Webinar: Planned relocation at COP28
Key lessons for national climate action

As climate impacts intensify and threaten the habitability of more and more places where people live and work, governments and regional organisations increasingly see the need to consider planned relocation as a policy option. At the same time, relocation is often considered as a ‘last resort’. With good reason: past relocations have often had negative consequences for communities. It is rarely self-evident or inevitable that a community should move. Instead, the decision to relocate in a purposeful, coordinated manner may only be relevant in specific contexts and under certain circumstances. It is vital that when relocations occur, the process happens under the best possible conditions, maximizing adaptive outcomes, minimizing losses and damages and preserving human rights and dignity. This requires adequate frameworks for deciding whether, when, and under which circumstances planned relocation should happen.

For the 2023 edition of the Climate Academy, academic experts, practitioners and policymakers gathered for two week, one online and another in-person in Saly (Senegal) to discuss the state-of-the-art, knowledge and practice gaps, and action pathways on planned relocation. This webinar will focus on lessons from the Climate Academy for governments and policy-makers interested or already engaged in planned relocation processes – and implications for COP28. The event will introduce 5 key insights from the academy on integrating planned relocation into national climate action (published in a Policy Brief). Speakers will then share insights on how planned relocation is currently discussed and integrated in different national contexts.

Carolien Jacobs, Leiden University, Netherlands

Carolyne Cherop, Parliament of Kenya, Kenya

Sarah Thekla Koeltzow, Platform on Disaster Displacement, Switzerland

Sumit Naidu, Association of Development Financing Institutions in the Pacific, Fiji

The conversation will be moderated by Dr. David Durand-Delacre, Senior Researcher at the United Nations University Institute for Environment and Human Security (UNU-EHS).