ECMN25 Program

Global discussions increasingly emphasise the consequences of climate change for human mobility. While existing research has yielded diverse findings depending on the chosen climate indicator, migration pattern, or study area, the interpretation of the role played by climate change in migration trends remains insufficiently explored. Furthermore, the literature’s predominant focus on the Global South raises the question of whether similar dynamics apply in the Global North. Using the Metropolitan City of Turin as a case study, this paper aims to determine to what extent people have migrated to areas less affected by heat and drought. Employing a tri-dimensional conceptual framework, this study draws on residential data from 2006 to 2022, along with summer temperature, precipitation, and humidity anomalies, to reveal correlations and visualise spatial variations between lowland and mountainous municipalities. The bivariate mapping and fixed-effects regression model show that rising temperatures are significantly associated with outmigration trends in the study area. Additionally, severe drought and excessive moisture scenarios correlate with a prevalence of outbound mobility. The results also underline that climate change factors have a stronger relationship with residential mobility in low-altitude areas, while the nexus between them is less clear in the highlands. This study provides novel evidence of climate-mobility links in a less-studied geographical area while offering a new perspective on the diversity of emerging mobility patterns in low and high-altitude territories – essential for effective adaptation strategies and long-term resilience.

Climate has been shown to influence migration, yet the mechanisms through which climate events lead to migration as well as the heterogeneous effects on different population groups remain poorly understood. This study addresses these gaps by exploring two key questions: (i) Who are the rural climate migrants in low- and middle-income countries? and (ii) Why do they migrate?. We examine changes in consumption levels and inequalities as potential mechanisms linking climate events to migration, employing the Roy-Borjas model to explain the self-selection of climate migrants based on
skills and wealth. Using ERA5 weather data combined with 45,000 household observations from South Africa, Tanzania, Malawi, and China over two to four years, our fixed-effects models reveal that rising temperatures and declining precipitation drive rural-to-urban migration by reducing rural consumption and increasing consumption inequality. Our findings indicate that less educated individuals from middle-income households are more likely to migrate in response to climate events. These results underscore the heterogeneous effects of climate change on different population groups and highlight the need to (i) better understand the impacts of climate migration on affected households and (ii) develop targeted support for vulnerable populations who may become trapped by liquidity constraints.

Mobility has long been a key survival strategy, shaped by economic opportunities, environmental pressures, and socio-political factors. In recent years, the link between climate change and migration has gained increasing attention, particularly in the MENA region, where environmental challenges are intensifying. This study explores the relationship between climate change and migration using panel data from 1990 to 2023 and advanced econometric techniques. Contrary to common assumptions, our findings indicate that the direct effects of climate change on migration are not statistically significant. Instead, socio-economic factors such as GDP, mortality rates, rural population dynamics, and agricultural land use play a more decisive role in shaping migration patterns. These results underscore the necessity of a multidimensional approach that extends beyond environmental determinants. By integrating economic, social, and environmental perspectives, this study provides a deeper understanding of climate-induced migration and advocates for comprehensive policy responses to address migration challenges in the MENA region.

The local governments of coastal communities at-risk of inundation from climate-induced sea level rise are tasked with the difficult responsibility of balancing their legal, fiscal, and administrative obligations while accurately assessing and appropriately responding to this impending hazard. The following is an assessment of the coastal vulnerability, adaptation policy, and adaptive capacity of Monroe County, Florida in the context of sea level rise. The focus of this assessment is the evaluation of the climate adaptation policy of Strategic Resettlement as a means of reducing the vulnerability of the County. Popular themes within the discourses of environmental migration, mobility, climate science, federal disaster relief policy, land-use development, coastal vulnerability, climate adaptation, law, and governance are explored. The results produced are tailored policy recommendations for the County to critically reflect upon, draw inspiration from, and potentially utilize. The goal of this thesis is to contribute to the existing academic knowledge of mobility as a means of climate adaptation and the discourse of Strategic Resettlement.

Among scholars there is consensus that retreat will be the only viable solution for some areas impacted by climate change and sea level rise, at least in the long run. However, acceptance of retreat as an adaptation strategy requires a significant shift in perception from the more widely accepted strategies, which tend to underscore notions of “never retreat” and “building back” (Siders 2019; Gornitz et al., 2020, 19; Gaul 2019). Politically, and socially, retreat is highly contested as it is often equated with defeat. Because retreat is an unpopular option, policy makers and governments have been slow to consider it as a viable adaption strategy to climate change. As a result, preparedness for retreat remains rudimentary.
While the barriers to retreat have been studied in various contexts at a general level (Koubi et al., 2016; Bohra-Mishra et al., 2014; Mueller et al., 2014; Massey et al. 2010; Mortreux & Barnett 2009; Song & Peng 2017), there remains a significant gap in research as to the specific social, economic, and political barriers to retreat in a European context. Drawing on ongoing fieldwork in Portsmouth (UK), Venice (Italy), and the Wadden sea islands (the Netherlands), we investigate from a social acceptability perspective how local citizens and policy makers, in three coastal contexts in Europe susceptible the sea level rise, perceive retreat as an adaptation option to sea level rise. Our analysis is based on interviews with locals, policy makers, and experts.

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Climate change increasingly threatens lives and livelihoods worldwide and is projected to drive cross-border migration in the future. Because climate mobility remains an emerging policy challenge, both public attitudes and formal regulations are still evolving. While previous studies have examined economic, political, and climate-related drivers of migrant acceptance in isolation, real-world migration decisions are shaped by interconnected factors. Yet, public narratives often favor simplified explanations over nuanced accounts that reflect migration’s complexity.

In this study, we investigate how different communication strategies—ranging from climate change–only narratives to more complex accounts that also include local environmental degradation and economic pressures—affect host-community acceptance of climate migrants. We conducted a pre-registered online survey experiment in Germany (N=1,048) and New Zealand (N=810), where participants evaluated migration scenarios featuring fictional individuals from Bangladesh (Germany) and Tuvalu (New Zealand). Scenarios varied in two ways: (1) whether migration was attributed solely to climate change or also to environmental and economic factors, and (2) whether migrants were described as attempting in-situ adaptation before migrating.

We find that complex narratives shift causal attributions toward local processes in migrants’ home countries—a factor typically linked to greater rejection—yet do not significantly reduce acceptance. In Germany, highlighting adaptation efforts increases acceptance within the climate change narrative.

Our findings contribute to the debate on legal and policy frameworks for climate migration by shedding light on how different framings influence public acceptance.

In recent decades, several common narratives on climate migration emerged. Examples include ‘alarmist’ and ‘crisis’ narratives, according to which climate change will trigger mass and unstoppable migration from less to more developed countries. Similarly, the ‘problem’ narrative characterises migration as inherently problematic. As a somewhat inverse concept, the ‘migration-as-adaptation’ narrative displays migration simply as a proactive and often desirable process of adaptation. And according to the ‘simplicity’ narrative, it is generally trivial to establish causal relationships between the effects of climate change and migration. In light of this variety of narratives and the complexity of climate-related mobility, this paper aims to focus on the evidence base on climate migration. It attempts to check common narratives on climate migration against existing databases. In particular, the paper uses evidence from the Gallup World Poll, a representative survey conducted regularly in a large number of countries worldwide, which includes a dedicated question on environmental mobility. The data analysis reveals how narratives on climate migration are inaccurate and misleading. Rather than supporting the causal attribution of millions of potentially dangerous international migrants from the Global South to specific climate variables, the evidence points to complex and context-specific links between environmental factors and human mobility as well as potential voluntary and involuntary immobility in all regions of the world. The paper concludes with a number of specific policy recommendations.

In 2014, an academic discourse began on how a prolonged drought in Syria, attributed to climate change, caused extensive rural-to-urban migration, directly contributing to the war. Significant media attention ensued, with recurrent references to Syria’s ‘climate refugees’. Much of this continuing debate focuses on the role of drought in driving conflict and displacement, without reflecting on the larger political questions of what ends this focus serves. There are now notable interventions demonstrating how the ‘climate war’ narrative problematically asserts Orientalist and determinist explanations of climate-induced migration and overlooks historical and political factors (Ahuja, 2021; Daoudy, 2020; Hoffmann 2018; Selby et al, 2017). This paper compares cultural and institutional narratives addressing climate change and migration in relation to Syria, particularly those espousing progressive or radical politics. I look at fiction, memoirs, graphic novels and essays by authors including Omar El Akkad, Samar Yazbek and Andreas Malm, many of which incorporate necessary critiques of colonialism and violence, while also gesturing towards the ‘climate war’ narrative. I then look at institutional texts, such as advocacy and policy material produced by organisations including Greenpeace and the Climate and Migration Coalition, which also often undercut their own nuanced perspectives by incorporating problematic assumptions about Syria. Ultimately, I argue that the ‘climate war’ narrative foreshadows ongoing discussions on climate change and conflict, where inevitably mobility becomes part of an often fraught conversation – one that frequently, even within progressive circles, diminishes the power dynamics and racial politics inherent to the discourse on climate change and migration.

Peru and Colombia have historically had high levels of internal and cross-border mobility and are among the most vulnerable countries in Latin America to climate change. Floods, droughts, rising sea levels, and deforestation directly affect livelihoods, leading to increasing numbers of people moving. The literature suggests that in both countries, the climate-mobility nexus has gradually appeared in various public policy sectors (climate change adaptation, disaster risk management, environmental protection, territorial management, migration, and development policies), with climate change being emphasized after the issues related to the La Niña phenomenon in 2010-2011.
Our research question explores the influence of focusing events (Birkland, 1984; 2013; Kingdon, 1997) on the agenda setting of policies addressing the climate-mobility nexus.
The methodology lies in the analysis of public policy instruments, complemented by semi-structured interviews with policy makers and non-state actors. The comparison of national levels facing similar events will allow for the identification of their implications as well as the key actors involved in policy design and implementation, thus enabling an understanding of the impact of such events on decision-making and the circulation of knowledge and expertise at national, regional and international levels.
The expected findings are that disasters play a role in the agenda dynamic by focusing the attention and opening a window of opportunity for promoting policy framings on the climate-mobility nexus. It is expected that the nature of policies and the policy communities account for which policy framings emerge in national contexts, whether they are transnational or specific.

A regional and local approach to environmental and climate-related mobilities is essential to address its context-specific challenges and draw inclusive, respectful and just solutions. However, much of the debate focuses on advocacy and national policy development. Being largely left alone with the impacts of climate change and related mobilities, local communities have developed and implemented tools and strategies tailored to their needs. While such bottom-up solutions are often abstractly regarded as ‘best practices’ for guiding policy development, research on existing grassroots initiatives and their inclusion in policy development is still limited. In its project ‘From the Grassroots: Environmental and Climate Mobilities in Latin America ’, RESAMA (the South American Network for Environmental Migration) aims to turn around this dynamic and centre on the experiences, narratives and practices of grassroots organisations, projects and initiatives across the region in order to visibilize them and create a space for interconnection and collective learning. We are doing this through an interactive map and a collective building capacity session to enable knowledge exchange between the participants, who are not only on the frontline of climate change impacts, but also the designers and implementers of these strategies.

In the workshop, we will present the mapping of organisations across Latin America and provoke a reflection of the community narratives, challenges and strategies around environmental mobilities identified by the grassroots initiatives. We take these insights as a basis to provoke participants´ reflection on overlaps and tensions between grassroots and academic views on the topic, and how academia can learn from and successfully support such grassroots initiatives

This mini-workshop aims to examine the language used to describe the loss of habitable lands by engaging participants in a collaborative exploration of terminology. Participants will be invited to contribute words from their respective languages that capture the nuances of environmental and habitual displacement, either through direct translation or contextual explanation. The outcome will be the creation of a multilingual glossary that articulates these critical concepts more effectively. Beyond its connection to my research on Learning Loss, this workshop initiative seeks to foster linguistic reflection and cross-cultural dialogue, strengthening interpersonal connections among the 150 participants present in Bonn. Given ECMN’s emerging status as a network, such collaborations are valuable in building shared understanding and possible research collaborations in the future.

This session reimagines cartography as a dynamic, participatory act of storytelling, centered around a collaborative textile map created during ethnographic fieldwork in Indonesia on local disaster and environmental knowledge linked with mobilities. Conventional maps proved insufficient in capturing the region’s complex narratives, particularly the temporal and epistemic dimensions rooted in mythical time and local knowledge. That is why I collaborated with art collectives to make our own map. This session proposes a horizontal, communal exploration of these overlooked histories and adds a historical lens to discussions on environmental change and mobilities.

Storytelling Format: Participants will gather in a circle, with the textile map laid out as a focal point. This session departs from traditional presentations, instead embracing a storytelling format. Attendees are invited to engage with the map, pointing to specific elements that relate to the links between environment and mobilities, and asking about them. They can also share their own stories, research, or reflections, weaving personal narratives with the map’s visual representations of mobilities and environmental change. The map serves as a catalyst for collective memory and shared understanding.

