Clark researcher proposes \u2018breaking silos\u2019 to make it happen<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n More than 750 million people are on the move worldwide, including this Syrian refugee who migrated to Worcester. Many of these migrants have much to offer cities that are faced with sustainability challenges, researchers say. (Photo by Steven King, Clark University photographer)<\/em>\n<\/p>\n
Most policymakers focus on migration and sustainability as separate issues, missing key opportunities to implement transformational change in their cities, according to an article<\/a> co-authored by a Clark anthropologist and published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).<\/p>\n “There is widespread discussion of both sustainability and migration as global political challenges of the 21st<\/sup> century, but there is little understanding of how they are related and, consequently, how they can be addressed together in a cohesive action,” Anita Fábos<\/a>, a professor in Clark’s Sustainability and Social Justice Department, and her peers write in “Bridging and Breaking Silos: Transformational Governance of the Migration-Sustainability Nexus.” “Migration is thought of as external to sustainability concerns and migrants are left out of national and urban sustainability planning.”<\/p>\n From December 2020 to November 2021, the researchers interviewed 73 representatives involved in migration and sustainability efforts through governmental and non-governmental organizations in Worcester and three cities in Europe: Amsterdam, Brussels, and Malmö, Sweden. They discovered that the officials “find it challenging to see how they could be working together and that migrants are rarely conceived of as sustainability actors and\/or targeted populations of sustainability policy.”<\/p>\n “There is widespread discussion of both sustainability and migration as global political challenges of the 21st<\/sup> century, but there is little understanding of how they are related and, consequently, how they can be addressed together in a cohesive action.”\n<\/p>\n — Anita Fábos et al <\/cite>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n<\/p>\n
\nProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences<\/p>\n