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The United Nations University Office at the United Nations, New York (UNU-ONY) and UNU Institute for Environment and Human Security in Bonn, Germany (UNU-EHS) are organizing a multi-part panel discussion of policy perspectives on how climate change affects the ability of people to manage their risks - through migration and displacement, or through mechanisms such as risk reduction and insurance, as the impacts of climate change become more pronounced in vulnerable areas of the world.

Date: Thursday, September 24, 2009
Time: 10:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. (2 panels)
Venue: The Simon Wiesenthal Center/New York Tolerance Center, Screening Room, 226 East 42nd Street, New York, NY 10017 (between 2nd and 3rd Avenues) See map

Panel 1: Emerging Policy Perspectives on Human Mobility in a
Changing Climate (10:00 to 11:30 a.m.)

Panel 2: Seal the Deal: How Risk Reduction and Insurance Strengthen the Adaptation Package in a Copenhagen Agreement (11:30 a.m. to 1:00 p.m.)

UNU, together with partners and leading experts, have created these two panels to complement the message of the Secretary General to the 64th General Assembly: to reach a strong agreement in Copenhagen on combating climate change and supporting adaptation. These panels provide delegates and other interested individuals examples and ways forward to promote adaptation and resilience in the face of climate change.

Moderated by:

Jean-Marc Coicaud

Director of the United Nations University (UNU) Office at the United Nations in New York

Welcome Remarks:

Mark Weitzman

Director of Government Affairs & Director of the Task Force against Hate and Terrorism, Simon Wiesenthal Center

Presentation:
Insurance Instruments for Adapting to Climate Risks: Moving towards Copenhagen, download PPT

The Climate Change - Migration Nexus, download PPT

Background Readings:

Highlights of UNU Research and Publications on the Environment and Sustainability, Download PDF

In Search of Shelter: Mapping the Effects of Climate Change on Human Migration and Displacement, Download PDF

Adaptation to Climate Change: Linking Disaster Risk Reduction and Insurance, Download PDF

Insuring against Climate: Negotiators Push for Policies to Help Weather Natural Disasters, Download PDF

Munich Climate Insurance Initiative, Download PDF

Climate change and associated environmental degradation hold the potential to displace millions of people in coming decades. Estimates of the likely number of people who may be affected by environmental migration vary widely and there have been few efforts to date to systematically analyze the triggers, patterns and policy implications of such trends. An emerging body of inter-disciplinary research is beginning to look at key aspects of these issues with the aim of helping policy makers to make informed decisions on how to prepare for, prevent or respond to climate change related human mobility in an effective manner.

Welcome Remarks :

William Lacy Swing

Director General of the International Organization for Migration (IOM)

Speakers:

Susan F. Martin
Director of the Institute for the Study of International Migration in the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University

Koko Warner
Head of the Environmental Migration, Social Vulnerability, and Adaptation Section at the United Nations University Institute for Environment and Human Security (UNU-EHS)

Hansjoerg Strohmeyer
Chief of the Policy Development and Studies Branch, United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs

Thomas Loster
Chairman Munich Re Foundation

Frank Laczko
Head of Research, International Organization of Migration (IOM)

In recent years there have been more and more indicators that climatic change already influences the frequency and intensity of natural catastrophes. These increasing hazard-related risks--associated with both climate change and social and economic developments--create a substantial additional burden for sustainable development. The decisive question today is not when we will have the ultimate proof for anthropogenic climate change - a small risk of error certainly will remain for some time - but which strategies we should follow to mitigate and adapt to climate change.

Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) have committed themselves to considering the special needs and concerns of developing countries resulting from the adverse effects of climate change in the area of insurance. Many governments and organizations are exploring how disaster risk reduction and risk sharing approaches might help countries particularly vulnerable to climate change impacts adapt. A central concern, and the focus of this panel, is how to make such measures accessible and affordable to vulnerable developing countries in order to support them in their efforts to reduce risk and adapt to climate change.

