Governments in the Americas Reaffirm the Need to Address Disaster Displacement

September 28, 2023
Events, Press Releases

Panama City, Panama, 23-24 August 2023 – Government officials gathered in Panama for the IV Plenary of the Regional Conference on Migration (RCM) and the South American Conference on Migration (SACM) to address disaster displacement in the region.

The Americas are at the frontline of the climate emergency, and countries are increasingly experiencing the impacts of disasters and the adverse effect of climate change on population movements. According to a World Bank study, the region could face the displacement of more than 20 million people by 2050.

“Climate change is increasing the numbers and severity of unpredictable and extreme weather events which have an impact on human mobility, and this is a policy issue that will continue to require our attention and collaboration,” said the representative of the Canadian Government during the event.

This meeting, convened by the Government of Panama, current Chair of the RCM, sought to promote greater collaboration between countries of both regional processes, and identify concrete avenues for a joint approach to address migration governance challenges in the region.

“Climate change is not a new phenomenon, and yet migration policies, while acknowledging the issue, still fail to develop ways to address it,” said the representative from Costa Rica. “We have an opportunity here with the development of a new migration policy 2024-2034, whereby the climate change and migration nexus has been defined as a central element.”

For two days, Government officials from 23 countries discussed increasing technical knowledge, recent and future migration trends, shared good practices, and reflected on each member’s experience managing disaster displacement.

Several governments expressed interest in learning from existing practices, including the United States, stating they were “supportive of innovative ways to expand legal pathways for people who are fleeing the adverse effects of climate change” and were taking note of “Argentina’s very creative and innovative humanitarian visas for people displaced by climate disasters.”

The IV Plenary of RCM-SACM included for the first time a session on “Environment, Disasters & Climate Change” which aimed to discuss the links between migration and environmental policies, assess existing coordination mechanisms and identify challenges to incorporate environmental issues in the migration agenda.

Argentina and Chile, co-chairs of the discussion, introduced the session by stressing the importance of a multi-stakeholder perspective in addressing disaster displacement. They also took the opportunity to present progress made in South America, notably the creation of a new “Migration, Environment, Disasters and Climate Change Network” in the SACM, established under the Argentinean Chairmanship in 2021, and its recent meeting in Santiago de Chile in August 2023 to advance and discuss a common regional agenda on migration and climate change.

The discussion highlighted a number of regional achievements, namely the adoption of a non-binding regional instrument on the protection of people displaced across borders and on migrants in countries affected by disasters linked to natural hazards, a series of national capacity building workshops on cross border movements during times of disaster, and the overall advocacy work deployed over the years around disaster displacement in existing regional migration governance structures in the Americas.