Why do individuals remain in climate-vulnerable areas despite escalating risks? Through a behavioral lens, this study explores whether cognitive biases are present among climate change-affected populations and whether these biases can explain their preference to stay. We deconstruct the decision-making process into three stages: awareness, intention formation, and action. Using data from two surveys conducted in coastal Bangladesh, we examine the role of motivated reasoning and sunk cost bias, as well as impatience, risk aversion, and self-efficacy. Our findings show that 40% of individuals living in areas frequently affected by climate hazards engage in motivated reasoning, which leads them to downplay the severity of risks, such as sea-level rise. Additionally, one third of respondents exhibit sunk cost bias, particularly those with strong emotional attachment to their land, influencing their preference to remain in high-risk areas. This combination of biases consistently forms a coherent pattern: despite a higher inclination to take risks, which could encourage relocation, respondents demonstrate significantly lower levels of patience, especially those most strongly attached to their homes, potentially preventing them from acting on their intentions to relocate. Together, these results indicate that the decision to remain in climate change-affected regions frequently derives from an interplay of cognitive biases that systematically influence risk perception and adaptation choices. Recognizing these biases is crucial for designing effective and inclusive climate adaptation strategies that address socio-economic inequalities and empower communities to make informed decisions about their future.

Place brings together physical elements and the sociopolitical contexts around them. When communities experience change, their place attachments—the emotional and social connections they form with their surroundings—become particularly evident. In this way, place attachment offers a valuable framework for understanding how climate change impacts both mobility and immobility.
We argue for a conceptualization of place attachment that involves both place awareness and place affection. A key dimension of place attachment is the emotional and affective bonds that communities develop with the spaces they live in. In addition to this, place attachment also involves the development of practical knowledge accumulated overtime, including localized environmental knowledge essential for adaptation and survival.
From this perspective, we cover how multiple previous works have argued that place attachment plays an important role in determining (im)mobility decision making. However, place attachment also helps explain not only whether populations affected by climate change stay or leave but also how they do so. For example, affective links to place are related to solastalgia, a form of distress associated with loss of climate affected populations. Further, communities that move after being affected by a climate-induced disaster may experience a rupture in their place-based knowledge, complicating adaptation in their new environments.
In this article, we argue for a comprehensive understanding of place attachment in relation to climate (in)mobilities that involves both emotional and practical links to place. To do so, we review existing research on climate-related (im)mobility, including responses to slow-onset climatic changes, resettlement, and disaster-induced displacement.

Why do people stay despite high environmental risk? This study explores risk perceptions and migration decision-making in a multi-hazard context of upland Nepal. Since the catastrophic earthquake of 2015, the landscape of many valleys in northern Nepal have become increasingly unstable, resulting in recurring landslides, floods and rockfall events. Additionally, global warming is heightening the risk of glacial-lake outburst floods in the region.

In this multi-risk context, the lived experiences and perceptions of risk and migration among residents of the Bhote Koshi valley were studied, using qualitative and participatory methods. This approach revealed complex mobility dilemmas: while most residents are highly aware of the increasing risks, many also feel deeply attached to their land, resulting in a state of immobility. Notably, those who remain are predominantly the most financially vulnerable, or are constrained by age, gender or class and caste in their motility.

Yet, to categorise this as ‘involuntary’ or ‘acquiescent immobility’ proved overly simplistic, as it did not fully capture the residents’ experiences. Rather, their immobility is the outcome of a combination of both positive and negative factors and exists on a continuum between ‘voluntary’ and ‘forced’.

The findings of this study question the practical applicability of (im)mobility categorisations as conceptualised through the aspirations-capabilities framework. They emphasise the need for a more nuanced understanding of immobility rooted in human experience. Such insights are vital to informing inclusive policymaking that enhances the motility and adaptive capacity of people who remain in places exposed to high environmental risk.

This paper addresses the ‘mobility bias’ in the climate-migration literature by examining the role of retain factors that prompt people to stay in climate-vulnerable regions of West Africa. While climate change is often framed as a push factor for migration, observed migration flows remain far smaller than most migration theories predict. This discrepancy is typically attributed to financial and structural barriers to mobility, yet existing models often overlook the factors that make people want to stay.
Using data from the Gallup World Polls, we conduct a comprehensive multilevel empirical analysis across thirteen West African countries to investigate how retain factors shape aspirations to migrate or remain in place. By constructing new indicators of climate vulnerability and migration ability, we capture the heterogeneous nature of these decisions. Our findings reveal that individual characteristics have the strongest explanatory power, followed by satisfaction with community institutions, while economic factors, health indicators, and social ties play a more limited role.
This study challenges the dominant narrative that focuses on involuntary immobility and ‘trapped populations’, instead revealing the positive dimensions of place attachment. Those who aspire to stay amidst climate challenges report higher levels of contentment, social support, trust, and satisfaction with local institutions. The interplay between these factors, climate vulnerability, and migration ability offers key insights into why many individuals opt to remain despite environmental pressures. Understanding these dynamics is critical for designing adaptation strategies and sustainable policy solutions tailored to the realities of this climate-vulnerable region.

This paper examines the temporalities of an imminent hydrological disaster in the Canal del Dique River in Colombia, analyzing the (im)mobilities shaped by this scenario. The Canal del Dique is an artificial branch of the Magdalena River, constructed during colonial times, to facilitate commerce through the port of Cartagena de Indias. Today, the canal is surrounded by small settlements and wetland-dependent agricultural activities. However, erosion caused by large oil tankers, inadequate maintenance, and shifting rainfall patterns due to climate change have exacerbated the region’s vulnerability to flooding. Although the last significant flood occurred in 2010, structural conditions remain the same, leaving the region in constant risk.
Disasters are not merely episodic events but ongoing processes that expose deep sociopolitical and environmental dynamics (Barrios 2017). In this context, disaster is not a singular past event but an imminent condition that positions communities in a state of constant vigilance and adaptation. The 2010 flood triggered both temporary and permanent displacements, and the anticipation of another flood similarly generates practices of mobility and immobility. In a region historically affected by violence and displacement, climate (im)mobilities complicate displacement, as migration is not only a reaction to environmental change but is shaped by existing socio-environmental conditions (Kelley, Shattuck, and Thomas 2022).
Based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in 2022, this study explores how people live with the threat of imminent disaster. By analyzing how mobility and immobility are embedded practices within broader socio-environmental uncertainties, this research contributes to discussions on the temporality of climate (im)mobilities.

While studies of disaster displacement acknowledge the complexities in post-disaster recovery and redevelopment, they often focus on the physical reconstruction of dwellings and livelihoods. However, the aspiration and ability to return after displacement depend on the accessibility of essential infrastructures and services. Disruptions to these—such as water, healthcare, and transportation—play a key role in shaping mobility and immobility patterns after disasters, affecting different social groups unequally. Moreover, the recovery of services often progresses unevenly, and they are partly interdependent. Without accounting for the multi-dimensional nature of the disruption and recovery of essential services, it is difficult to understand the influence of disasters on (im)mobility and return decisions among specific social groups.

To address these aspects, we introduce the Essential Services Conditions (ESC) framework, which categorizes disruptions into three phases: stability, catastrophe, and restoration, allowing us to examine their impact on post-disaster (im)mobility. Through a comparative analysis of Hurricane Katrina (USA, 2005) and the Nepal Earthquake (2015), we demonstrate how disruptions of services and their uneven reconstruction differentially influence aspirations, capabilities, and long-term decisions to stay, relocate, or return across different social groups.

By integrating perspectives from geography and social anthropology, we highlight how service reconstruction follows asynchronous timelines—some infrastructures are quickly restored, while others remain inaccessible for years—shaping cascading mobility patterns. The ESC framework offers a new, service-centered perspective on resilience and adaptation, challenging dominant assumptions about disaster recovery as a straightforward process of return.

Understanding the temporal dynamics of livelihood resilience across generations offers insights into how human-environment relationships have shifted under climate change. Migration is often seen as an adaptation strategy, yet many people choose to stay despite risks (‘non-migration’). Both strategies shape livelihood resilience, however, migration can also fail when hardships or crises at the destination lead to involuntary return, highlighting the need to examine its historical dimensions. This study addresses two key gaps: examining how livelihood choices have evolved across generations in response to environmental and socio-economic changes and tracing the historical factors influencing migration and non-migration decisions. We introduce the novel ‘Intergenerational Livelihood Pathways’ framework which integrates resource accessibility, livelihood choices, and (non)migration patterns across generations. Based on 53 livelihood history interviews in coastal villages of India and Bangladesh, our findings reveal a shift from nature-based livelihoods (farming, fishing, forest dependency) in the grandparents’ generation to non-nature-based livelihoods (small businesses, wage labor, migrant work) in the grandchildren’s generation. This transition, initiated in the parents’ generation, was driven by increasing environmental degradation, expanding migration flows, and greater access to formal education. Migration aspirations evolved from voluntary non-migration (grandparents) to a mix of voluntary non-migration and forced migration (parents) to a combination of voluntary non-migration and voluntary migration (grandchildren). Additionally, free ration transfers, remittances, and intergenerational knowledge shape the present generation’s livelihood strategies, including voluntary staying aspirations. This study advances theoretical understanding by integrating historical perspectives into the aspiration-capability framework and offering insights into the temporal dynamics of livelihood resilience.

With the ‘mobilities turn’ (Sheller & Urry, 2006; Glick Schiller & Salazar, 2013), scholars have underscored the complexity of migration drivers and choices, revealing how geographic and cross-border mobility permeates everyday social and economic practices, particularly in West Africa ( Kleist & Bjarnesen, 2023). However, when discussing environmental drivers, migration is often depicted as a linear process, which overlooks its multifaceted and unpredictable nature. This presentation aims to challenge these traditional narratives, especially by exploring the aspiration to return, as highlighted by scholars like Roger Zetter.
Recent biographical interviews with migrants from Burkina Faso residing in Ghana reveal that even in contexts of environmental change or crisis, migration rarely follows pre-established and inflexible plans. It evolves through stages linked to personal life courses, shaped by a dynamic interplay of lifeways, socio-economic conditions in the regions traversed, and broader historical patterns that transcend or question national boundaries and belonging.
While border crossings often entail significant risks, connections to countries of origin are rarely severed. This is especially evident in the frequent cultural movements associated with events such as weddings and funerals, as well as the desire to return home to fulfill community responsibilities, such as eldership duties. These observations call for a re-examination of the analysis of environmental migration, challenging the framing of these movements within rigid constructs.
Employing a biographical lens allows for a deeper analysis of migration as a social process, highlighting how it is embedded in kinship networks and cultural traditions (Collet & Veith, 2013).

This study explores how climate migration research has evolved from a niche topic into a distinct academic field. While scholars have examined climate migration since the 1980s, only in the past two decades has the field consolidated through shared knowledge infrastructures. By analyzing key indicators—internal and external recognition, shared language, social ties, and legitimacy—this research identifies the mechanisms shaping its development.

Using a mixed-methods approach—combining bibliometric analysis, policy review, and expert interviews—we trace how conceptual frameworks, citation patterns, and international collaboration have shaped the field. Findings indicate increasing interconnectivity through 1) citation patterns around early scholars, 2) dominant paradigms such as the multicausality approach, and 3) growing international collaboration. Policy and funding institutions have played a critical role in this process, influencing research agendas and institutional legitimacy.

Despite this progress, challenges remain, including theoretical fragmentation, the need for stronger legitimacy within science infrastructures, and limited representation from under-researched regions. This study offers a framework for assessing how research fields mature and highlights the interplay between knowledge production and policy influence. By mapping these trends, it provides insights for scholars, funders, and decision-makers invested in the future of climate migration research.

Despite a growing empirical and theoretical literature on the links between climate change and migration, the majority of scholarship focusses on the Global South. At the same time, projections that estimate future migration within or from countries and regions in the Global South are often misinterpreted and misappropriated in security-laden discourses to warn against rising numbers of people who will inevitably move to the Global North, including to Europe. These myths surrounding human mobilities in the context of climate change are confounded by the limited evidence providing insights into the role played by climate change and related events in shaping migration patterns to and within Europe as well as lack of scholarship that conceptualises climate change and migration as an intra-European phenomenon. This constitutes a significant knowledge gap at a time when climate impacts are increasingly becoming visible and migration politics continues to be contentious and value laden. To this end, we present an ongoing systematic literature review of the existing scholarship on this region, including literature that does not use specific migration terminology but falls under the broader climate mobilities umbrella. We therefore give an overview of existing evidence and provide a springboard for further investigations on climate change and migration to and within Europe.

