Introduction: Disaster Displacement

Abstract

Climate change, hazards, and environmental changes in general constitute just one trigger for migration and displacement among other social, economic, political, and other factors. However, the prospect of a potential future in which whole stretches of land would become uninhabitable and where millions of people would lose their livelihoods due to environmental factors is especially daunting, because the culprits of migration and displacement are not as black-and-white and are harder to identify than in a war and conflict scenario. This chapter shows that forecasting in the context of environmental changes and the possible human mobility that comes along with it is particularly challenging. The research interest of this chapter concerns the role of IOs in the rise of the topic as well as the underlying goals that IOs might attach to picking up the topic of environmentally displaced persons (EDPs). For this reason, this chapter will, firstly, introduce the topic of disaster displacement; secondly, outline the empirical puzzle that this thesis will focus on; and thirdly, illustrate the approach of the research project. Lastly, this introductory chapter will discuss the empirical and theoretical contributions of this thesis.