Speakers:

Thomas Loster
Chairman of Munich Re Foundation

Koko Warner
Head of the Environmental Migration, Social Vulnerability, and Adaptation Section at the United Nations University Institute for Environment and Human Security (UNU-EHS), Founder and Executive Board Member Munich Climate Insurance Initiative

Simon Young
Chief Executive Officer, Caribbean Risk Managers Ltd

Yannick Glemarec
Deputy Executive Coordinator at UNDP's Global Environmental Facility

We would like to thank the Simon Wiesenthal Center - New York Tolerance Center for their contributions to this event. The Simon Wiesenthal Center (SWC) is an international Jewish human rights organization dedicated to preserving the memory of the Holocaust by fostering tolerance and understanding through community involvement, educational outreach and social action. With a membership of over 400,000 families and 250,000 e-members, SWC is headquartered in Los Angeles and maintains offices in New York, Toronto, Miami, Jerusalem, Paris and Buenos Aires. NYTC provides diversity seminars for educators, criminal justice officials, state/local government practitioners, and middle and high school students from the public, private and parochial school systems. In addition, NYTC provides special film, lecture and facilitated tours for the general community.

Biographies:

Jean-Marc Coicaud is the Director of the United Nations University (UNU) Office at the United Nations in New York. He was Senior Academic Officer at the UNU in Tokyo from 1996 to 2003. Before joining UNU, he served in the Executive Office of the United Nations Secretary-General as a speechwriter for Dr. Boutros Boutros-Ghali (1992-1996). A former fellow at Harvard University (Center for International Affairs, Department of Philosophy and Harvard Law School, from 1986 to 1992), Coicaud has held appointments such as Cultural Attaché with the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Legislative Aide with the European Parliament (Financial Committee), Associate Professor at the University of Paris, and Visiting Professor at the Ecole Normale Supérieure-Ulm in Paris. He has also taught at the New School for Social Research (New York). He has been a Senior Fellow at the United States Institute of Peace (Washington, D.C.) and a Global Research Fellow at New York University School of Law. Coicaud holds a Ph.D. in political science-law from the Sorbonne and a Doctorat d'Etat in philosophy from the Institut d'Etudes Politiques of Paris. In addition, he holds undergraduate and graduate degrees in literature and linguistics. He is a member of the Advisory Board of Carnegie Council's Global Policy Innovations (New York). He also serves as an adviser for the Fondation pour l'Innovation Politique (Paris).

Mark Weitzman is Director Government Affairs and the Director of the Task Force against Hate and Terrorism for the Simon Wiesenthal Center. He is also the Chief Representative of the Center to the United Nations in New York, and was the Founding Director of the SWC's New York Tolerance Center. Mr. Weitzman is a member of the official US delegation to the Task Force for International Cooperation on Holocaust Education, Remembrance and Research and a board member and former Vice-President of the Association of Holocaust Organizations. He is also a member of the advisory panel of Experts on Freedom of Religion or Belief of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), of the official Jewish-Catholic Dialogue Group of New York and of the advisory board of the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy at Yale University.

Mr. Weitzman is a winner of the 2007 National Jewish Book Award for best anthology for Antisemitism, the Generic Hatred: Essays in Memory of Simon Wiesenthal which he co-edited and contributed to and which has appeared in French, Spanish and Russian editions. His most recent publications are Magical Logic: Globalization, Conspiracy Theory and the Shoah. (Vidal Sassoon Center for the Study of Antisemitism at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem) and Strategies in Facing Antisemitism: An Educational Resource Guide which was a joint publication of the Simon Wiesenthal Center and Yad Vashem.

He has lectured and worked with various groups including Congress, the U.N., the EU (European Union) the U.S. Army and the FBI. In 2004 he was one of the featured speakers at the UN's first ever conference on antisemitism and in 2009 addressed the UN's conference on cyber hate. In June 2005 he spoke at the OSCE conference on Antisemitism and Other Forms of Intolerance which was held in Cordoba, Spain, and he was an advisor to the US delegation at the June 2007 Bucharest OSCE conference on Combating Discrimination. Mr. Weitzman also chaired the panels on Internet and Media Issues at the 2007 and 2008 Global Forums on Antisemitism that were convened by the Israeli government. In April of 2008 he was one of the Jewish leaders invited to meet with Pope Benedict XVI during his visit to the US. In 1999 Mr. Weitzman was honored with the Distinguished Service Award by the Center of Hate and Extremism at the Richard Stockton College of New Jersey.