While various studies have been conducted regarding the nexus between environmental change and human mobility, they remain fragmented due to diverse research areas, environmental events, socio-demographic groups, and the heterogeneous nature of climate-related (im)mobility. This hinders scholars and policymakers in cross-scale knowledge management, decision making, and transdisciplinary collaboration. To address such issues, this study introduces a spatially explicit knowledge graph that integrates peer-reviewed climate mobility literature. By defining an ontology at the beginning, domain concepts such as places, people, environmental hazards, migration decisions and patterns, even research methodologies, are structured as nodes, while relationships between them are framed as edges. Leveraging the ontology, NLP technologies including named entity recognition, relation extraction, event extraction and entity alignment are employed to systematically discover, link, disambiguate, and store knowledge from literature. This organizes scattered knowledge into a unified graph, then enables faceted queries like ‘Which regions with socio-demographic vulnerabilities are exposed to environmental risks’ through GeoSPARQL, facilitating human-computer interaction and knowledge exchange. Unlike the black-box models found in generative AI, this knowledge-driven approach ensures explainability and transparency with explicit semantic relationships. Flexibility and interoperability are also maintained, since updating with external datasets is easy and affordable. Future work will integrate and link additional heterogeneous data like real-time quantitative data, websites and scientific reports, to make the graph capable of representing a more comprehensive context of climate mobility. Reasoning will also be implemented, enabling the discovery of hidden knowledge, supporting people from different positions to observe, collaborate, and plan for the future.

Environmental variability is increasingly recognized as a major driver of global migration, with climate-induced changes such as disruptions in food and water security, extreme weather events, and rising sea levels, prompting migration as a survival strategy. In Ghana, urban-to-rural migration has emerged as a response to climate-related challenges, though it remains underexplored compared to rural-to-urban migration. This study examines the interplay of climate change, social capital, and urban-to-rural migration as a livelihood adaptation strategy, focusing on migrant farmers in Mangoase, Akwapim North Municipality. Using a qualitative phenomenological approach, data was purposively collected from nine participants who initially migrated from northern Ghana to Adjin-Kotoku, a peri-urban area in Greater Accra, and subsequently to Mangoase due to climate-related disruptions. Thematic analysis using NVIVO revealed key environmental push factors such as flooding, sand mining, urbanization, and poor land management, which caused loss of arable land and unsustainable urban livelihoods. Pull factors to rural Mangoase included access to fertile land, favourable land-use terms, market proximity, and job stability, which supported sustainable livelihoods. The study highlights gender disparities, with migrant women farmers facing greater challenges in land use and ownership. Climate change impacts, including reduced incomes, job insecurity, and health complications, were mitigated by social support in the form of emotional, financial, material, and labour-intensive aid. Recommendations emphasize comprehensive land-use policies, education on sustainable land management, gender-inclusive land rights, and rural development initiatives such as healthcare, education, and agro-processing industries to enhance rural sustainability and support urban-to-rural migration as a climate adaptation strategy.

Climate change represents a major challenge in South Asia, with women being particularly vulnerable to its impacts. Mobility may have the potential to facilitate adaptation in the context of climate change. However, limited research has examined the role of mobility in adaptation, especially from a feminist perspective, and its outcomes on the daily lives and experiences of understudied migrant women at their destination.

This paper presents a qualitative analysis of the intersection between gender, mobility and climate change in an urban destination area in coastal Bangladesh. It explores the gendered dimensions of mobility outcomes and the potential of mobility for adaptation from a feminist perspective, considering different contexts and realities.

Drawing on livelihood and life history interviews with migrant women and their spouses in the port city of Mongla, and grounded in feminist political economy, this paper provides insights into how patriarchal economic, cultural and political structures in Bangladesh perpetuate gender inequalities and injustices. These structures restrict women’s access to economic opportunities and resources, cultural recognition, and political representation. Gender also intersects with other axes of inequality, such as class, age, marital status, and migrant status, to perpetuate gender inequalities and injustices. Consequently, these may influence, somewhat negatively, the daily lives and experiences of migrant women at their destination and the potential of mobility for adaptation.

By providing contextualised and nuanced knowledge of migrant women’s distinct experiences and daily lives as an outcome of their mobility, this paper contributes to the mobility-as-adaptation debate from a feminist perspective.

In 2024, the IDMC’s Global Report recorded 9 million disaster-induced displacements in Southeast Asia and the Pacific—the highest globally. With 1.4% to 2.7% of ASEAN Member States’ (AMS) populations at risk of climate-driven migration due to rising sea levels, coastal inundation, and extreme storms, a joint solution is crucial for the future of the area. As climate displacement largely remains within the region, ASEAN is uniquely positioned to lead policy responses, particularly for female climate migrants, who face heightened vulnerabilities. Climate migration is inherently gendered, yet existing policies fail to address its intersectional challenges. Women experience heightened risks, including limited access to reproductive healthcare and economic precarity. While ASEAN has frameworks addressing climate change, human rights, and female labour, their effectiveness in protecting female climate migrants remains underexplored. This research evaluates ASEAN’s existing policies to determine their capacity for addressing the unique challenges faced by female climate migrants. It examines the interplay between regional climate governance and gender-responsive migration frameworks, highlighting gaps where policies treat women solely as victims of climate crises or as migrants, without acknowledging the overlap of these identities. Findings underscore the need for a holistic, rights-based approach that integrates gender and climate-specific considerations into ASEAN’s migration governance. By proposing an intersectional policy framework, this research contributes to bridging critical gaps in regional protections, ensuring more comprehensive support for this marginalised group.

Climate change impacts are gendered. This is also true for climate-induced migration, which affects men and women differently. On account of this difference, legal instruments and policies seeking to address and support climate-induced migration need to be gender-focused to address differentiated needs and outcomes. This paper looks at existing policies and legal instruments for the inclusion of gender aspects of climate-related migration. We focus on Ethiopia, India, and Peru, all of them with developed instruments to address the human mobility-climate change nexus. We investigate the scope of provisions concerning gender in relevant instruments in the three country contexts, their likely impact to tackle gender-specific vulnerabilities arising with climate-induced migration, and suggest strategies and priorities for enhancing gender inclusion in policy development and application broadly.

This article explores the spatial and temporal dynamics of bordering practices related to the cross-border transhumance of Fulani pastoralists in West Africa, a region increasingly affected by climate change, violent extremism, resource scarcity, and land-use tensions. Merging the literature on border dynamics with the concept of riskscapes, we argue that the border is not static or fixed, but rather waxes and wanes according to evolving perceptions of risk. In the context of Fulani cross-border movements, material risks – such as resource scarcity, land-use tension, shifts in rainfall patterns, and violent attacks – provide the foundation for bordering practices. However, these material risks are accompanied by discursive dimensions, through which actors interpret and translate concrete risks into narratives of threat or safety. At certain times and in certain spaces, Fulani movements are portrayed as risky and in need of interventions, while at other times and in other spaces they are portrayed as benign. These narratives, in turn, shape bordering practices that control when and where Fulani move. By situating bordering dynamics within the riskscapes framework, we show how borders are repeatedly produced, recede, or reemerge depending on perceived risks or opportunities. The combination of riskscapes and bordering research reveals how authorities and communities negotiate the timing and spacing of borders as part of broader risk management strategies. The case provides insights for contemplating the future of bordering practices amidst rising environmental and security challenges.

This paper presents findings from an unprecedented study on the impact of climate change on cross-border mobility in the Americas. For more than two years, the International Refugee Assistance Project and a coalition of legal services organizations have surveyed over 4,000 migrants and asylum seekers about climate-related challenges in their countries of origin and during transit. This is the first in a series of publications from the ongoing study. Our initial findings reveal that many respondents faced multiple climate disasters—heavy rains, extreme heat, hurricanes, and flooding—which compounded existing vulnerabilities and likely drove their displacement. These disasters devastated homes and infrastructure, shut down essential services like schools and hospitals, and destroyed livelihoods, often with little to no government support. The study also documents climate-related challenges migrants and displaced people face during transit, as extreme weather makes journeys through jungles, deserts, and other treacherous terrain even more dangerous. While comprehensive data exists on disaster-driven internal displacement, cross-border climate mobility remains poorly documented. By capturing firsthand accounts alongside survey data, this research fills a critical knowledge gap and supports advocacy for policies that mitigate climate change impacts and protect people on the move.

This presentation examines the intricate relationship between climate change, (im)mobility, and gendered migration patterns in Mexico City. Drawing on ethnographic evidence and interviews planned for spring 2025, the research focuses on how environmental pressures intersect with existing social and political realities to shape migrant experiences. Specifically, it highlights the spatial reconfiguration of Mexico City as a new urban borderland, where Latin American migrants, particularly from Central America, grapple with a complex web of sociopolitical challenges that exacerbate environmental problems like droughts, wildfires, and floods. These factors, compounded by economic instability and gendered violence, significantly influence migration decisions within the region.

The presentation will further explore the subjectivities and strategies of international migrants in Mexico City. It analyzes how these individuals perceive and respond to the impacts of climate change at various stages – in their countries of origin, during their journeys, and after settling in Mexico. This research contributes to the growing body of literature at the intersection of migration, gender, race, and climate change, with a focus on understanding how migrants’ experiences are shaped by both environmental stressors and deeply entrenched socio-political, gendered, and racial structures.

Mexico’s historical role in U.S. border externalization has intensified violence against migrants since 2018, creating spaces of racialized and gendered vulnerability beyond territorial borders. In this context, Mexico City has emerged as a critical migratory hub, offering comparatively safer living, working, and environmental conditions for migrants who have endured protracted challenges along continental migratory routes.

The Bengal Delta, specifically the Sundarbans, was once a dynamic, connected, and amphibious space. Historically, the active delta’s amphibious atmosphere thrived on human-nonhuman interdependencies, where tides and seasonal floods were seen as life-giving. But since colonial rule, this amphibious region has been disrupted by borders between land and water, humans and nonhumans, and between two countries – India and Bangladesh. In the recent past, extreme climate events, increasing border militarization, and top-down policies have exacerbated the communities’ vulnerabilities. It is often framed as a climate migration hotspot in policy and research discussions.
This paper traces the present crisis back to colonial state interventions which subsequently provided the blueprint for the post-colonial interventions that focused on increasing control over movement. Interventions such as rigid water management, legal reforms towards fixing land ownership, and the drawing of international borders, sought to contain and control this fluidity by imposing artificial boundaries. These interventions have altered historically flexible livelihoods, degraded the environment, and increased the marginalisation of vulnerable communities. This paper is also attentive to how these state interventions have not only impacted the physical landscape of the region, but also have had an affective and discursive impact on how the region is imagined, governed, and experienced by those living here. Informed by fieldwork, the paper describes how these state interventions disrupted the natural flows, with people feeling cut off from traditional livelihoods, non-human elements, and their adaptive culture leaving them more exposed to socio-political and climatic risks that currently impact the region.

This study critically analyzes Brazil’s environmental policies, highlighting both progress and setbacks, while emphasizing the increasing prevalence of climate-induced displacement. The research explores the intersection of environmental crises, migration, and socio-political systems, positioning Brazil within broader Latin American and global contexts.

In 2024, the Brazilian Ministry of Justice and Public Security, through the Department of Migration, organized the Second National Conference on Migration, Refuge, and Statelessness. Discussions focused on the complex relationship between migration and environmental disasters in Brazil and Latin America. Despite the growing number of displaced individuals, climate-induced displacement remains largely unrecognized under current legal frameworks.

That same year, severe flooding in Rio Grande do Sul devastated cities, leaving thousands homeless, many of whom were international migrants already in vulnerable conditions. Meanwhile, Manaus faced a major environmental crisis caused by wildfires and drought. By August, the city had the worst air quality in Brazil, with dense smoke covering neighborhoods, further exacerbating the humanitarian crisis.

This study examines Brazil’s political responses to climate displacement, justice, and reparations, while exploring the social, economic, and racial dimensions of those most affected by climate change, particularly marginalized communities. The theoretical frameworks of the Anthropocene and decolonial perspectives, particularly from Indigenous scholar Ailton Krenak, challenge dominant Global North narratives. Additionally, Achille Mbembe’s concept of necropolitics helps analyze climate justice and environmental racism, emphasizing the disproportionate impact on Black and non-white populations. Ultimately, the research underscores the urgent need for international recognition of environmental refugees and the socio-economic transformations resulting from climate-related disasters.

Due to the highly context-specific and cross-cutting nature of both human mobility and adaptation, relevant actions must be designed not only at national but also at subnational levels of governance with participation of a wide range of actors. Countries are working to strengthen the linkages between national and subnational adaptation planning through a two-way process of vertical integration for the implementation of NAP priorities, as well as addressing the needs of people in situations of mobility and immobility. Based on desk research and key informant interviews, submitted NAPs were reviewed, particularly their concrete provisions or actions at the subnational level and related to migration, disaster displacement, or planned relocation.

