The Climates of Migration project was invited by the Bavarian Ministry of the Environment to participate with a poster at the “Klimaforschung Bayern” Congress, which took place in München, Germany, from June 24th to 25th.
Tag Archives: climate
News: Engler and Mauelshagen publish new paper on famine vulnerability
This June, staff members Steven Engler and Franz Mauelshagen with co-authors Johannes Werner and Jürg Luterbacher published a new paper, “The Irish famine of 1740–1741: famine vulnerability and “climate migration”” in Climate of the Past
The “Great Frost” of 1740 was one of the coldest winters of the eighteenth century and impacted many countries all over Europe. The years 1740–1741 have long been known as a period of general crisis caused by harvest failures, high prices for staple foods, and excess mortality. Vulnerabilities, coping capacities and adaptation processes varied considerably among different countries. This paper investigates the famine of 1740–1741 in Ireland applying a multi-indicator model developed specifically for the integration of an analysis of pre-famine vulnerability, the Famine Vulnerability Analysis Model (FVAM). Our focus is on Ireland, because famine has played a more outstanding role in Irish national history than in any other European country, due to the “Great Famine” of 1845–1852 and its long-term demographic effects. Our analysis shows that Ireland was already particularly vulnerable to famine in the first half of the eighteenth century. During and after the experience of hardship in 1740–1741, many Irish moved within Ireland or left the country entirely. We regard migration as a form of adaptation and argue that Irish migration in 1740–1741 should be considered as a case of climate-induced migration.
Find his paper here.
Rebecca Hofmann interviewed by broadcaster Deutsche Welle
Project member Rebecca Hofmann was interviewed by the German broadcaster Deutsche Welle. She was giving inside into her research on the Island State of Chuuk, Micronesia, and answering questions on why a changing climate can leave cultural scars. A summary of the interview can be found here.
Publication “Global Environment”
Bringing together the papers of last year’s conference on Environmental Change and Migration in Historic Perspectives, this special issue offers a broad scope of examples that illustrate the nexus of environmental changes and movement patterns in its interrelations and interdependencies.
Luebken, Uwe (ed.), “Environmental Change and Migration in Historical Perspective”, Special Issue of Global Environment, Nr. 9/10, 2012.
News: Lübken and Hofmann at the ASEH annual conference in Toronto
PD Dr. Uwe Lübken was chairing a panel at the Annual Conference of the American Society for Environmental History (ASEH) taking place in Toronto from April 3-6. The panel on “Natural Disasters and Migration: Explorations into a new Field of Research” focused on the relationship between extreme natural events and the various forms of (forced) mobility and migration they can create. Thereby, Rebecca Hofmann of the Climates of Migration project presented results from her extensive field work in Chuuk, Micronesia, and provided a closer look at the complexities of disaster migration from both a local Micronesian and a colonial point of view. The two other case studies presented looked at “Post-Flood Settlement and Relocation in St. Petersburg, Russia, 1824-1862″ and “Post-Disaster Displacements and Migration: the 1908 Messina Earthquake and the 1968 Belice Earthquake”.
News: Luebken interviewed for LMU magazine EINSICHTEN
Project director Uwe Lübken talks about the ‘climate refugee’ debate and explains how the Climates of Migration project analyses environmentally induced population movements using a historical approach, exploring links between environment, society and forced migration. Lübken elaborates on several case studies of the Climates of Migration team, such as population history in the Chesapeake Bay area and the Ohio River flood of 1937. To read the article, see: Flooding and Fleeying – Math or visit the LMU news website.
Last house on Holland island in Chesapeake Bay. Photo: baldeaglebluff
News: Shrinking, Sinking, Resurfacing…
In November, 2012, scholars from around the world gathered at the Rachel Carson Center in Munich for the Conference Shrinking, Sinking, Resurfacing: Small Islands and Natural Hazards in Historical and Current Perspectives.
The conference was the second of the three international conferences organized by the project “Climates of Migration”. Seventeen presentations highlighted the complexity of the natural hazards that are challenging small island communities and atolls. Case studies from several Pacific Islands, North America, Europe, and Asia discussed the various means by which islanders are successfully dealing with natural hazards, despite being categorized as “vulnerable.” Hosted by the project members Rebecca Hofmann and PD Dr. Uwe Lübken, the conference successfully integrated various disciplines while keeping a historical component in all presentations. The conference report can be found here.
News: Climates of Migration at 4th International Disaster and Risk Conference
PD Dr. Uwe Lübken hosted a panel on Climate and Migration at the 4th International Disaster and Risk Management Conference of the Global Risk Forum taking place in Davos, Switzerland from 26 to 30th of August.
The panel on “Climate Change, Migration and Displacement” focused on the great challenges that climate change poses to communities and individuals, putting further pressure on already marginal conditions that are influencing people’s decision to move. The panel was accompanied by a plenary session on the interconnections between “Disasters, Environment and Migration” in which Lübken and Dr. Franz Mauelshagen presented.
Photo credits: Nikos Kapelis
News: Call for Papers
Workshop “Small Islands and Natural Hazards”
On 22-24 November, the Rachel Carson Center will be hosting the workshop on Shrinking, Sinking, Resurfacing: Small Islands and Natural Hazards in Historical and Current Perspectives, aiming to look at the complex problem that natural hazards have posed -and still pose- on small islands. The Climates of Migration team has released a Call for Papers covering a range of interconnected historical topics, as well as current topics with a strong historical component and will accept proposals until May 15th.
Raised Limstone, Guam Micronesia – R. Hofmann
News: Conference Report Released
The report of the conference Environmental Change and Migration in Historical Perspective, that took place in Munich from August 4-6, is available. Click here to download the report.
Scholars from around the world gathered at the Internationales Begegnungszentrum in Munich for a two-day conference to discuss the intersections between environmental change and migration from a historical perspective. Hosts and project leaders Uwe Lübken (RCC) and Franz Mauelshagen (KWI) emphasized that an increase of attention to climate change and migration has contributed to a growing body of literature. There is, however, a knowledge deficit in the empirical field, particularly noticeable in historical scholarship. The Climates of Migration team therefore organized a conference and invited multi-disciplinary paper proposals on the historical intersections between environmental change and migration.
Climate migration is often framed as a security issue in Western countries. Yet the notion that millions of “eco-refugees” will be fleeing the Global South for the – literally – safer shores of the developed countries probably tells us more about Western climatic paranoia than about the real problems involved. As recent literature on the topic has clearly shown, the issue is much more complex. Migration can be both a short-term and a long-term strategy to cope with environmental change. The distances migrants can cover span thousands of miles, or perhaps just a few hundred feet to relatives on higher and drier land. In some cases, if victims of environmental change lack the resources necessary to leave, migration may not even be an option. In other cases, can be forced to leave a hazardous area, or migrate more or less voluntarily. The evacuation of a certain region can be administered by the state in one case and can be spontaneous and unplanned in another. Finally, as far as causation is concerned, “environmental migration” is, of course, entangled into a web of many other factors, such as economic, political and ethnical factors. The conference brought scholars together that outlined the great diversity of migration patterns and took a first step in broadening the discussion from a historical perspective.
Photography by Suzanne Bruins
Climates of Migration 