Expert seminar

Environmental degradation, climate change and migration are not new to the global community. However, managing these phenomena has become both more challenging and more critical to ensuring human security and sustainable development. Not only are gradual and sudden forms of environmental change aquiring greater magnitude, but they are likely to lead to ever larger waves of internal and international migration, including mass human displacement. Migration is also having a demonstrable impact - at times positive, at others negative - on the environment in communities of origin and destination. Both phenomena are figuring more prominently in the eruption of new and old conflicts. Recognising the need to support improvements in research and policy for more effective management of the association between migration, the environment and other intermediating social, economic and political factors, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) and the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) co-sponsored a two-day Expert Seminar on Migration and the Enviornment in Bangkok, Thailand on 22-23 February 2007.