This interactive session aims to enhance understanding of the existing types of approaches to integrating human mobility in NAPs into planning and implementation across levels of governance: localizing NAP’s priority actions on subnational level; developing subnational adaptation plans; including local actors in national planning; building local-level capacities; strengthening local leadership for implementation; enhancing integration between different levels of governance; improving subnational information and finance flows; and strengthening cross-sectoral linkages. Discussing M&E efforts in this context will contribute to considerations on ways to incorporate human mobility into the development of the indicator framework and the operationalization of the UAE Framework for Global Climate Resilience. Finally, the session provides a space to discuss findings, share experiences related to vertical integration and human mobility across countries and stakeholder groups, and build connections to collect challenges, good practices and opportunities in this topic.

The adverse impacts of climate change are increasingly influencing human mobility patterns, particularly in the developing world. Pakistan is highly susceptible to climate-related natural hazards, including floods, droughts, and extreme weather events. Managing disaster displacement risks and preparing for unavoidable displacement and mobility remains a significant challenge.
This study explores the relationship between climate change, mobility and disaster displacement in Pakistan, analyzing trends, challenges, and policy gaps. We provide an overview of Pakistan’s climate vulnerabilities, such as melting glaciers, rising sea levels, and shifting rainfall patterns, and their implications for displacement and migration. The differential impacts on marginalized communities, women, and children are also discussed.
We examine Pakistan’s policy framework concerning climate change and human mobility, assessing the relevance of international agreements such as the Paris Agreement, the Sendai Framework, and the Global Compact for Migration (GCM). We also evaluate national policies on climate change, disaster risk reduction, and migration, highlighting strengths, weaknesses, and gaps. Additionally, we discuss the challenges in implementing effective policies, including institutional constraints, limited resources, and governance issues. Despite these challenges, there are opportunities to enhance policy frameworks by integrating climate-induced mobility considerations into broader climate and development strategies. Finally, the role of international cooperation in supporting Pakistan’s efforts to address climate change impacts and build long-term resilience will be explored.

The Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), published in 2014, in its chapter on Human Security, acknowledges the significance of human mobility in the context of climate change, given the increasing displacement of populations worldwide. Among the key drivers of displacement are events associated with hydrological variability, such as floods, landslides, flash floods, and droughts. In light of the growing adverse effects of climate change on the planet’s hydrological cycles, the relationship between Water (In)Security and Human Mobility emerges as particularly relevant, especially in disaster contexts.
This study aims to highlight the interconnections between Water (In)Security, climate change, disasters, and human mobility while examining the degree of coordination and governance of these agendas within public administration in the Municipality of São Paulo. The findings underscore the necessity for public policies on water management and governance to incorporate human mobility as a key element in territorial planning for water supply and watershed restoration. Additionally, water management policies must update their instruments to account for and address the potential impacts of population movements, particularly in response to hydrological stress scenarios, whether due to water scarcity (such as droughts) or excess water (such as floods, inundations, and flash floods). Finally, the study highlights the challenges faced by public administration in addressing planned relocation and voluntary immobility in the context of highly vulnerable urban communities exposed to hydrological disaster risks.

In recent years, academic research on the relationship between climate change and (im)mobility has expanded, revealing the complex ways in which communities respond to climate impacts, and their perception hereof. Several studies found that migration types—adaptive, involuntary, and immobility—are shaped by social, political and economic circumstances besides individual/household characteristics. Together with socio-economic and political conditions, factors such as gender, age, ethnicity and socio-economic status can significantly shape climate risk perceptions of local communities and their intention to leave or to stay. However, existing literature on gendered environmental mobilities often overlooks the intersecting factors that affect climate risk perceptions and determine why mobility becomes an option for some individuals but not for others. Understanding the multidimensional and intersectional nature of climate risk perceptions and mobility intentions is crucial for evaluating If migration is an effective climate adaptation strategy and for whom. Furthermore, Central Asia is still underexplored within environmental mobilities literature even though it is significantly impacted by climate-related challenges, such as drought, water scarcity, and poor natural resource management. Taking Kyrgyzstan as a case study, this research addresses these gaps by participatory focus group discussions and semi-structured interviews in Jalal-Abad and Issyk-Kul provinces. Employing QCA and Q methodology, the research aims to inform safe climate adaptation and migration strategies that address the specific needs of different socio-demographic groups.

This study examines how climate change risk perception shapes the vulnerability of environmental non-migrants (ENMs), considering the influences of bonding social capital and intersectionality. A mixed-methods approach was employed, integrating quantitative and geospatial survey data with qualitative observations from coastal Bangladesh.
A Climate Vulnerability Index (CVI) was developed to assess vulnerability, encompassing three dimensions—exposure, sensitivity, and adaptive capacity—alongside a Bonding Social Capital Index (BSCI), which measured community support and cohesion. The findings reveal that heightened perceptions of climate risks are associated with increased vulnerability among ENMs, contradicting prior research that suggests higher risk perception often leads to adaptive behaviors that reduce climate vulnerability. Surprisingly, the moderating role of bonding social capital in this relationship was not supported, indicating that while community networks exist, they may not be sufficient to mitigate structural barriers to adaptation.
Intersectional socio-demographic factors significantly shaped both risk perception and vulnerability. Women generally perceived lower climate risks than men, while older individuals exhibited greater concern about their families’ survival prospects. Additionally, individuals with lower education and income levels and older and less-educated ENMs faced heightened vulnerabilities. Most respondents were effectively ‘trapped,’ possessing migration aspirations but lacking the financial or social resources to relocate.
These findings highlight the need for context-specific, inclusive adaptation policies tailored to the unique vulnerabilities and evolving risk perceptions of ENMs. This study contributes to a deeper understanding of climate change impacts on marginalized communities by leveraging local knowledge and fostering equitable disaster risk reduction strategies.

The ongoing doctoral research examines the interplay between overfishing, climate change, and migration, focusing on the aspirations of young individuals in Cape Verde’s coastal communities. Positioned at the intersection of environmental degradation and migratory patterns, the study investigates how governance policies and practices related to overfishing and climate change affect migratory aspirations. Cape Verde, an archipelago reliant on marine resources and rich in a culture of migration, faces significant challenges due to rising sea levels, biodiversity loss, and unsustainable fishing practices. These issues, intertwined with global climate governance and EU-Cape Verde partnerships, severely impact local livelihoods and mobility.
Utilizing an interdisciplinary and multi-methodological approach, this research addresses the central question: How do overfishing, climate change, and their governance policies influence the migratory aspirations of young individuals from Cape Verde’s coastal communities? The sub-questions explore governance mechanisms, policy gaps, the influence of socio-economic and community factors, and young people’s capacity to take action in response to environmental challenges.
The study employs a mixed-methods framework, incorporating legal documentary analyses, statistical data analysis, interviews, participatory observations, and gamification techniques. These methodologies aim to shed light on young people’s lived experiences, perceptions, and aspirations within the context of socio-environmental vulnerabilities. The findings will enhance the understanding of the multidimensional factors that influence migration and provide evidence-based recommendations for governance strategies that integrate young people’s voices while addressing the interconnected challenges of climate change, overfishing, and migration.

Recent syntheses and meta-studies of the extensive literature on the links between population migration and environmental change remain inconclusive regarding the sign and amplitude of the two most studied drivers: temperature and rainfall variability. A strong argument is that this is due to contextual differences, but also to a neglect of the role of subjective perceptions. Another explanation is the complexity of the mechanisms linking environmental drivers and migration, and the neglect of intermediate drivers such as soil degradation and fertility loss.
Our study overcomes these limitations through an empirical survey in northern Senegal (n=905 households). We explicitly consider households’ migration intentions alongside their perceptions of a large panel of potential environmental drivers and control variables. Our logistic regression results show that households that perceive soil degradation as problematic are indeed the most likely to report migration intentions, while the links with temperature variability and pluviometry are weaker. It seems that soil degradation has a greater impact because it has a concrete and direct effect on current and future agricultural productivity, whereas temperatures and pluviometry do not.

Research about refugees in Ghana is not entirely new but research focusing on urban refugees, their solidarity practices and integration networks is hard to find. In the midst of growing displacements resulting from growing political instability. Climate change and environmental disruptions, the question of whether Greater Accra can serve as a sanctuary for the displaced is left unanswered. Using qualitative interactions, this study focused on exploring the solidarity structures and the strategies refugees employ to navigate the seemingly challenges of in an urban setting. The interaction reveals the existence of some local frameworks adopted by host country to protect refugees living in urban Accra. Refugees explore the refugee community zones approach where members receive communal support for themselves. Local and International NGO’s provide support systems to assist urban refugees to navigate through the challenges of accessing shelter, education, health and economic frameworks. Nonetheless, there are existing challenges of accessing preferred durable solutions and are forced by circumstances to integrate in host communities despite dislike

Gaps in knowledge and policy remain in addressing displacement and social cohesion in the context of climate change. This study examines how social cohesion is strengthened or weakened in displacement settings, focusing on Mozambique—a southern African country already experiencing loss and damage from the climate crisis. Drawing on research conducted in Sofala province in central Mozambique, the study assesses social cohesion in the context of cyclone-related displacement and evaluates government and donor-led resilience and recovery efforts, including relocation, housing reconstruction, and livelihood support. Using quantitative data from the International Organization for Migration (IOM)’s 2023 Displacement Tracking Matrix (DTM), alongside key informant interviews and focus group discussions, the findings reveal that while interventions by the government, humanitarian organizations, and development actors are essential, they risk undermining social cohesion if they do not integrate principles of distributive, participatory and procedural justice. The paper contributes to the growing discourse on climate-induced displacement by highlighting the need for justice-centered approaches to foster social cohesion in affected communities.

Social capital plays a pivotal role in shaping migration pathways by influencing decisions, financing, and integration. Using a case study from Ethiopia’s Hadiya and Wolaita regions, this paper investigates how social capital enables capabilities at different stages of migration, drawing on Amartya Sen’s Capability Approach (CA) to frame migration as a freedom that gets expanded or constrained by one’s social capital. Based on data from 200 individuals on the move, 51 returnees, and 51 potential migrants, combined with qualitative insights from focus groups and key informant interviews, this paper highlights the significance of social networks in enhancing or limiting individuals’ real opportunities (capabilities) to achieve desired outcomes such as migration, financial security, and social inclusion. The framework developed integrates bonding, bridging, and linking social capital with CA dimensions (functionings, capabilities, and conversion factors) analysing how social networks expand the scope of freedom in pre-migration decision-making, financing journeys, and post-migration adaptation. Our findings reveal that family and community networks act as vital support structures, particularly in financing migration through asset sales and informal borrowing, while bridging and linking capital ease integration challenges in destination areas. Our paper underscores the importance of social capital in enhancing migrants’ resilience and agency, offering a new perspective on migration as a function of both social networks and capabilities. Insights contribute to the broader discourse on migration and development, highlighting how local social networks mitigate vulnerabilities and enhance the adaptive capacity of mobile populations in fragile environments.

Over the past three decades, academic discourse on climate change, migration, and adaptation has shifted from portraying individuals as passive “climate refugees” to recognizing them as adaptable agents. This evolving perspective has fueled growing scholarship on the nexus between climate (im)mobility and adaptation, particularly since the late 2000s. However, research often treats adaptation in situ, relocation, and migration as an adaptation strategy as separate dimensions rather than interrelated processes.
This study examines how migration networks facilitate adaptation among Cuban households in Havana Province, a region highly exposed to extreme weather events and slow-onset climate impacts. Through extensive fieldwork in Cuba and northern Italy, the research explores the role of transnational and translocal practices—including remittances, commodity circulation, and knowledge transfers—enabled by highly mobile Cuban nationals. It investigates how these cross-border connections shape household resilience, offering an alternative perspective on migration’s role in climate adaptation.
By integrating insights from migration and adaptation studies, this research highlights how transnational mobility and immobility interact to create dynamic adaptation strategies. In doing so, the study contributes to a more nuanced understanding of how migration, whether voluntary or forced, influences climate responses at multiple scales.

Locals proudly regard the Guet Ndar fishery community of Senegal as ‘the heart of Saint-Louis’ and ‘the fishing capital of Senegal’. To the historically mobile fishers, fishing is more than an occupation; it is an intrinsic way of life, a cultural identity, and a generational practice. Community members assert that ‘while others go to school to learn a profession, we are born with ours’. Guet Ndar fishers possess exceptional indigenous seafaring expertise and artisanal fishing skills that underscore their claim as the best fishers in Senegal. Yet, this way of life and livelihood asset is severely threatened by climate-induced mobility challenges and restrictive maritime governance. For example, the artificial breaching of the Langue de Barbarie dune at the Senegal River mouth in 2003, initially intended to mitigate flooding, has instead disrupted traditional fishing routes, intensified dangerous sea conditions, and caused significant economic and non-economic losses. In addition, restricted access to traditional fishing grounds due to territorial boundaries in Mauritanian waters and new gas extraction platforms at an once a very fertile fishing site aggravate the fishers’ challenges. This paper combines empirical data from participatory fieldwork, interviews, and focus groups in Guet Ndar to highlight the unique intersection of climate mobility, cultural heritage, and climate-induced loss and damage. We argue the need for inclusive climate governance frameworks that recognize and support the adaptive mobility practices of the fishers as not merely an economic necessity but also an essential cultural heritage that is worth preserving.

