Climate Change Adaptation

Just a month after ratifying the Paris Agreement in September 2016, Sri Lanka published its National Adaptation Plan (NAP) detailing adaptation actions in eight key sectors. This included agriculture, health, water, irrigation, coastal and marine, biodiversity, tourism, urban development and human settlements. Migration, however, has not been adequately linked to climate change in the NAP, which means that the lack of official efforts to track future impacts of climate change on mobility will leave the nexus between the two issues largely unknown, unless it is addressed through dialogue and action.

Sri Lanka’s lure of the nation’s garment industry in the capital city of Colombo and surrounding areas, as well as foreign employment in the Gulf States, is thought to be the main pull factor for internal and external migration patterns in the country. There is, however, a lack of data or analysis on whether climate change is in fact exerting a “push” factor on these developments, as emerged during the multi-stakeholder national consultation on the Global Compact on Migration that took place in Sri Lanka in August 2017.

There are clear gaps in the inclusion of migration-related data or analytical studies in the disaster management portfolio in Sri Lanka. Authorities record numbers of people temporarily displaced by rapid-onset events such as landslides, cyclones or floods. However, they do not currently record the extent to which these numbers translate into permanent migration. Nor do they record the impact on migration of slow-onset events such as drought or changes in seasonal rainfall or temperature patterns, which can lead to steady yield decline, and eventually drive people to give up on agriculture and move to urban areas.  This may then also have an impact on food security across the country.

Against this backdrop, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) plans the following actions, in coordination with government and non-government actors:

• Conduct assessments to identify needs and vulnerabilities of communities affected by climate change and environmental migrants – IOM tools such as the DTM can be rolled out in areas vulnerable to natural hazards and climate extremes.
• Conduct in-depth research on the role of remittances in climate change adaptation, including their use as social safety nets to reduce forced migration due to climate change and gender-differentiated impacts of environmental migration.
• Identify existing relevant mechanisms at national and sub-national levels to mainstream environmental migration.
• Convene and support regular information-sharing meetings to discuss climate migration and feed into the development of a relevant policy instruments to address environmental migration.
• Develop localized training material based on IOM’s existing Training Manual on Migration, Environment and Climate Change (MECC) with a view to better prepare policymakers on how to integrate MECC into existing policy frameworks and develop climate migration policy instruments.

Although there had been many government initiatives, policies and practices drafted by addressing climate change mitigation and adaptation, such national policies and frameworks had not been successful to adequately address the migration and environment nexus or address it to a minimal extent. This clearly attests the need for a review and improvement of current national policies and adaptation plans.