By Vicente Anzellini, Alice Baillat, and Sylvain Ponserre; Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC),  Norwegian Refugee Council, Switzerland 

The disappointing outcomes of COP29 in Baku, left many developing countries frustrated, as the newly agreed climate finance goal – 300 billion USD per year by 2035 – falls far short of the initial target of 1.3 trillion USD that developing nations had sought from developed countries to address climate change impacts. With loss and damage (L&D) projected to reach staggering amounts, comprehensive L&D assessments are essential to informing decision-making related to finance, planning, and implementation.

Displacement is one of the most tangible manifestations of loss and damage due to climate change and disasters. Many people are forced to leave their homes behind when risks become unmanageable, disrupting their lives, livelihoods and cultural identities and creating long-term community impacts. Every year, storms and floods generate millions of movements of people globally. However, L&D assessments often fail to account for displacement and its impacts, resulting in an underestimate of the total losses incurred by affected communities.

Assessing displacement requires understanding its multiple dimensions—temporal, geographical, and social—which presents significant challenges.

First, the lack of standardized definitions and metrics makes it difficult to report accurately on disaster displacement and its impacts. Reporting systems often use different metrics such as “families” and “households”, making it challenging to estimate the number of individuals involved. Furthermore, terms like “displaced” and “evacuated” are frequently used interchangeably, further complicating data collection.

This may not seem like a problem, but this inconsistency, combined with a lack of time-series data, makes it hard to determine when people are displaced, assess their specific vulnerabilities and needs and how they evolve over time, and evaluate the effectiveness of disaster risk reduction measures.

Second, a key gap is the difficulty in estimating the length of displacement, especially as internal displacement becomes increasingly protracted. This is closely linked to the magnitude of displacement triggered by disasters, which can fluctuate rapidly before, during and after an event due to a variety of reasons. The intensity of hazards, the extent of vulnerability and the distance people move from their homes are among the factors that impede detailed assessments and the production of time series data.

This dynamic nature makes it challenging to track the impact of preparedness and response measures. While some countries, like the Philippines, have made progress in tracking displacement over time, this remains a significant challenge globally, hindering efforts to compile comprehensive estimates of the number of people living in internal displacement as a result of disasters. The lack of long-term tracking also limits our ability to estimate the direct, indirect, and long-term costs associated with displacement.

Third, inconsistent methods used by different stakeholders for collecting data in the same areas or on the same events can lead to conflicting estimates of the number of internally displaced persons (IDPs), as well as new and repeated movements or returns. This can cause confusion for policymakers, donors, and organizations working to address IDPs’ needs, undermining the effective allocation of resources. The lack of harmonised data systems makes it difficult to understand how displacement crises evolve. Standards like the International Recommendations on IDP Statistics (IRIS), developed by the Expert Group on Refugee, IDPs, and Statelessness Statistics (EGRISS), have yet to be systematically implemented.

To be comprehensive and robust, data should capture the triggers, impacts, scale and duration of displacement in all its forms.[1] Analysis protocols to examine trends and patterns should also be defined. Such data is critical for supporting L&D assessments, informing financial requests and guiding the provision of technical assistance under the UNFCCC. The following recommendations outline key steps to improve displacement monitoring and align it with global frameworks:

1. Enhancing data standardization and harmonization: Establishing a global baseline for displacement data will facilitate consistent comparisons and learning across countries, directly contributing to more accurate L&D assessments. Standardised, interoperable and comparable data will enable countries to quantify the scale of displacement and its impacts, providing robust evidence to request financial support and technical assistance. This data is crucial for prioritising responses under key UNFCCC mechanisms, such as the Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage and the Santiago Network for Loss and Damage.
2. Filling data gaps: Addressing data gaps will improve our understanding of the complexity of displacement, including its duration and long-term impacts on communities and economies. This evidence is essential for refining methodologies to quantify economic and non-economic losses and damages linked with displacement and support countries’ requests for accessing climate finance and assistance.
3. Ensuring interoperability between reporting systems: Integrating displacement data into global frameworks such as the Sustainable Development Goals, the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction and the Paris Agreement will help operationalise these frameworks at the national level. For instance, displacement metrics can inform Nationally Determined Contributions and National Adaptations Plans under the UNFCCC as well as disaster risk reduction strategies and enable countries to align their priorities with global targets.
4. Strengthening national capacities: Empowering governments to generate and use displacement data ensures that L&D assessments are nationally owned and context-specific. Incorporating displacement metrics into national planning, budgeting, and reporting systems will support country requests for financial and technical assistance. IDMC is well positioned to provide technical expertise, tools and guidance to governments and UNFCCC bodies to strengthen displacement data integration into these processes, by bringing its expertise on data collection and analysis, socio-economic impacts or risk assessments, and facilitating cross-country knowledge sharing and good practices.

Displacement is a powerful people-centered indicator of where better policies and actions are needed for risk reduction, adaptation and durable solutions. By failing to account for displacement in loss and damage assessments, decision-makers lack a complete understanding of climate change impacts, impeding effective resource allocation, policy planning and assistance delivery.

[1] EGRISS, International Recommendations on Internally Displaced Persons Statistics, March 2020.

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this piece are those of the author/s and do not necessarily reflect the views or policies of AIDMI.