Today, IOM launched the Environmental Annex of the IOM Reintegration Handbook “Guidance for mainstreaming environmental and climate considerations into reintegration programming“, funded by the UK Department for International Development.

There is an increasing awareness of the role environmental factors play – in conjunction with others – in driving migration, and of the ways in which climate change impacts exacerbate these factors. It is also understood that people who return, for whatever reason, to environmentally degraded or hazard-exposed areas are likely to find it very difficult to re-establish secure livelihoods that are often largely dependent on natural resources.

These challenges impact the sustainability of reintegration for returnees. In view of this, IOM has started to reflect on how to connect its reintegration programmes with climate change adaptation, disaster risk reduction and environmental sustainability efforts.

The guidance document aims to encourage reflection and initiatives to better understand opportunities and challenges associated with the inclusion of environmental dimensions into reintegration programmes. It also aims to guide practitioners and decision makers in designing and implementing reintegration programmes that fully integrate environmental perspectives — an emerging area of work and approach, for which few examples of previous activities or tools are available.

This annex supports IOM’s integrated approach to reintegration, looking at each level at which reintegration assistance occurs – individual, community, structural – with a section on monitoring and evaluation. For each of these sections, the annex proposes a checklist, or a set of guiding questions to incorporate environmental considerations and identify opportunities at each level.

Consult the Environmental Annex here. It will also be translated into French and Arabic.

If you want to learn more about the Environmental Annex, join the webinar on “Introducing environmentally sustainable reintegration: a two-fold strategy” organized by the EU-IOM Knowledge Management Hub and hosted on the Return and Reintegration Platform. The webinar will take place on Wednesday 9 September 2020 at 11:00 am (Geneva time). Click here for more info and join the conversation!