The Hamburg Conference: Actions for Climate-Induced Migration Research context of this conference
The 21st century will be characterized by changes shaped by climate change. Many scientific results have shown the threats and challenges that climate induced migration poses on population, governments and governance structures. Current climate change projections suggest that the situation could aggravate, thus putting additional pressure on the socio-ecological systems and increasing their vulnerability and reducing their capability to react to any future stressor. This situation may be aggravated in many countries by the lack of state and regional capacity to manage the impacts of climate change, as well as by the unpredictable overlay of conflicts, both within nations and transnationally (Werz and Conley, 2012)
Climate Change, Migration, and Conflict (Werz and Conley, 2012) (PDF)
It is clear that not all countries or societies are equally exposed to climate and environmental change nor are they similarly capable to cope with environmental stressors. Hence, anticipating the vulnerability to climate change of particular socio-ecological systems proves crucial for taking adequate and timely actions. Such actions can be undertaken only through efficient governance structures, and by supporting social transformation processes enabling states and populations to react to vulnerable situations.
The goal of the Hamburg Conference is to increase knowledge and management inputs through an intensive learning process of decision-making, action and evaluation. Therefore we invite contributions showing tools and actions to deal innovatively with environmental and climate-induced migration.
The conference outcomes should contribute to the enhancement of essential types of knowledge production that might improve and provoke further actions:
| • System knowledge identifying the cause of present problems and their future development |
| • Target knowledge concerned with the values and norms that can be used to form goals of problem-solving processes |
| • Transformation knowledge dealing with how a problematic situation can be transformed and improved (Hirsch Hadorn et al. 2008) |
| • Transdisciplinary knowledge collected from different sources representing the information feed-forward and feed-back processes across individuals that are necessary for transformations in societal processes (van der Leeuw 2009) |
Central and final aim of the conference is to collect evidence-based knowledge and experiences and produce an outcome document, along the lines of the Nansen Principles on Human Displacements, thus contributing to setting the future agenda on climate induced migration.
Nansen Conference on Climate Change and Displacement in the 21st Century
Conference Scientific Board
Petra Bendel (Friedrich-Alexander-University Erlangen-Nuremberg)
Michael Brzoska (University of Hamburg)
María Máñez Costa (Climate Service Center, Hamburg)
Giovanna Gioli (University of Hamburg)
Graeme Hugo (University of Adelaide)
Cord Jakobeit (University of Hamburg)
Patricia Romero Lankao (NCAR, Boulder)
Benoit Mayer (National University of Singapore)
Angela Oels (University of Berlin)
Jürgen Scheffran (University of Hamburg)
Sophia Wirsching, (Brot für die Welt, Berlin)
Keynote speakers
- Dr. Susana Adamo (Columbia University, New York, USA)
- Dr. Tamer Afifi (United Nation University, Bonn, Germany)
- Prof. Samuel Codjoe (Univerity of Ghana/Legon, Accra, Ghana)
- Dr. François Gemenne (IDDRI/Sciences Po, Paris, France)
- Prof. Graeme Hugo (University of Adelaide, Adelaide, Australia)
- Prof. Jiahua Pan (Director of the Institute for Urban & Environmental Studies, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences – CASS, Beijing, China)
- Prof. Oliver C. Ruppel (University of Stellenbosch, Stellenbosch, South Africa)