Sarah Louise Nash

Sarah Louise Nash is a political scientist working on climate change politics and policy, especially at the intersection of climate change and human mobilities, and is currently a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences (BOKU) in Vienna. She is the holder of a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowship for her project “Climate Diplomacy and Uneven Policy Responses on Climate Change and Human Mobility” (CLIMACY). Her first book, Negotiating Migration in the Context of Climate Change. International Policy and Discourse, was published in 2019 with Bristol University Press. Sarah holds a PhD in Political Science from the University of Hamburg, an MSc in Human Rights and International Politics from the University of Glasgow, an MA in German and Politics from the University of Edinburgh, and a BA in Political Science from the University of Vienna. In 2012, Sarah was a recipient of the Green Talents Prize for High Potentials in Sustainable Development from the German Ministry of Education and Research.

Project: “The Politics of the Climate Change and Migration Nexus: Taking the UNFCCC Task Force to Task”

Climate change and migration are widely reported to be defining phenomena of the 21st century. Increasingly the climate change and migration nexus is becoming conceptualized as a phenomenon in its own right, worthy of attention by governance and policymaking communities. The forum in which most concrete attempts to govern have been made is the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), where, in the outcomes of the Paris climate conference, a Task Force on climate change and displacement has been created. This Task Force ushers in a new era for the nexus in climate politics as the UNFCCC now has an entity dedicated solely to considering this phenomenon.

This project examines this Task Force and uses it as a site to delve deeper into the politics of the climate change and migration nexus. Practical questions will be asked regarding the potential members and institutional setup of the Task Force. Questions from the academic literature will also be posed, surrounding who has the power to decide the terms of the debate and how this relates to the role of knowledge. Importantly, this project asks what effects these relations have on policies that are proposed, adopted, and ultimately implemented.