Methodology

The Climate Displacement and Resilience Database relies on rigorous, comprehensive, and the most current data and analysis from leading sources on global displacement, Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) monitoring, climate change risk assessment as well as climate change adaptation and resilience. The Climate Displacement and Resilience Database incorporates these datasets to inform the following set of indicators that are used to explore the database:

  • Governance and Capacity Building for Climate Resilience
  • Price Tag of Financing Climate Resilience Projects
  • Countries' Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) Goals or Compliance
  • Global Displacement Data
  • Climatic Events

Based on exhaustive research and a thorough understanding of the field, these indicators were identified as critical forms of measurement to be able to bring together leading research, analysis, and data into a comprehensive interactive research tool to demystify and address the root causes of climate-induced displacement, and to uplift the necessary information to develop recommendations and strategies in service of the “Right to Stay.”

In order for the selected datasets to be considered viable for this project, they had to meet the following set of criteria:

  • The data must be available for at least 175 countries
  • The data must be available/updated within the last five years
  • The data must be API (Application Programming Interface) accessible to ensure timely updates
  • The data must relate to (at least) 4 climate events of concern: floods, storms, droughts, and extreme temperatures
  • The data must fulfill one or more of the database indicators: Governance and Capacity Building for Climate Resilience, Price Tag of Financing Climate Resilience Projects, Countries' Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) Goals or Compliance, Global Displacement Data, and Climatic Events.

For the Global Displacement Data, we acknowledge that the Internal Displacement and Monitoring Centre (IDMC) does not regard displacement resulting from weather-related events as necessarily linked with climate change, and that its measure of disaster-induced displacements is not a measure of climate-induced displacement. However, OBI's framing and analysis of the climate crisis contextualizes weather-related events and disasters, and climate-induced displacement, as a result of various social, political, economic, and environmental forces that simultaneously give rise to, influence, and compound the forced displacement of people globally. Furthermore, we address how these forces are not only exacerbated by the climate crisis, but also largely born of the extractive and exploitative structures that have given rise to the climate crisis itself. We thus treat IDMC’s measure of disaster-induced displacements as a measure of climate-induced displacement. 

For Climatic Events, data was included for the following drivers of forced displacement and reflected in the interactive map:

  • Storms: tropical storms (cyclones, hurricanes and typhoons), extratropical/winter storms, local storms (tornadoes, blizzards and snowstorms, sand storms, hail storms, lightning)
  • Floods: land-borne or riverine floods (caused by heavy rains, snow melt, and breaking of banks), sea-borne or coastal floods (caused by storm surges and breaking of levees), flash floods (caused by snow melt run-off, dam bursts and sudden water release)
  • Extreme Temperatures: cold snaps and extreme winter conditions, heat waves
  • Drought
  • Wildfires: brush, forest, grass and savannah
  • Dry mass movement: rock falls, landslides, avalanches, sudden subsidence and sinkholes
  • Wet mass movements: landslides, avalanches and sudden subsidence
  • Erosion

All of the datasets selected met the required criteria, with the exception of the IGES NDC Database which does not have an API. However, based on the invaluable information the database contains for the Climate Displacement and Resilience Database, the database was included in this project.