He was on the board of advisors for the companion guide for the film Shoah (1987). Other publications include editing and contributing to Dignity and Defiance: Confronting Life and Death in the Warsaw Ghetto (1993) The New Lexicon of Hate (3rd edition, 2004) the textbook Historical Case Studies: The Holocaust (1996), the Wiesenthal Center's annual CD, Digital Hate and Terrorism (2000-2008) as well as to Globalisierter Rechtsextremismus?: Die extremische Rechte in der Ara der Globalisierung (Globalized Right-wing Extremism: Right-wing Extremism in an Era of Globalization - 2006) and the Encyclopedia of Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity (Macmillan, 2004). His article, The Transmigration of Antisemitism: Old Myths; New Realities, appeared last spring in Not Your Father's Antisemitism: The Hatred of Jews in the Early 21st Century, edited by Michael Berenbaum. His book Dismantling the Big Lie: The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, (which he co-authored with Steven L. Jacobs) the first full refutation of the infamous Protocols, was published in 2003 and has been translated into Arabic and Japanese.

Mr. William Lacy Swing, is the Director General of the International Organization for Migration (IOM). On 18 June 2008, Ambassador William Lacy Swing of the United States was elected as the next Director General of the International Organization for Migration (IOM). He assumed his post on 1 October 2008. From May 2003 till January 2008, as UN Special Representative of the Secretary-General (SRSG) for the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Ambassador Swing successfully led all facets of the largest UN peacekeeping operation in history. Prior to his work in the DRC, Ambassador Swing served from 2001 to 2003 as the Special Representative to the Secretary-General for Western Sahara and Chief of Mission for the UN Mission for the Referendum in Western Sahara (MINURSO).

During a long diplomatic career at the US Department of State, Mr. Swing was a six-time ambassador, managing some of the largest diplomatic missions and foreign development and humanitarian aid programmes in two hemispheres, with a record of strengthening bilateral relationships.

Through his diplomatic assignments in countries facing significant migration movements, he has acquired a deep understanding of the multiple factors affecting international migration.

Ambassador Swing graduated from Catawba College in North Carolina (Bachelor of Arts) and Yale University (Bachelor of Divinity), and did post-graduate studies at Tubingen University in Germany and at Harvard University. He speaks fluent French and German.

Susan F. Martin is the Director of the Institute for the Study of International Migration in the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. Susan F. Martin holds the Donald G. Herzberg Chair in International Migration and serves as the Director of the Institute for the Study of International Migration in the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. Dr. Martin is also Co-Director of the Certificate Program on Refugees and Humanitarian Emergencies. Previously Dr. Martin served as the Executive Director of the U.S. Commission on Immigration Reform, established by legislation to advise Congress and the President on U.S. immigration and refugee policy, and Director of Research and Programs at the Refugee Policy Group.

Her publications include Refugee Women, The Uprooted: Improving Humanitarian Responses to Forced Migration, Beyond the Gateway: Immigrants in a Changing America (ed.), Managing Migration: The Promise of Cooperation, and Mexico-U.S. Migration Management: A Binational Approach (ed.). Dr. Martin earned her MA and Ph.D. in American Studies from the University of Pennsylvania and her BA in History from Douglass College, Rutgers University. She is the immediate Past President of the International Association for the Study of Forced Migration and serves on the U.S. Comptroller General's Advisory Board, the Academic Advisory Board of the International Organization for Migration, and the Board of the Advocacy Project.

Dr. Martin's began working on environmental migration issues in the early 1990s when she organized an international conference, IOM/RPG Seminar on Migration and the Environment, Nyon, Switzerland (January 1992). The background document that she wrote to help organize the discussions and the summary of the conference's findings continue to be key documents in the evolving literature on the subject. More recently, Dr. Martin has been working on an article examining policy frameworks to address environmentally-induced migration, which includes an examination of poverty reduction strategies, national adaptation plans, and immigration policies in potential receiving countries. The paper is part of an IOM project on environmental migration. In another project, she is examining the involvement of the refugee regime in addressing mass displacement of people from environmental causes or natural disasters, looking at the circumstances in which the UN High Commissioner for Refugees should use its good mandate to assist and/or protect those displaced by these situations. Her book, The Uprooted, also focused on the evolving humanitarian response to complex forced migration, including movements generated by environmental causes and climate change.