Voluntary migration can serve as a key adaptation strategy for individuals and communities to reduce their vulnerability to climate impacts. But other forms of mobility — including forced displacement and planned relocation — often give rise to human rights violations and conflict. In all cases, mobility can pose specific challenges to both moving and receiving communities, including strain on local resources and intercommunal tensions. While these dynamics have been relatively well-explored in the context of voluntary migration as a form of climate adaptation, less attention has been paid to the mobility impacts associated with climate mitigation strategies. This article aims to fill this gap by looking at the case of land-based carbon removal credit schemes, which are growing in prevalence as a climate change mitigation approach globally. It argues for the need to integrate conflict sensitivity into the design of climate mitigation interventions by exploring how improperly managed carbon credit schemes can displace local communities and Indigenous Peoples, especially in areas with contested land tenure. Practical examples are pulled from peatland rewetting and conservation schemes in Indonesia and forest management schemes in Kenya to capture the interplay between climate mitigation, land use competition and mobility impacts in practice. The article concludes with recommendations on integrating conflict sensitivity and equity considerations into carbon credit design, as well as minimising reliance on carbon credits through deep emission reduction efforts.

Climate-related (im)mobility has gained prominence in international climate negotiations under the UNFCCC. The issue is framed as one of adaptation, protection or loss and damage. This paper analyses the competing discourses from 2016 to 2024, highlighting changes over time and revealing the multiple possibles and impossibles of climate (im)mobility governance. Our discourse analysis is informed but not limited by the discursive climate (im)mobility literature, which distinguishes between three discourses: migrants as security threats, vulnerable populations, or adaptive agents. Recent scholarship incorporates decolonial and feminist perspectives, exposing colonial biases, and inequalities inherent in (im)mobility governance. We analyse a sample of key UNFCCC documents, including advocacy documents by relevant actors e.g. IOM, UNHCR and PDD intended to influence the negotiation texts. Moreover, the research draws on participant observation and qualitative interviews carried out by team members at the UNFCCC COPs from 2016 to 2024. Using Mitchell Dean’s governmentality framework, we reveal especially neoliberal modes of rendering the issue governable. Preliminary results show competing conceptualizations of climate (im)mobility which struggle with each other over time. Within the UNFCCC, climate (im)mobility has long been framed as a form of loss and damage. In contrast, many organisations continue to emphasise climate-induced migration and planned relocation as adaptation strategies. The securitizing discourse linking migration to national security persists outside the UNFCCC but is less present in technical debates surrounding negotiations. Additionally, Island states are advocating for a “right to stay”, rejecting mobility altogether. We conclude by discussing the political implications of this discursive landscape.

This paper presents the preliminary findings of a research project led by the Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences – Ecuador, and the Latin American Network of Social Studies for Disaster Prevention. The project involves four rural communities in the Andean highlands and two urban settlements, one located in the Amazon rainforest and the other on the Pacific coast.

The research used an intersectional and participatory approach. Data collection was carried out using qualitative techniques that included more than 110 in-depth interviews, six participatory mapping workshops, and 12 focus groups. Data analysis is almost complete. Some of the main findings to date are as follows:

– In the six communities studied, human (in)mobilities associated with climate change are shaped by multicausality, where long-term socio-historical dynamics play a major role through the configuration of the vulnerabilities that lie behind them.

– Long-term socio-historical dynamics—like colonialism—play a major role in the configuration of the vulnerabilities behind human (in)mobilities associated with climate change.

– Human (in)mobilities of rural communities in the Andean Region are currently subject to radical reconfiguration shaped by the convergence of extractivism and the effects of climate change.

– The economic effects of climate change are threatening small-scale peasantry, increasing migration of the rural youth to urban areas and threatening the food sovereignty of the Andean countries

– Existing vulnerabilities often lead poor inmigrants to settle in urban areas that are highly exposed to treats associated with climate change.

This session is designed as a collaborative space for participants to shape our collective work and engage in theoretical dialogue.

We will begin by focusing on agenda-setting for our workstream. This initial part is dedicated to getting to know each other, understanding participants’ specific needs and interests within the field, and collaboratively planning potential activities and events for the coming year. We will also discuss how best to structure ourselves and define various roles within the workstream to achieve our shared goals effectively.

Following this phase, we will move into theorising. Here, our aim is to collectively build and refine analytical frameworks to explore the complex ways in which gender and gendered dimensions of migration are shaped by and related to climate and environmental change. This will involve engaging with and building upon existing theoretical perspectives, such as feminist political ecology (Vigil 2024), and reflecting on key overview studies (Castillo & Zickgraf 2024) and relevant literature (see, for example, Lama, Hamza and Wester, 2021). The workshop thus offers a space for both practical workstream planning and engaged theoretical development in this vital research area.

The workstream “Climate, Human (Im)mobility, and Health” aims to provide space for researchers working on or interested in the nexus of climate, human (im)mobility, and health. This workstream covers all connections between the three elements of the nexus, not just how climate influences mobility and health but, for example, also how health impacts human (im)mobility in the context of climate or how climate impacts the well-being of people who have moved or are immobile. For us, health involves both physical and mental health as well as the wider health sector. Human (im)mobility includes migration, displacement, planned relocation, and immobility. By analyzing these intersections, the workstream aims to inform policies that can mitigate adverse health outcomes and support adaptive strategies for vulnerable groups affected by climate-driven (im)mobility, such as those defined by age or gender. This holistic approach contributes towards a more comprehensive understanding of how climate change reshapes human (im)mobility and health landscapes, ultimately contributing to more resilient and healthy societies. This will be the first event of the workstream in which we will map out ECMN members’ expertise and interests and we will emerge with concrete plans for collaboration.

The Media representations, narratives and visual aesthetics of climate (im)mobilities workstream brings together ECMN members interested in the representational politics and narratives of climate mobilities. In particular, we are concerned about the impact that media narratives have and how it might be possible to move beyond the persistent sensationalist and inaccurate portrayals of a world where climate change and mass migration are inevitably linked and something to be feared.

This workshop focuses on visual representations. Much has been made of problematic discourses and images, but what is less clear is how to develop more accurate and positive visual representations of climate mobilities. We seek representations that acknowledge the severity and seriousness of climate mobility challenges, but also emphasise the resilience, rights, and agency of affected people.

In the first half of the workshop, participants will separate in groups to discuss a selection of visual materials created by ECMN members (videos, photos, and cartoons), based on a few guiding questions. In a second part, the session will bring all the groups together for a moderated discussion and Q&A, featuring panelists who have been working with these visual methods. They will share their insights about the challenges and value of these approaches, whether for research, communication, or advocacy.

Sundarban Delta region of India and Bangladesh is considered one of the most vulnerable regions, where multiple climatic events—such as sea-level rise, cyclones, inland floods, and river erosion—intertwine with existing socio-economic vulnerabilities, continuously affecting people’s livelihood assets, options, and opportunities, and in one way or another forcing people to move from this area permanently or temporarily as an adaptive measure. This research incorporates the Capability Approach to understand and address the livelihood situation of environmental migrants more holistically and to recommend the required capability development and policy measures for both the individual and government levels.

This qualitative research uses case studies and focus group discussions to understand people’s livelihood vulnerabilities. For the analysis part, thematic analysis was done with the help of manual coding of the qualitative data. The results show a clear relationship between the physical environment and migration decision-making, as migrants possess high physical and socio-economic vulnerabilities, and in one way, these vulnerabilities forced these people to migrate.

This research recommends that environmental migrants should possess Physical Safety and Health Capability, Economic and Livelihood Diversification Capability, Educational and Skill Development Capability, and Political and Legal Empowerment Capability to increase their functioning and choice in securing the adaptive path. This study also illustrates the role of government and individual agency in transforming these capabilities into improved life outcomes.

Vectors of access to resources and resource depletion has historically been a driving factor for migration specially in fragile ecosystems. This has become more glaring in the context of environmental related mobility/ immobility. This paper maps the flows of water and migration in the semi-arid hinterlands of Udaipur, Rajasthan where multiple water transfer schemes are operating. It attempts to understand how slow onset events like droughts and water scarcity can be productive handles to trace the complex and overlapping connections between migration, displacement and socio-economic vulnerabilities in relation to environmental change. Using the vantage point of water transfer this paper delves into the nexus between small dam construction, displacement and migration. The threat to livelihood, land and resources led to a conflict between the communities and the state presenting a complex scenario of resource appropriation between the rural and urban. This paper extensively uses qualitative methods like in-depth interviews, focused group discussions, and participation observation method with multiple stakeholders (farmers, displaced people, leaders of the struggle, bureaucrats, and experts) as well as grey literature to trace the struggle, migration patterns and resettlement process. Indeed, the migration/ (im)mobility continuum with varied patterns emerge in this hinterland illustrating exacerbated vulnerabilities, deepened societal fissures and reinforcing systematic inequalities in adivasis, and marginalized communities in this area. Tracing the connections, interlinkages and interdependence between resources and migration within this fragile eco system of Aravallis, it is elucidated that these interactions shape migration/immobility decisions and also gets shaped through the varied practices.

Increasing air pollution, dust storms, and climate change are causing serious environmental degradation in southwest Iran, especially in Khuzestan province and Ahvaz city. Numerous respiratory and cardiovascular conditions have increased due to these environmental factors, among other serious effects on public health. This study examines the relationship between deteriorating air quality and internal migration, emphasizing the human rights aspects particularly the right to health and a safe living environment. This study uses a qualitative research methodology to critically examine environmental reports, policy documents, and legal regulations, to investigate how health vulnerabilities caused by air pollution impact increasing movements in recent years. The research highlights the impacts on marginalised communities, particularly low-income households and ethnic minorities, who experience limited sources and adaptive capacities and systematic neglect. The findings demonstrate that the degradation of environmental quality in Khuzestan is not only an ecological or health crisis; it also demonstrates a human rights crisis that includes involuntary migration. Since existing legal frameworks and policies are insufficient in offering sufficient protection and assistance for internally displaced people, impacted populations are left in a state of legal limbo following this crisis. Therefore, this research concludes a necessary and urgent comprehensive policy reform that addresses the legal gaps to ensure the protection of the right to health and the environmental justice, by implementing sustainable measures and legally binding remedies for vulnerable communities in this region.

Recent research has confirmed the importance of micro-mobility – understood as very short-term movements lasting a few days to a few weeks – and temporary migration – lasting less than 6 months – as essential socio-economic responses to environmental stress. However, these movements are still largely understudied and underestimated, partly because they are difficult to measure and often invisible in traditional surveys. In Senegal, the scale of these mobility patterns has recently been uncovered by the analysis of 3 years of mobile phone call detail record (CDR) data, which revealed the existence of large temporary population movements, measured by the number of stays of between 20 and 180 days away from the main residence. In order to shed light on this unprecedented mapping of internal mobility derived from CDRs, a field study based on expert interviews, focus group discussions, and individual interviews was carried out in localities that are vulnerable to environmental and climatic risks and experience important and variable mobility flows. We will present the initial results of this survey, carried out in December 2024, on temporary migration and micro-mobility in Thiaroye-sur-Mer – a coastal municipality in the Dakar conurbation whose livelihood is largely based on fishing and the processing and trading of fish products – and Ngoye – a rural community in the groundnut basin whose activities are dominated by the cultivation of rain-fed groundnuts.

The climate emergency directly affects the ability of those belonging to traditional communities and indigenous peoples to maintain their livelihoods around the world, and especially in Latin America. In fact, indigenous communities and populations in Central America have already been displaced by disasters – with no chance of return – and traditional communities in South America have had to litigate their right to relocation in order to continue existing in their own territories. Although all forced displacement implies a community rupture, vulnerabilities in these cases are exacerbated, since the spiritual, religious and cultural ties of these communities to their territories can also lead to a rupture of identity. In this context, this study proposes to analyze the legal, judicial and political initiatives, measures adopted and protections aimed at the climate immobility of traditional populations in three case studies, namely the case of Cananeia (Brazil), Cartí Sugdup Island (Panama) and the El Bosque community (Southern Mexico). The comparative analysis seeks to identify not only the protections that exist in the countries that host these populations, but also (i) how each of the cases developed, (ii) when it became a concern at the national/governmental level, (iii) how the judicialization of the cases impacted the developments of the guarantees given and (iv) how cultural rights were – or were not – recognized by the different States in a context of climate crisis. The aim is to assess the recognition of the cultural dimension in climate (Im)mobility.

The proposed paper focuses on the right to participation in processes of planned relocation in the context of disasters and climate change. Taking an analytical and policy stance, it explores how the right to participation applies to and plays a role in planned relocation processes. In doing so, it seeks to contribute to the growing body of literature on planned relocation and human rights.

