WASHINGTON, DC — Climate change impacts communities in different ways, and whether and how it triggers migration varies based on people’s vulnerability and their ability to cope and adapt. Yet progress has been slow on localizing climate mobility solutions, as a result keeping development work from achieving its greatest and most sustainable impact, a new Migration Policy Institute (MPI) issue brief finds. Local actors possess critical knowledge about their communities’ vulnerabilities and needs, and they are often first to sound the alarm about looming climate mobility challenges. They also bring the networks and understanding needed to anchor projects in existing community dynamics and to ensure long-term sustainability. As multilateral development banks, governments, philanthropies and other donors begin to work more on climate mobility, they should give greater focus to engaging, partnering with and funding local civil-society organizations and authorities to achieve more effective, sustainable and just climate mobility programming, MPI analysts Lawrence Huang and Camille Le Coz argue. Where much thinking on recruiting local voices has tended to agree on why such steps are valuable, the MPI brief, Engaging Local Communities for More Effective Climate Mobility Programming, articulates how to begin to invest in localized solutions. The authors draw on interviews and exchanges with donors, international organizations, national development agencies and local non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to detail why localization has been so difficult for donors and development actors. The brief offers recommendations for concrete actions and strategies that international partners and local actors alike can implement to turn the aspiration of systematic localization into a reality. Donors have defaulted to working with large international organizations for a range of reasons, including the lack of clearly established networks of local actors with the necessary expertise, visibility and capacity to manage big development projects. Huang and Le Coz suggest stakeholders in the development world should work in new ways, including by: - Engaging local actors from day one of a project through sustained and inclusive consultations on the assessment of local needs and development of solutions, as well as embedding local actors throughout program design, implementation and evaluation.
- Ensuring that local actors have a greater role in directly implementing climate mobility projects, as well as experimenting with dedicated funding for local-level responses.
- Raising the visibility of local organizations and their climate mobility work at the global level to inspire other local actors, donors and international players to take on similar projects.
- Leveraging philanthropy to fund new projects with local actors because philanthropic actors are better suited to take on small-sized, riskier and more resource-intensive projects.
The brief offers recommendations for local actors as well, including the need for them to learn to speak donors’ language to showcase their comparative advantage and better articulate the intersection of climate change and migration. “Turning the principle of localization into reality can be difficult, particularly so in a new, politicized and complex field such as climate mobility, but there are small, practical steps that can be taken now to pave the way toward more systematic integration of local partners and better program outcomes in the years to come,” write Huang and Le Coz. “Moving forward, prioritizing localization while testing and scaling climate mobility solutions will be critical to ensuring effective, sustainable and just programming.” This brief is the final one in a four-part research series on climate migration supported by the Rockefeller Foundation. The first three briefs focus on factors that trigger anxiety or support for climate migrants, the role of immigrant workers to aid in the green transition and displacement solutions beyond the humanitarian protection system. To read the brief on local engagement, visit: www.migrationpolicy.org/research/local-communities-climate-mobility. * * * Check out MPI’s highly rated podcast, Changing Climate, Changing Migration, for smart discussions on the nexus between climate change and migration. To access all of MPI’s work on climate change, visit: www.migrationpolicy.org/topics/climate-change. |