 
Koko Warner is Head of the Environmental Migration, Social Vulnerability, and Adaptation Section at the United Nations University Institute for Environment and Human Security (UNU-EHS). Dr. Warner´s research focuses on two climate adaptation paths: environmentally induced migration and environmental change, and financial mechanisms to assist the poor including (micro)insurance and remittances. Warner was on the management board of the EACH-FOR project (Environmental Change and Forced Migration Scenarios, www.each-for.eu), a first-time global scoping survey of the links between environmental change and migration sponsored by the European Commission. Warner helped organize the first major international conference (www.efmsv2008.org) on the topic. She contributed to the establishment of the Climate Change, Environment, and Migration Alliance (CCEMA), and in collaboration with the Munich Re Foundation planned and implemented a summer academy on environmental change and migration. Warner is a founder and executive board member of the Munich Climate Insurance Initiative (MCII, www.climate-insurance.org). She serves on the editorial board of the International Journal of Global Warming. She is pursuing a Habilitation at the ETH Zürich, Department for Environmental Science and Economics, and serves as an assistant professor at the University of Richmond´s Emergency Service Management graduate program. Prior to joining UNU-EHS Warner was a researcher at the ETH Zürich, and before that she was a researcher at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA). She received her PhD in economics at the University of Vienna Department of Economics as a Fulbright Fellow.

Hansjoerg Strohmeyer is currently Chief of the Policy Development and Studies Branch at the Office for the Coordination for Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). As such he is the principal policy advisor to the Emergency Relief Coordinator on enhancing effective humanitarian action through adherence to humanitarian norms and principles, developing strategies and tools in support of humanitarian field operations, and advocating for humanitarian concerns in all areas of the United Nations' work.

Until December 2006, Mr. Strohmeyer served as Chief of Office of the United Nations Under-Secretary General for Humanitarian Affairs/Emergency Relief Coordinator and as Head of the Secretariat of the Executive Committee on Humanitarian Affairs at OCHA. He advised the Under-Secretary General on all matters related to the management of humanitarian crises, including interaction with political and peacekeeping/military actors, and frequently accompanied him on field missions including to Afghanistan, Iraq, the Middle East, Sudan, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Zimbabwe, Angola, or Malawi.

Mr. Strohmeyer served in several United Nations missions, including most recently as Chief of Staff and Senior Political Adviser to the United Nations Independent International Inquiry Commission (UNIIIC), based in Beirut, where he was responsible, inter alia, for cooperation matters with Syria. From August 2004 until May 2005 he was Chief of Staff of the United Nations Mission in Sudan (UNMIS), and, in 2003, he served in Liberia as Chief of Staff and Special Advisor for Protection to the Special Humanitarian Coordinator.

Moreover, from October 1999 to July 2000 he served as the Acting and then Deputy Principal Legal Adviser to the United Nations Transitional Administration in East Timor (UNTAET); from June to August 1999 as the Legal Adviser to the Special Representative of the Secretary-General in Kosovo (UNMIK); and, from 1996 to late 1998 as advisor on war crimes, human rights, and legal reform issues within the Offices of the High Representative (OHR) and the High Commissioner for Human Rights in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Mr. Strohmeyer was born in Mannheim, Germany, in 1962 and completed his academic education in Muenster, Germany with degrees in law and political science. From 1991 to 1996 he served as trial judge in Duesseldorf, Germany and is currently on leave of absence from his judgeship. In 1997 and 1998 he was a member of the German delegation to the International Criminal Court preparatory committee proceedings and the Rome Conference.

He is the author of the Secretary-General's first two reports on the protection of civilians in armed conflict and of several academic publications, including "Collapse and Reconstruction of a Judicial System: The United Nations Missions in Kosovo and East Timor", American Journal of International Law, January 2001.