The paper begins with a conceptual section introducing planned relocation as a distinct form of human mobility. It then examines the right to participation in international law and policy. Given that the right to participation is primarily held by individuals, with certain groups holding collective rights, the paper explores the relationship between individual and collective rights in planned relocation processes. It also considers the right to participation in relation to the concept of community engagement, recognizing that communities are heterogeneous groups of people with diverse interests and inherent power relations.

The paper then analyzes to what extent the right to participation is incorporated and reflected in policies on planned relocation from different regions. It assesses what implications this has for affected individuals and communities, including challenges and opportunities for implementation. Finally, it asks what planned relocation policy and practice can learn, exploring how it can both benefit from and strengthen the right to participation.

The paper underscores the importance of a human rights-based approach to planned relocation, highlighting how meaningful and inclusive participation can contribute to better outcomes for affected populations.

Planned relocation is gaining traction as a preventive adaptation measure to ensure the safety of people in the face of climate change impacts. While the logistical and technical challenges of planned relocation are documented in the literature, its justice implications have only recently received attention and have barely been investigated empirically. This paper fills this gap by developing and applying a framework for interrogating how considerations of distributive, corrective, and procedural justice inform the emerging policy and practice of planned relocation in Europe. It delves into four case studies in the context of coastal and riverine flooding: the top-down plans for community relocations in Portugal; the buy-out scheme for the voluntary relocation of households in Italy; the relocation of neighbourhoods via zoning regulations coupled with financial incentives in Austria; and the plans for decommissioning the village of Faribourne in the United Kingdom. The paper shows that utilitarian understandings of distributive justice dominate the framing of relocation policies at the national and regional levels, with cost-benefit reasoning guiding decisions. However, it also finds that alternative notions of distributive justice come into play when moving to the households and community level, suggesting that different criteria can coexist across scales. On procedural justice, findings reaffirm the importance of stakeholder engagement for the success of relocation projects, but also detect an over-reliance on technical assessments for decision-making which marginalises local knowledge. The article contributes to move from conceptual discussions around justice to the practical implications they have on communities adapting to a changing climate.

Human mobility is relatively common in communities who are in climate hotspots. Climate change impacts on the local land and other common proper resources, impacting thereby lives, livelihoods and cultures, forces people to move out of their geographies/habitations. These mobility patterns are of various forms: forced yet temporary, forced forever, voluntary but forced by factors that cannot be tackled, so on and so forth. In this presentation we will deal with people who have been forced to be displaced forever and are backed with no law to be compensated in a just and inclusive manner. In the Bay of Bengal, like many other places on Earth, climate change induced displacement has emerged as a key challenge for the people and policy makers alike. While rapid disasters such as cyclones and floods attract more attention of the humanitarian communities as well as policy makers, the slow onset disasters caused by climate change force millions of people to misery and most of it goes unreported. The Bay of Bengal has been infamous for being the cyclone hotbed and also a lot of communities in the Bay states of India are facing sea-level rise induced displacement. Some of them have been relocated but a lot remains to be done both in policy and practice. This presentation will present a strategy to make Relocation as a tool to provide just and inclusive rehabilitation & resettlement to these vulnerable communities that take cares of socio-economic, cultural and ecological restoration in the Bay of Bengal.

Climate migration, driven by environmental changes and extreme weather events, presents an urgent challenge to mitigate the impact of such events. It requires a robust legal and policy response. This paper addresses the complexities of climate migration and the pivotal role of law and policy in addressing these challenges. This paper critically examines India’s Legal and policy response to climate migration, focusing on their efficacy in addressing migration, rehabilitation and long-term adaptation. It is interesting to note that the country doesn’t have direct legislation to address climate migration, but a number of the acts, policies and government schemes that indirectly address the impact of climate migration, such as the Disaster Management Act of 2005, National Rehabilitation and resettlement policy, 2007 and Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana, 2015. It accentuates the necessity for a comprehensive policy that ensures the safe, dignified movement of climate migrants while protecting their rights of resettlement and livelihood and also facilitating integration into new communities. This paper aims to comprehensively explore the interaction between law, policy and climate migration through Legislative Analysis using McClain et al.’s Migration with Dignity Framework. It offers insights and recommendations from the best practices from India for developing adaptive and resilient responses to ensure climate migrants are protected and supported through proactive and well-coordinated legal and policy measures.

Majuli Island is the world’s largest river island and home to the indigenous people of Assam located in the northeastern region of India. It is one of the most vulnerable areas affected by climate induced flooding and erosion. This study examines the complex relationship between climate change, human mobility, and legal frameworks affecting Majuli’s inhabitants. Adopting an interdisciplinary approach combining environmental anthropology and legal analysis, this research investigates mobility responses ranging from temporary seasonal relocation to permanent displacement. The study focuses on traditional adaptive strategies and forced climate-induced displacement, examining how indigenous knowledge systems intersect with formal legal frameworks. While previous research has documented Majuli’s physical transformation and land loss with anthropological literature exploring traditional adaptation strategies, limited research integrates these perspectives for river island communities experiencing fluctuating mobility patterns. Presently India lacks national policy frameworks for internally displaced people, leaving climate-affected populations in a protection vacuum when relocating within national borders. This study employs ethnographic fieldwork among displaced communities alongside analysis of relevant legal frameworks at local, national, and international levels. Findings will address protection gaps for populations falling outside conventional migration categories while respecting cultural heritage and agency in mobility decisions. This research contributes to theoretical understandings of climate mobility and practical legal solutions while broadening discussions on climate justice and indigenous rights applicable to vulnerable communities worldwide.

From a human rights perspective (Scott, 2018), there is no explicit international entitlement to enter or remain in a country specifically due to climate-induced migration, except for the protections offered by international human rights law, such as the fundamental principle of non-refoulment, which applies to refugees (Aranilla and Rada, 2020). An examination of the global legal framework for climate-induced migration and discourse on potential avenues of state responsibilities are necessary to address the existing gaps in legal protection. The principle of Common but Differentiated Responsibilities and Respective Capabilities (CBDR-RC) is highly significant in the context of climate change. However, the precise provisions governing the implementation of this principle in international conventions are ambiguous. Developed states fail to demonstrate their acknowledgement of the CBDR-RC principle, which includes the responsibility to provide bilateral assistance to developing countries in addressing climate-induced migration. This situation may pose future challenges, as the potential rise in climate-induced migration (IPCC, 2022) could disproportionately burden poor developing nations with the responsibility of managing climate migrants.

This paper aims to present a clearer understanding of the relationship between the CBDR-RC principle and climate-induced migration. In addition, it will focus on how a relationship can be established between the responsibilities of states in the context of protecting climate migrants and the CBDR principle. By establishing a connection between international environmental law and strategies for international collaboration, this understanding can aid in the promotion of global justice.

The UN estimates that by 2050, 200 million individuals will be displaced due to environmental degradation and disasters. According to the Secretary General of the United Nations, we are experiencing “the era of global boiling”. Therefore, it is imperative that the international community quickly and effectively mobilises to protect the rights of environmentally displaced persons (EDPs).

International Law (IL), however, lacks instruments and a consensus on how and under the scope of which legislation EDPs are/should be protected, creating a “legal protection void”. Those who find themselves in the most severe legal void, not being protected by the Refugee Convention nor for instruments concerning internally displaced persons, are the EDPs who cross international borders. There are two kinds of solutions that the international community can pursue to fill this void: hard law initiatives, legally binding norms, or soft law, the norms, principles and procedures that are outside the formal sources of IL and that cannot create legally enforceable rights and obligations.

My work aims to assess to what extent soft law initiatives are an adequate and feasible solution to fill the legal void related to the protection of EDPs who cross international borders and what would be the advantages and disadvantages of this approach. To accomplish this goal, it analyses the benefits and downsides of hard law solutions to the issue, following with assessments on how soft law has been contributing to international human rights law, international environmental law and to the international climate change regime.

This paper takes a nuanced approach to the dynamics of community attachment and involuntary human immobility in the context of climate change-enhanced disasters in Nigeria. Drawing on extensive ethnographic fieldwork conducted in four communities facing the climate change crisis, it employs different ethnographic approaches to provide qualitative data involving youths, community leaders, and policy practitioners to investigate how the increasing severity of climate change threats affects im/mobility-related decision-making processes.

At a structural level, the study results reveal a complex interplay between a strong sense of community attachment and involuntary immobility constraints. Therefore, the paper sheds light on deep-rooted spiritual and religious connections to land, identity, and cultural heritage. Conversely, lack of access to strong migration networks, social categorizations, policy barriers, and psycho-socio constraints resulting in aversion to uncertain migrations to unknown regions also contribute to involuntary immobility outcomes and trapping of vulnerable populations amidst cascading disasters. The study contributes to the broader discourse on displacement in the context of climate change impacts by shedding light on the often-overlooked aspect of voluntary immobility responses, such as resistance to planned relocation during climatic disasters.

The paper thereby argues that understanding the reasons behind the immobility decisions of vulnerable populations during climatic disasters is crucial for developing targeted policies and the effective use of climate finance to scale up adaptation investment in vulnerable settings. The study concludes by advocating for tailored strategies and recommendations that support locale populations and recognizing their emotional bonds to the community and the structural barriers to human immobility.

Climate change impacts are being experienced by mountain communities in their daily life and livelihood choices. Erratic precipitation, rising temperatures, and extreme events are leading to crop failures, increasing uncertainty in tourism enterprises and overall rise in livelihood insecurity. This is providing further impetus for the mountain communities to shift to non-farm and non-local livelihoods, including migrating for work purposes. Mobility and multi-local livelihoods are traditional norms in high mountain communities, as few household members out-migrate during winter, while other members remain in their origin areas. With increasing impacts of a changing climate, the traditional mobility patterns have shifted, along with expansion of migration destination. In this study, we explore these changing mobility patterns and its implications on how community identifies place and sense of belonging. We use mixed method, consisting of household surveys, life histories, group discussions, and multi-stakeholder workshops, to understand and map migration decisions, destinations, and wellbeing implications for migrants and non-migrant populations at origin. The findings show how mobility is an important strategy for adapting to changing climate at household and community scales. Migration of some household members or entire households have helped reduce competition on the limited natural resources such as water and land, making it possible for remaining population to better adapt. Migration has increased the risk-taking capacity and create economic opportunities for in-migrants from nearby areas. By connecting people and places, migration has helped people construct a new sense of place attachment and belonging, thereby creating new opportunities at both origin and destination.

Climate change intensifies heat waves globally, disproportionately impacting urban informal settlements like the Korail slum in Dhaka, Bangladesh. Despite extreme heat stress and associated health and livelihood challenges, residents exhibit a strong tendency for non-migration, choosing instead to adapt in place. This chapter explores environmental non-migration as a critical adaptation strategy, drawing from qualitative interviews with slum residents and experts. Findings reveal that non-migration decisions are influenced by livelihood opportunities, place attachment, risk perception, and risk-taking ability, underscoring the complex interplay between socio-economic, cultural, and environmental factors. While non-migration fosters community resilience and resource transformation, it faces barriers such as inadequate infrastructure and unequal access to cooling solutions. Insights contribute to broader climate adaptation discourses, particularly in vulnerable, low-income urban contexts.

Within climate change adaptation research, the impact of sea level rise on island communities has been extensively studied (see e.g., Esteban et al. 2019; Thomas and Benjamin 2018). Previous scholarship has emphasized low-income nations and communities that are acutely vulnerable to the impacts of changing sea levels (Rigaud et al. 2018). These studies often focus on the perception of mobility as an adaptation strategy to sea level rise. However, Europe as a context for (future) climate induced mobilities is often neglected. This study aims to contribute to this gap, by exploring how the future threats posed by sea-level rise shape residents´ sense of place and belonging in European island contexts.

Previous studies have focused on the loss of, or changes in identity, sense of belonging and place due to sea-level rise in low-income countries (see Roberts and Andrei 2015). We aim to understand how these phenomena are perceived in resource-rich Europe, which represents a context where on the one hand, mobility is less likely to be seen as a primary adaptation strategy, while on the other hand, the changing sense of place due to sea level rise is already experienced through diverse future anxieties.

The analysis is based on two months of fieldwork conducted in Venice and the Dutch Wadden Islands. In-depth interviews were conducted with various affected populations, including residents, some of whom may be migrants themselves. We aim to expand the academic discussion by including the voices of affected populations in climate mobilities in the European contexts.

The location of the Galapagos Islands makes them particularly vulnerable to climate change, impacting both marine and terrestrial ecosystems. However, these impacts also manifest in various human practices that interact with these ecosystems, from fishing, science, agriculture, tourism, among others. All this takes place within the framework of a National Park “Special Regime” which distinguishes different forms of mobilities: encouraging tourists, permitting scientists, regulating locals and restricting migrants. While the impacts of climate change unfold in a situated setting of the Galápagos, attention to stakeholders reveals the entanglement of multiple scales, seen both in the movement of diverse actors and in the various levels of socio-environmental and climate governance.
As part of my doctoral research project on the Galapagos Islands and drawing from the perspective of the New Mobilities Paradigm, I would like to present a theoretical and methodological approach from the Global South that contributes to broadening perspectives on climate mobilities. On one hand, I seek to explore how with the mobility of actors also circulates different rationalities, sensibilities, and practices, that shapes the ways of knowing and making sense of climate change at the local level. On the other hand, I want to critically examine how the uneven configuration of mobilities intersects with the controversies, negotiations, and arrangements through which climate change becomes a situated object of governance.

