Type

Report

Author

Foresight

Title

Mountainous Regions Workshop The International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD) 28 February to 1 March 2011

Year

2011

Publisher

Government Office for Science UK

Abstract

The Foresight programme within the UK Government Office of Science aims to help develop policies that are robust and resilient in the long term. It looks at direct policy impact, both nationally and internationally, on a range of priority issues for the UK government. The Foresight programmes’s projects span different government departments and address multi- disciplinary topics, and one of the current projects is migration and global environmental change (MGCE). The project aims to assess how a broad range of environmental factors interacts with other socioeconomic drivers of change and influences patterns of migration globally with a future perspective up to 2060, and to assess the policy implications. GEM focuses on four broad ecological regions where the interplay of environmental and non- environmental drivers is likely to be of most interest to global policy makers. These regions are: • dryland margins (e.g. Southern Africa); •low-elevation coastal zones/small island states (e.g. Bangladesh, Pacific islands); • the Mediterranean region; and • mountainous regions (e.g. the Himalayas). The GEM project has a lead expert group that provides conceptual and intellectual leadership and is composed of experts from various disciplines related to environmental migration. Region-specific workshop: mountainous regions. The Foresight programme organised four region-specific workshops concerning environmental migration, including the one on mountainous regions. They aimed to respond to the following queries: How can we best understand global migration arising from environmental change to help those who move, those in host areas and those who stay behind, and what are the policy implications? The workshop discussions were divided into the five following themes: • drivers of migration and the extent to which they are influenced by environmental change (drivers of migration); • what environmental migration looks like in the future (present and future scenarios); • future uncertainty, and socioeconomic scenarios of the future which may affect environmental migration (future uncertainties and socioeconomic scenarios); • policies and interventions relevant to environmental change and migration (policies and intervention); and • next steps and catalysing action. Foresight in cooperation with the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD) held a high-level workshop on migration and global environmental change: mountainous regions from 28 February to 1 March 2011 in Kathmandu, Nepal. There were 30 local and international participants in attendance (Annex 2). In addition to presentations, there were breakout sessions and in-depth discussions into the above themes (Annex 1). ICIMOD is a regional knowledge development and learning centre serving the eight regional member countries of the Hindu Kush Himalayas – Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, China, India, Myanmar, Nepal and Pakistan. ICIMOD recognises that globalisation and climate change have an increasing influence on the stability of fragile mountain ecosystems and the livelihoods of mountain people. ICIMOD aims to assist mountain people to understand these changes, adapt to them and make the most of new opportunities, while addressing upstream–downstream issues

Citation

Foresight. (2011). Mountainous Regions Workshop The International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD) 28 February to 1 March 2011. Kathmandu – London : Government Office for Science UK.