Migration has accelerated at the nexus of global warming and geopolitical unrest in vulnerable regions, challenging the resilience of societies. Forced displacements in the world have increased significantly in the recent decade, and an estimated 22.5 million people have left their homes due to climate change since 2008. Most of this migration has remained internal and regional, but who will move, where and in what numbers in future is still debated. How the relationship between climate change and migration is viewed and described by influential policy making bodies has consequences for what kind of actions that are proposed to deal with the phenomenon and thereby also for the lives of those who are most affected by the negative effects of climate change globally. Is migration considered a problem or a solution, and for whom? Focusing on years during which forced displacement increased significantly, we explore perspectives on climate induced migration in UN and EU official policy documents. The results show that both actors consider climate change as potentially leading to increased cross-border migration. UN perspectives tend to be human security-oriented while the EU perspectives tend to focus on state security. Response measures tend to focus on support to climate adaptation.

This paper contributes to the burgeoning research on the integration of climate-related security risks by organizations. Development organizations have an important preventive mandate and can mitigate climate security challenges in low- and lower-middle-income economies, but they have a complex task, contending with power asymmetries and a very wide set of policy-making processes occurring in tandem. We explore how climate security challenges are being addressed in development organizations through focusing on the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida), which has worked with integration of cross-sectoral issues since the 1980s. We narrow in specifically on how the overlaps between two separate policy areas at Sida—climate and conflict—have been framed and responded to in recent years. The study finds that the integration of these two areas is prioritized on a general policy level but that there are obstacles when translating policy into practice. Challenges include conceptual diversity, tensions between expert and general knowledge and differing organizational preconditions. Despite this, integration does occur between the two policy areas on several levels, ranging from a macro-level general awareness of potential overlaps with a “do no harm” ambition, to micro levels of integration in which strategies and interventions are adjusted.

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