities of this Initiative, please contact info@displacementsolutions.org or jordan@displacementsolutions.org