Key Highlights

CHAPTER FIVE

GOING WITH THE FLOW

“Come, my friends, ‘Tis not too late to seek a newer world. Push off, and sitting well in order smite The sounding furrows”

– Alfred, Lord Tennyson, “Ulysses”

KEY HIGHLIGHTS

• Policies can target risks at the source of migration (in situ) or at the destination (ex situ).

• None of these policies in isolation is likely to be completely effective at protecting people and their assets. Since residual risks remain, there is a need for synchronized and complementary policies that can cover different dimensions of risk.

• There is no consensus on whether migration is an appropriate strategy of adaptation to chronic risks or whether it represents a failure of risk mitigation policy. Likewise, there is no consensus on the economic impacts at the destination.

• Even so, there is a role for governments at the destination to assist economic and social integration of migrants and to prepare cities for acute bouts of water shortages. Policies should allow for flexibility in responses rather than requiring costly and irreversible investments that risk being unused and becoming stranded assets.