Thomas Loster is the Chairman of Munich Re Foundation. Mr. Loster, a geographer, was a member of the Geoscience Research Group at Munich Reinsurance Company, Munich, the world's leading reinsurance company, for 16 years. He was in charge of issues relating to weather perils, climate change and climate policy. His responsibilities also included the statistical analyses of worldwide natural catastrophes and trend analyses that appeared in a number of papers and publications. Mr. Loster was appointed chairman of the Munich Re Foundation in July 2004. The Foundation addresses major global challenges - environmental and climate change, water as a resource and risk factor, population growth and disaster prevention - and is committed to helping people exposed to risk situations. True to its motto "From Knowledge To Action", the Foundation aims to prepare people to deal with risks and to improve their living conditions as well as to minimise the risks to which they are exposed. The Foundation clarifies the key issues and provides support, not only in developed but also in developing countries. Thomas R. Loster is member of the German Council for Sustainable Development, also a member of the National Committee of the United Nations Decade of Education for Sustainable Development.

Frank Laczko is Head of the Research and Publications Division of the International Organization for Migration (IOM) in Geneva. IOM is an inter-governmental organization. Dr. Laczko joined IOM in 1995, and his previous posts include, Head of the Migration Information Programme for Central and Eastern Europe, Budapest, 1995-1998, Head of Research at the IOM Technical Cooperation Centre for the CIS and Central and Eastern Europe, Vienna, 1998-2000.

Prior to joining IOM he worked for UNHCR 1993-1994, and was a consultant to ILO, OECD, and the European Commission, was a Senior Lecturer in Social Policy in the UK. Educated in the UK and Sweden, Dr, Laczko, published widely on social policy issues relating to labour market policies, population ageing and poverty, before moving into the field of migration. Between 1987-1989, he was a member of the evaluation team at the University of Bath, responsible for assessing the impact of the European Commission's Second Anti-Poverty Programme consisting of 92 pilot projects.

Dr. Laczko, is a member of the Advisory Board of the Migration and Development Research Centre, University of Sussex, Eurasylum, Brussels, and the COMPAS centre for research on migration, University of Oxford.

Simon Young is Chief Executive Officer, Caribbean Risk Managers Ltd which supervises the Caribbean Catastrophe Risk Insurance Facility (CCRIF). He has a background in Earth Sciences and, after completing his PhD, joined the British Geological Survey, where he worked on a number of applied earth science projects including hazard mapping and risk assessment (in Central and South America) and volcano monitoring and disaster management (primarily on Montserrat in the Caribbean.) In October of 2006, GeoSY Ltd became Caribbean Risk Managers, CaribRM. As CEO, Dr Young continues to work with a wide variety of public- and private-sector clients across the Latin America/Caribbean region in the advancement of their risk management and risk transfer goals. In particular, CaribRM is in the middle of its third year as Facility Supervisor of the Caribbean Catastrophe Risk Insurance Facility, the world's only parametric, multi-national sovereign cat risk pooling scheme. Dr Young leads the CaribRM business unit focusing on bringing innovative risk transfer solutions to single- and multi-territory companies and institutions through cat modelling, dynamic financial analysis and other risk management expertise. In particular, CaribRM has developed expertise in parametric/index product development and implementation. Dr Young's broad range of experience in natural hazards and risk financing has been called upon through numerous engagements and presentations at conferences, workshops and seminars around the world and through press and academic publications.

Yannick Glemarec is the Deputy Executive Coordinator at UNDP's Global Environment Facility.In this capacity, he has primary responsibility for the implementation oversight of a $6 billion portfolio ($2 billion in grants and $4 billion in co-financing) comprising over 2,000 projects and activities in 140 countries. He supervises UNDP-GEF staff both at HQ and at six UNDP/GEF regional coordination units in Beirut, Bratislava, Dakar, Bangkok, Panama City and Pretoria. Yannick joined UNDP in 1989 and successively served as a country manager in Vietnam for five years, in China for five years and in Bangladesh for two years prior to joining UNDP/GEF in New York in January 2003. Yannick holds a Doctorate Degree in Environment from the University of Paris and a MSc Degree in Hydrology (DEA) from the French National School for Water and Forestry. He has authored and co-authored several books and papers in the environmental and natural disaster risk management fields.