Living with Climate Change, Conflict and Displacement: Recognising Agency, Voice, Mobility, Language and Linkages
Publisher: Overseas Development Institute
Author(s): Caitlin Sturridge
Date: 2023
Topics: Climate Change, Conflict Causes, Livelihoods, Programming
Complexity and uncertainty characterise the relationship between climate change, conflict and displacement. The analytical enormity of climate change, conflict and displacement as individual challenges is further amplified when these are considered collectively. While progress has been made in narrowing the gaps between climate–conflict and climate–displacement, a disjointed approach marked by a lack of empirical research and data persists between the three (Peters et al., 2021).
In addition to being complex and uncertain, the relationship between climate change, conflict and displacement is also highly political. Political priorities and associated narratives (rather than independent and impartial evidence) determine how climate change, conflict and displacement are conceptualised and addressed. Despite being discredited by experts, ‘big numbers and misleading statistics’ are routinely used to describe climate displacement (Kjærum, 2023). A key reason why these alarmist narratives resurface in an ‘echo chamber of headlines, press releases and funding campaigns’ is that they reinforce the anti-immigration policy agendas of governments as well as the fundraising agendas of aid actors (Sturridge and Holloway, 2022: 4).