India, Nov. 8 -- The shift has already begun.

"Climate change is not a distant threat. We can already see the impacts of it. People are being rendered homeless or jobless because of it, are moving because of it," says Alice Baillat.

A climate governance researcher, Baillat is a policy advisor with the Geneva-based Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC), one of the world's leading data sources on displacement (set up by the not-for-profit organisation Norwegian Refugee Council).

"Displacement has long-term impacts on economies, on societies. Every country needs to integrate displacement into national planning," says Baillat. "Climate change is what we call a risk multiplier."

What does she mean, and what should we be doing?

We...