Migration and climate change: building resilience and enhancing sustainability

Expected Outcome

Projects should contribute to all of the following expected outcomes:

• Strengthen EU and national migration governance by developing a dynamic knowledge database and an exchange platform, for enhanced collaboration among researchers, policymakers, and practitioners, promoting the integration of environment and climate change migration considerations into EU and national policies.
• Develop a strategic roadmap that outlines key research (including in SSH disciplines) and policy priorities addressing climate change and migration and supports implementation measures.
• Develop policy recommendations to improve the EU's understanding and preparedness, and to enhance collaboration between the EU and third countries within the frameworks of relevant EU policies.

Scope

Proposals should develop a strategic roadmap that will act as a comprehensive framework for understanding the impacts of climate change on migration and its impact on future generations and outline key research and policy priorities in the context of environmental degradation, climate change and migration.

Having developed such a roadmap, proposals should develop a dynamic exchange platform with up-to-date information, to be accessed by all concerned parties, involved in climate change and migration including EU and national authorities, researchers, policymakers, and relevant stakeholders. This platform should be collaborative, user-editable, and community-driven, allowing for future updates and contributions from various stakeholders. It should act as comprehensive go-to place, a source repository, and a networking and coordination space, with a focus on integrating climate change considerations into migration policies. The platform should incorporate comprehensive data on migration patterns, including on international and internal displacements, on international destinations including neighbouring EU countries, and EU arrivals, and on climate change as a root cause or its interaction with other root causes, with the goal to inform policy decisions.

Proposals should identify gaps and set the groundwork for future research and policy initiatives. They should adopt an interdisciplinary approach integrating climate, population, and human mobility studies addressing the complex relationship between environmental disasters and migration intentions. They should encompass a broader analysis of vulnerabilities, such as internal displacements, how preexisting inequalities (e.g. social, economic, political, health, gender) are exacerbated due to climate change, and populations stranded in their countries of origin, aligning with EU's external policy frameworks for adaptation strategies[1].

Proposals should consider the involvement of the Knowledge Centre on Migration and Demography (KCMD) operated by the European Commission’s JRC[2] with a view to be sustainable beyond the lifetime of the project. In particular:

• the structure and the format of the platform should be decided together with DG RTD, DG HOME and the JRC, and it should be built and hosted within the web environment of the Knowledge Centre on Migration and Demography as part of its knowledge management efforts;
• the development of the roadmap is encouraged to be developed in consultation with relevant stakeholders, particularly including with DG RTD, DG HOME and the JRC;
• findings and recommendations should be translated in very concise policy briefs, preferably in coordination with the KCMD.

Proposals could identify local case studies to perform context-specific analysis and extract actionable insights and scalable solutions that could inform broader migration and climate adaptation policies. These local case studies could explore the impact of climate change in different regions and the phenomenon of environmental immobility, where individuals are unable or unwilling to move despite facing significant environmental threats.

The proposals are strongly encouraged to look into the findings of completed Horizon 2020 projects on forecast and foresight, particularly from the topic ‘MIGRATION-01-2019 - Understanding migration mobility patterns: elaborating mid and long-term migration scenarios’, and wherever possible build on their outcomes and methodology[3]. They are also encouraged to build on the deliverables of project INNOVATE[4] and of relevant projects of Destination “Effective management of EU external borders” of Horizon Europe Cluster’s 3/Horizon 2020’ SC7, such as projects ITFLOWS[5], CRITERIA[6], MIRROR[7] and PERCEPTIONS[8], as well as the relevant use cases and pilots conducted as part of the Destination Earth initiative[9].

Proposals should consider incorporating in the platform the data provided by European Research Infrastructures, such as the European Social Survey[10] or other Research Infrastructures dealing with climate change and environment. Where applicable, proposals should leverage the data and services available through European Research Infrastructures federated under the European Open Science Cloud, as well as data from relevant Data Spaces. Particular efforts should be made to ensure that the data produced in the context of this topic is FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Re-usable).

The selected project should produce a range of feasible policy recommendations. These recommendations should be based on evaluations of existing EU humanitarian aid, development and migration policies and drafted as policy options that are directly actionable , include cost considerations and explicitly recommend additions or modifications of current EU strategies, regulations, and directives. The option of non-action should also be elaborated. The recommendations should be firmly embedded in EU values such as respect for human dignity, gender and age equality, and fundamental rights.

[1] https://climate.ec.europa.eu/eu-action/adaptation-climate-change/eu-adaptation-strategy_en

[2] https://knowledge4policy.ec.europa.eu/migration-demography_en

[3] https://cordis.europa.eu/programme/id/H2020_MIGRATION-01-2019/en

[4] Beneficiary of the topic HORIZON-CL2-2023-TRANSFORMATIONS-01-04: Bridging the migration research to policy gap https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/101132593

[5] https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/882986

[6] https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/101021866

[7] https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/832921

[8] https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/833870

[9] https://destination-earth.eu/

[10] ri-portfolio.esfri.eu/ri-portfolio/table/