Climate Change, Environment and Migration Alliance (CCEMA)

Institute:
UNU-EHS

CCEMA is a multi-stakeholder global partnership aiming to bring together actors representing a range of perspectives including environment, migration, development and humanitarian assistance. Its objective is to bring migration considerations to the environment, development, and climate change agendas and vice versa.

CCEMA was founded in response to the growing realisation that there are complex interdependencies among climate change, environmental degradation and migration. There is a need and a substantial scope for building synergies among these domains in policy, research and action. This requires interdisciplinary collaboration and the development of comprehensive approaches.

The CCEMA alliance was initiated in April 2008 at an expert meeting in Munich, Germany. Membership in the Alliance is open to organizations and individuals with a demonstrated interest and engagement in the climate change, environment and migration field and a commitment to the purpose and objectives of CCEMA. The members are (in alphabetical order):
- International Organization for Migration (IOM)
- Munich Re Foundation (MRF)
- The Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI)
- United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP)
- United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA)
- United Nations University – Institute for Environment and Human Security (UNU-EHS)
- University of Sussex – The Development Research Centre on Migration, Globalisation and Poverty (DRC)
- World Wildlife Fund (WWF)
More info: http://www.ccema-portal.org/
The major aim of CCEMA is to mainstream the environmental and climate change considerations into the migration management policies and practice and to also bring migration issues into the world’s on-going environmental and climate change discourse. The alliance provides a platform for interdisciplinary broad-based regional, international, and global collaboration and coordination to:
- Raise policy and public awareness of the need for concerted action to address the challenges and realize the opportunities presented by the climate change, environmental degradation and migration nexus.
- Improve the knowledge base of the complex relationships between climate change environmental degradation and migration in terms of cause and consequence, long-term as well as short-term patterns. This will be achieved through, inter alia, gathering, compiling and making available the latest information on these issues relevant to policy and practice, and developing innovative research approaches.
- Provide a neutral and open forum for policy dialogue to identify and discuss major cross-cutting issues in the field of climate change, environment and migration. The Alliance will bring together policymakers and practitioners from multiple fields and different constituencies to contribute to a better understanding of the challenges and opportunities this nexus presents. The Alliance platform will strengthen cooperative mechanisms among governments and other key stakeholders to comprehensively and effectively address environmental change and migration.
- Provide practical support to the most vulnerable countries and population groups through building the capacity of governments and other stakeholders to respond effectively to the challenges presented by the climate change, environmental degradation and migration nexus. The Alliance encourages policy coherence among these and other relevant domains, identifying success stories and evaluating solutions applied in a variety of settings such as disaster management, migration and environmental management, and emergency displacement and resettlement. The Alliance serves as a catalyst for new projects and innovative ideas which take into account existing initiatives and partnerships in order to avoid duplication of effort.
Dr. Cosmin Corendea
Associate Academic Officer

Tel.: + 49-228-815-0274
e-mail: corendea@ehs.unu.edu