Slow-onset disasters and multiple drivers Given the drought conditions that affected hundreds of millions of people in Asia and Africa in 2016, IDMC made a concerted effort to collect quantitative data on the displacement associated with them. Some figures were obtained from Cambodia, Ethiopia, India, Mozambique, Somalia and South Sudan, but they hardly paint a complete or coherent picture. Instead, the data speaks to the variety of ways in which drought combines with other factors to result in displacement as well as other more voluntary forms of population movement or migration. In India, population movements associated with the impacts of drought are recorded as part of broader seasonal and labour migration. This makes it difficult to identify people in distress whose movements might be better described as displacement. In Mozambique, Ethiopia, Somalia and South Sudan, displacement was reported in areas where people’s vulnerability was strongly linked to conflict and violence as well as the impacts of drought. While multiple interlocking factors make it difficult to isolate and estimate the number of people whose displacement is strongly associated with drought conditions, data collection rarely captures more than a single reason why people have had to leave their homes. Some displaced people coming from drought-affected areas may name drought as the primary cause in response to surveys, while others may refer to loss of livelihoods, hunger, or conflict as the more immediate reason why they were forced to leave. In South Sudan, for example, crop yields and food insecurity are influenced both by agricultural drought and by farmers’ inability to access their crops because of conflict. At the same time, food insecurity is also one of several drivers of conflict and violence in the country. As people compete for dwindling resources, flashpoints include cattle rustling, the encroachment of livestock onto agricultural land and tensions between clans and communities over water points and pasture areas. In pastoral areas of Ethiopia affected by drought, displacement – including across borders – was brought about by a number of factors of which a lack of rainfall was just one, and not necessarily the most significant.121 These situations challenge the artificial distinctions that have been made in the past when disaggregating displacement figures by “cause” whether it be conflict, disasters or development projects. Focusing on a single cause distorts and oversimplifies the context and, without further analysis, may hamper the identification of appropriate solutions. Complex combinations of both natural and human factors that intertwine to influence the risk of future displacement call for a more holistic interpretation that includes not only triggers, but also the latent and structural factors that determine how exposed and vulnerable people are to hazards in the first place. Ethiopia is experiencing one of the most severe droughts in half a century related to the effects of El Niño. Photo: NRC, April 2016 ON THE GRID: Global internal displacement in 2016 39