There is a wide amount of research dealing with sea level rise adaptation measures in low-income countries and small island countries (e.g., McMichael et al., 2021; Mortreux & Barnett 2009; Esteban et al 2019). In the context of Global South, mobility and climate migration are often associated with adapting to sea level rise. We want to contrast this by examining the adaptation and immobility in European context. The resource rich Europe mostly sees sea-level rise adaptation strategy in terms of protection showing strong reliance on technology (see Lebbe et al., 2021; Powell et al., 2019). Technological solutions such as MOSE, i.e. the high-tech experimental moveable barriers system that is capable of sealing off the Venetian Lagoon from the Adriatic Sea (Mel et al., 2021b), are meant to provide protection from sea-level rise.
Media framing on sociotechnical imaginaries and spatial imaginaries, as normative shared meanings related to place, play a central role in building political and public understanding of threats posed by sea-level rise. Sociotechnical imaginaries intertwine with spatial imaginaries building Venice as unique and exceptional in terms of culture and history of which protection from sea-level rise becomes a central national concern. By contrast, when the media discusses sea level rise in other contexts, retreat and accommodation are emphasized.
By using media data, the paper explores how sociotechnical and spatial imaginaries concerning MOSE are configured and framed in a geographical context in the Italian media, producing immobility and othering in relation to global realities.

Climate migration is increasingly governed through implicit and explicit networks. This paper traces the convergence of two phenomena within these networks: transnational municipalism and gravity modelling.

For three decades, a series of statistical models have shaped political claims about future patterns of climate change and migration, and justified anticipatory action in the present. The political lives of these knowledge claims, however have been largely overlooked. Cities, meanwhile, have increasingly seen as both the location of the future problem of climate change migration, and the optimal location for anticipatory governance to manage it – particularly since COP26.

In an approach that builds on disciplines including Science and Technology Studies, Geography and Politics, this paper analyses the epistemic politics of a contemporary climate migration modelling project and its subsequent application in cities in the global south. Drawing on empirical research with modellers, development workers and members of city governments, it analyses how transnational municipal organisations have mobilised knowledge about climate migration to claim agency and reconfigure the scale in which this future problem is anticipated.

For scholars of climate migration, this highlights that understanding the governance of climate migration cannot be reduced to any single existing political logic or scale of governance. Rather, we must instead use the links between power and knowledge to look beyond the border and the nation state, and beyond any single existing political logic such as biopolitics or neoliberalism.

This article employs Carol Bacchi’s ” What’s the Problem Represented to Be?” (WPR) framework to analytically deconstruct the notion of ‘population’ in climate (im)mobilities discussions. Through an extensive critical discourse analysis of policy documents from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, and European Union border agreements, the research questions the racial, gender, and colonial frameworks that inform the depictions of population in climate migration narratives. By methodically exploring Bacchi’s six analytical questions, this study reveals that the unquestioned use of ‘population’ allows to avoid addressing key dimensions of climate (im)mobilities: (1) concealing the essential contribution of fossil fuel capitalism to climate-related displacement, (2) justifying immobilization policies that confine marginalized groups within climate-vulnerable areas, and (3) strengthening hierarchical mobility systems that favour populations in the Global North.
The analysis shows that contemporary population narratives are not impartial demographic accounts, but influential biopolitical instruments that influence mobility management. Drawing from feminist political ecology and Indigenous critical viewpoints, the research proposes to redefine ‘population’ as a disputed field of power dynamics instead of a static demographic classification.
In conclusion, the study promotes a transformative stance on climate (im)mobilities that emphasizes mobility justice, decolonial land relations, and policies for resource redistribution. This paper offers a critical rethinking of population by questioning techno-managerial strategies regarding climate migration, emphasizing the lived experiences of the communities significantly impacted by climate change.

Two sets of scenarios narratives and an accompanying video series by the EU-funded HABITABLE project examine how changes in the climate and environment are influencing how people perceive the “habitability” of where they live and their decisions about migration. The first set of crisis scenario narratives focus on the impact of severe climate-related shocks in the year 2030 in Ethiopia, Mali, and Ghana, examining potential losses of habitability in order to guide present actions to strengthen resilience. The second set of normative scenario narratives envisions a habitable future in the year 2050 for Ghana, Kenya and Thailand, in spite of intensifying climate change impacts. The scenarios create a history of the future by “backcasting” the developments and policy actions that would be required to realize this future, including a range of robust adaptation, migration and sustainable development policies. By developing plausible scenario narratives for how climate change may shape migration in different contexts, the research team aimed to spark discussions on what policy actions can be taken today and in the near future to reduce the impact of future climate hazards, to protect those most vulnerable, and to increase the resilience of those most exposed. The scenarios were co-developed by adelphi research in collaboration with the HABITABLE in-country teams and other experts from the relevant countries and regions.

The question of what to expect in the future drives much of the public and policy discourse surrounding climate migration. While many studies on climate mobilities implicitly include future saspects, they rarely adopt an explicit perspective on futures. There is also limited systematic engagement with how futures are operationalized, contested, and shaped across different strands of climate mobility research and governance. This restricts how deeply human rights, livelihoods, or governance perspectives on climate mobilities can engage with the future, and it impedes productive dialogue with approaches that explicitly do so (eg predictive modeling). Although modeling produces future projections, it often remains weakly grounded in the complex social and political realities that shape human mobility futures. This is exemplified in some authors’ prediction of inevitable global population redistributions due to escalating heat, while others emphasize that there is currently – and in the foreseeable future – no evidence to support this. This contribution therefore seeks to place “future” as a central focus in climate mobility studies. It argues that the diverse, often contradictory, contributions on the futures of climate mobilities frequently talk past each other across multiple dimensions – especially the temporal scale, spatial scale, and mobility types. Drawing on relational future making, the contribution proposes a conceptual framework for the understanding of climate mobilities futures, which integrates four core dimensions of future making – calculating, governing, living, and imagining. The proposed frame facilitates a systematic assessment of climate mobilities futures and enables a productive conversation between diverse perspectives and approaches.

Quantifying displacement and building future scenarios through models is key for shaping policy that addresses both the root causes of vulnerability and the needs of displaced people. In this presentation, we introduce research undertaken by UNU MCII Climate Analytics and the Environment and Migration: Interactions and Choices (EMIC) divisions, working with the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC), ETH Zurich, and CIMA Research Foundation on the IDMC Disaster Displacement Risk Model. Our approach integrates state-of-the-art datasets into a probabilistic model approach, enabling us to present a global displacement risk model for several climate and geophysical hazards under different future climate conditions for the middle and end of the century.

Initially, mainly focused on direct housing loss from sudden-onset hazards, the model is now being expanded to refine and include livelihood impacts and systemic vulnerabilities of displacement risk across different hazard types. This phase also explores how these factors influence displacement duration and seeks to integrate mobility aspirations and capabilities, advancing more people-centred, theory-informed risk modeling. As challenges such as limited data and mainstreaming vulnerability modeling across hazards are confronted, the presentation highlights progress toward a more robust disaster displacement model for policy and research.

The question of what to expect in the future drives much of the public and policy discourse surrounding climate migration. While many studies on climate mobilities implicitly include future saspects, they rarely adopt an explicit perspective on futures. There is also limited systematic engagement with how futures are operationalized, contested, and shaped across different strands of climate mobility research and governance. This restricts how deeply human rights, livelihoods, or governance perspectives on climate mobilities can engage with the future, and it impedes productive dialogue with approaches that explicitly do so (eg predictive modeling). Although modeling produces future projections, it often remains weakly grounded in the complex social and political realities that shape human mobility futures. This is exemplified in some authors’ prediction of inevitable global population redistributions due to escalating heat, while others emphasize that there is currently – and in the foreseeable future – no evidence to support this. This contribution therefore seeks to place “future” as a central focus in climate mobility studies. It argues that the diverse, often contradictory, contributions on the futures of climate mobilities frequently talk past each other across multiple dimensions – especially the temporal scale, spatial scale, and mobility types. Drawing on relational future making, the contribution proposes a conceptual framework for the understanding of climate mobilities futures, which integrates four core dimensions of future making – calculating, governing, living, and imagining. The proposed frame facilitates a systematic assessment of climate mobilities futures and enables a productive conversation between diverse perspectives and approaches.

Rapid urbanization, climate-induced displacement, and water stress are interlinked challenges shaping the precarious realities of resettled communities. Resettlement often focuses on physical relocation, overlooking the socio-emotional and systemic inequities that perpetuate cycles of vulnerability. In cities like Chennai, where water scarcity intersects with flood-induced displacement, these gaps become even more pronounced, underscoring the need for integrative planning and adaptive governance. Moreover, climate-induced displacement not only exacerbates challenges in accessing resources but intensifies existing vulnerabilities, weakening the position of displaced communities within the urban fabric.
This paper investigates the nexus between forced displacement and water scarcity through the lens of well-being in the resettled community of Perumbakkam, Chennai, a peri-urban settlement in Tamil Nadu, India, shaped by flood-related displacement. Using qualitative approaches, the research explores how resettled residents navigate coping strategies for resource access, policy limitations, and socio-spatial transformations.
Findings reveal that while resettlement policies prioritize technical infrastructures, they often overlook critical dimensions such as disrupted livelihoods, weakened social cohesion, and socio-economic vulnerabilities. Informal networks emerge as vital channels for resource access in this highly water-stressed community, demonstrating that locally rooted, participatory approaches can strengthen social bonds and improve resource distribution.
This paper argues for reimagining resettlement as a comprehensive process that prioritizes inclusivity, well-being, and community empowerment. It advocates for bottom-up frameworks that center the voices and needs of displaced populations, thereby contributing to the growing discourse on socially and environmentally just urban development, offering scalable strategies to bridge the gap between resettlement policies and community resilience.

The compound effects of accelerating environmental and climate change present significant challenges to river deltas, small islands and other low-lying coastal areas. Manifesting most strikingly as inundation and coastal erosion, these challenges are often accompanied by narratives of inevitable uninhabitability. Although conceived as a last-resort measure, state-led resettlement (or planned relocation) has become a prevalent policy response to reduce risk exposure. Affected communities, however, often perceive environmental risks lower than technical experts. Also, they place considerable emphasis on the social and cultural significance of their ancestral lands. Consequently, many targeted populations express a strong desire to remain in place despite severe threats, advocating for coastal protection measures instead.
This paper presents empirical research on a case of in situ adaptation to intense and prolonged coastal erosion in Ghana’s Volta Delta. The construction of six groynes to stabilize the shoreline facilitated land reclamation or raising of low-lying areas to a higher elevation. This necessitated the relocation of residents from these low-lying areas into temporal shelters and subsequent demolition of their homes for land raising to occur. Thereafter, they were permitted to return to sites near their original locations into standardized resettlement houses constructed on the newly reclaimed or elevated land, provided by government agencies as compensation for their demolished houses.
This contribution stimulates discussion on whether this costly and still rare approach of in situ resettlement – combined with land raising/reclamation and coastal protection – may offer a viable option to allow medium-term voluntary immobility at some of the world’s coasts.

This study examines the rehabilitation process of climate-displaced people by the government of Bangladesh, which ultimately reinforces social margination. While several studies highlight singular aspects, this study follows a multidimensional approach to analyzing project outcomes that accelerate marginalization. Qualitative by nature, the study employs two data collection methods. First, it conducts a comprehensive literature review and analyses 11 rehabilitation (Asrayan) projects across different regions as case studies. Then, for data triangulation, it interviews 17 beneficiaries from the Khurushkul project, one of the world’s largest climate victim rehabilitation centers. Using Johan Galtung’s structural violence framework, the study illustrates the gradual process of marginalization in three stages. The initial stage begins with climate- induced displacement, where victims frequently develop new survival strategies embedded in rural settings. However, rehabilitation in a top-down designed ‘barrack house’ limits their ability and restricts their access to basic rights, livelihoods, and social mobility as they enter the second stage of violence. The study further shows that instead of improving conditions by shifting from tin- shed housing to multistoried rehabilitation buildings, the rigid design only isolated social functioning. In the third stage, relocating in distant place reinforces their categorization as ‘outsider’ and intensifies their struggle to integrate into the new social and cultural structure, leading to more deepening marginalization under state-controlled programs. Ineffective and exclusionary to climate-displaced communities, yet the predominant presence of these projects shows the shortcomings of the outcome-based development paradigm embraced by one of the top- ranked disaster-prone countries.

Considering the deaths and disappearance of over 40,000 people and thousands more who were displaced due to the 2004 tsunami, the Sri Lankan government reimposed the 100-meter buffer zone regulation to the southern coastal belt as a disaster risk reduction strategy with the intention of protecting the lives and livelihoods of coastal community members from future tsunamis and other coastal hazards. Over 100,000 people were displaced in Galle, Sri Lanka and a majority of them were relocated into donor-built settlements. Most government lands were found in rural areas far away from the Galle city of displaced communities. Against this background, this study was carried out by interviewing persons from 288 relocated housing units in 11 relocated settlements in Akmeemana, Galle area and another 60 respondents from host community housing units situated close to the selected resettlements between 2023-2024. The study mainly examined the present relationship between host and resettled communities 20 years after relocation. It is evident from the data that host community members hold the view that they have mostly peaceful relationships with resettlers at present, reporting only some quarrels and tensions. Tensions had erupted due to the bad behavior of resettlers. For the last 20 years there was no proper solid waste management system in place. As they did not have enough garden space to bury or burn their garbage, resettlers’ dumped their garbage into empty lands owned by host community members. This was another factor for tensions between host and resettled communities other than hidden caste factor.

Climate (im)mobilities, though only recently gaining public policy attention, have become integral to everyday life in rural Chile. This study examined natural resource-dependent livelihoods and (im)mobilities in the context of climate change, focusing on the impacts of intensifying droughts and forest fires on rural communities in forestry-dependent central-southern Chile. Utilising a mixed-methods approach, the study included 41 semi-structured interviews, a household survey with 411 responses, and four multi-sector focus groups, conducted in late 2024.
While forest fires tend to be mostly associated with short-term evacuation mobility, the study shows how they can also impact the (im)mobilities in the affected communities long-term, with severe and gendered consequences for individuals, households and communities. As the 2017 fires destroyed local forestry plantations, the principal employment opportunity in the study area, forestry workers started to engage in increasingly long-distance daily labour mobilities (of up to six hours per day) to southern plantations to maintain their income. The predominantly male workers report how this contributes to severe exhaustion, prevents participation in family and community life and increases household spending on transportation. At the same time, (married) women experience increasing immobilization, growing workloads as well as economic dependence, as the fires destroyed forestry-adjacent economic opportunities such as mushroom collection, while household and care responsibilities prevent their participation in daily labour mobilities. While these post-forest fire (im)mobilities significantly affect the structures of daily life in the study area, these impacts remain largely invisibilised – and unaddressed – as such ‘micromobilities’ are not considered in national mobility statistics.

The impacts of climate change can be particularly adverse for women in developing countries,
and more so due to the presence of regressive gendered customs and norms in these
countries. In this study, we provide novel evidence on how the custom of dowry shapes the
long-term impacts of climate change on women in rural India. We examine how increasing
temperatures due to climate change are influencing marriage-related female rural-rural and
rural-urban migration in India. We find that a 1 ◦C temperature increase is associated
with a 27% decline in rural-urban and a 13.6% decline in rural-rural female migration. The
declining effects are concentrated in districts in northern states of the country where dowry
customs are historically prevalent. Supporting evidence suggests that decreasing agricultural
yields from rising temperatures is an underlying mechanism, as they are reducing the
resources to finance dowry. We further find that the declines in female migration are driven
by the northern districts with poor access to credit at the baseline, as it constrains agricultural
adaptation and limits borrowing during marriage years.

Kenya has witnessed a notable increase in the migration rate of pastoral youth to urban centers in recent years. This movement is driven by recurring droughts, socio-economic difficulties, and environmental challenges, leading to the rapid expansion of informal settlements. Unpredictable weather patterns and livelihood instability have heightened concerns among young pastoralists, making urban migration a common coping strategy. However, migration patterns are highly gendered. While men often engage in climate-induced mobility and take up informal employment in cities, women, children, and the elderly face constraints that limit their movement. Those left behind struggle with increased workloads, food insecurity, and restricted access to resources due to socio-cultural obligations and caregiving responsibilities. This paper utilizes both qualitative and quantitative approaches to examine the dynamics, push factors and gendered impacts of climate-induced mobility of pastoral youth in Laikipia County and Nairobi, Kenya and serves as a valuable resource for researchers, policymakers, and practitioners in the field of climate (im)mobility.

The nature of the relationship between climate change and migration is complex, context specific, and often shaped by social factors such as gender. This study examines how gender influences perceptions of environmental change and decisions related to mobility or immobility. Using a mixed-methods approach, we combine qualitative data from semi-structured interviews with 34 women and original survey panel data from 1700 households living along the Jamuna River in Bangladesh, a region severely impacted by environmental change, particularly flooding and riverbank erosion. Our findings reveal that women’s roles and responsibilities within their household and communities significantly influence their perspectives on environmental migration. While migration due to environmental changes exacerbates hardships for many women, they can also lead to unanticipated opportunities. The findings highlight that impacts of both, climate change and the resulting (im)mobility, are not uniform but rather highly varied across population subgroups. Thereby, they underscore the importance of integrating a gendered lens into policy interventions addressing climate change and migration.

The efficacy of early warning systems (EWS) in saving lives and reducing non-economic losses and damages is widely recognized. However, these systems often lack information about the potential impacts on people, assets, and systems. Impact-based early warnings (IbEW) that consider information on exposure and vulnerability could fill this gap, enabling a more effective public response and preparedness – notably for vulnerable groups disproportionately affected by extreme weather events. The increasing cost of extreme weather events and the focus on non-economic losses and damages from climate change underpins the need to advance risk knowledge, integrating vulnerability and exposure information of vulnerable groups into existing EWS. The UNDRR-funded EarlyWarning4IGAD project addresses this gap by supporting countries in the Greater Horn of Africa to transition from existing hazard-based to impact-based early warning systems. Building on desk study, expert interviews, and stakeholder consultations, we present a novel approach to IbEW for floods and droughts in Kenya by integrating data and information on exposure and vulnerability into existing hazard-based systems. One element is the co-creation of conceptual risk models with and for different vulnerable groups. This presentation focuses on people in camp settings, representing one of these vulnerable groups. In doing so, we show how such risk knowledge can be used for IbEW and ultimately integrated into existing operational flood and drought EWS tools at the regional level. In doing so, we highlight challenges and limitations for operationalization and updating data. 

This paper explores the value of critical mobilities theories, specifically recent conceptualisations of mundane (im)mobilities, in studying early warning systems (EWS) within the context of urban floods. EWS, which are a key component to disaster risk reduction, have traditionally been exceedingly top-down and technocentric. In response, researchers and practitioners are calling for community-centric EWS: to centre end-users in the design and dissemination of early warnings. However, although mobilities are imperative to community disaster preparedness, explicit cross-interrogations of (im)mobilities and EWS remain limited. Illustratively, the Netherlands’ EWS, whilst relatively advanced, have scarcely been scrutinised for how they might address or deepen mobility inequalities (e.g. by issuing warnings based on assumptions of able-bodiedness).

This paper attends to this gap through a case study of EWS within the context of urban floods in the Netherlands. It starts by addressing how mundane (im)mobilities, comprising habitual and incremental (im)mobility practices of the everyday, are incorporated in EWS frameworks generally. The paper then proposes a methodology based around living labs in two Dutch municipalities (Dordrecht and Geertruidenberg) to explore how flood-related EWS attend to disparate, mundane mobility needs and abilities of at-risk communities. These disparities may be physical, relating to mobility impairments or transport infrastructure provisioning, but also non-physical, for instance concerning digital literacy or language barriers for low-income migrant workers. The paper concludes that foregrounding mundane (im)mobilities, as an alternative to acute and exceptional mobility patterns that are frequently prioritised in disaster contexts, constitutes a critical step to creating EWS that are just and fair.

The Sahel is a region that the direct and indirect impacts of climate change could transform into a context marked by multiple constraints and limitations that would amplify the risks of migration and population displacement. The impacts of climate change on agriculture, the main means of subsistence for Sahelian populations, could be a key driver of population migration.An aspect of the solution to prevent these migration risks would be to integrate them into communication plans supported by agricultural resilience policies. Such an option requires specific scientific bases and decision-making tools.
Our paper presents an approach for integrating climate migration risks into agricultural resilience communication in the Sahel. It includes methods, information repositories, and a framework for integrating climate migration risks into agricultural resilience communication. The methodologies implemented include a method for mapping the determinants of migration risks linked to the impacts of climate change on agriculture, a method for target groups specifically concerned by climate migration risks and a method for identifying obstacles to the integration of migration risks into communication for the climate resilience of agriculture.
The results presented would be a relevant and efficient solution for developing scientific bases and decision-making tools for integrating migratory risks into communication plans for the resilience of agriculture to climate change.
Keywords : Sahel, agriculture, climate risks, migration, communication, prevention

Various studies predict large environmental migration flows due to climate change, yet the ex post empirical evidence for such migration is inconclusive. In particular, we lack robust evidence on the impact of repeated and concurrent climate events on migration. For instance, a climate event such as a flood might not lead to migration if it occurs once, but might make people move if it occurs several times in a row, or if it occurs in combination with another climate event, such as a storm. We investigate these questions relying on original survey panel data of 1537 household heads residing along the Jamuna River in Bangladesh, an area heavily affected by environmental changes. We relate respondents’ self-reported affectedness by riverbank erosion and floods in three consecutive monsoon seasons to their likelihood to migrate. We find that affectedness by erosion significantly increases the likelihood of migration. However, this effect gets weaker if households are affected repeatedly. Flooding has a negative effect, which becomes significantly stronger for repeated exposure. In terms of concurrent events, respondents who are affected severely by both flooding and erosion in the same monsoon season are more likely to migrate than those affected by only one of the two. A decline in socio-economic status after suffering repeated or concurrent impacts might lead to “trapped populations”. These findings have significant policy implications by underlining that repeated and concurrent affectedness by environmental shocks might reduce out-migration from vulnerable regions.

A fast-growing body of research underscores the link between climate change and human mobility, with climate hazards, such as rising temperatures and extreme weather events, shaping migration patterns within and across borders. While empirical studies have documented associations between climate shocks and migration patterns, recent scholarship calls for a more nuanced understanding of the local contexts and the mechanisms behind these responses. In particular, the pathways through which climate shocks influence migration decisions and the selectivity of those who turn to migration remain insufficiently explored.
This study addresses these gaps by analyzing a novel dataset of over 12,000 individuals, containing information on climate shocks exposure, development levels, and migration aspirations across different communities in Africa and Asia. Using structural equation mediation analysis, we examine how climate shocks—particularly droughts and floods— affect livelihoods and, in turn, shape migration aspirations. Our results provide evidence for the adverse effects of these shocks on livelihoods and confirm that this mechanism acts as a driver of migration aspirations. However, contrary to prevailing assumptions, we find that these effects are more pronounced for individuals in more affluent households and urban communities, rather than among agricultural, rural and economically disadvantaged populations.
These findings challenge widely held views from large-N cross-country studies, which have primarily emphasized agricultural income as the main pathway through which climate shocks influence migration. Prior research may have overlooked broader livelihood dynamics and the diverse ways climate shocks shape migration aspirations. By addressing these nuances, our study offers new insights into the climate-migration nexus.

Internal displacements due to conflict and disasters are a major driver of global human mobility. While the total numbers of internal displacements by cause and geographical region are increasingly well documented, a significant gap remains in the availability of disaggregated data on key variables, such as age, sex, education, livelihood for the populations impacted by these events. Data from localised case studies can provide this granularity; however, they are difficult to generalise to other displacement contexts. This lack of disaggregated profiles complicates the work of decision makers who need to allocate resources efficiently to address the diverse needs of impacted populations. Here we contribute to bridging this knowledge gap by providing harmonised global estimates of the age, sex, income, education, health, and land use of populations living in displacement sites. We derived these estimates by combining geolocated data covering ~27,000 internal displacement events between 2017 and 2024, representing a total of 349 million displacements, with gridded global maps of demographic, socio-economic, and land use variables. Our results provide a statistical baseline for the profiles of displacement-affected populations worldwide, highlighting the substantial diversity of groups impacted by different displacement causes and in different geographical regions.

Labor migration in Central Asia has been a dynamic process since the beginning of the 1990s. Apart from the labor migration tendencies, the Central Asian region is not an exception from the climate change issues. Data on the weather since the beginning of the 20th century demonstrate an increasing trend in annual temperature, and projects predict further intensification of warming in the region. Along with this, the issue of water scarcity poses challenges for solving sustainable development issues. Despite the climate change challenges and migration dynamics in the region, only a limited number of studies have explored the relationship between migration and climate change in Central Asian countries. This study empirically examines the effect of the drought of 2021 on migration in the Kyrgyz Republic. A panel dataset was created using nationally representative household survey data for the period 2019–2022 with 4240 households in each year and integrated with the satellite data on precipitation at the community level to measure the drought. Empirical estimations based on the difference-in-differences (DiD) method with fixed effects show that international migration of household members living in drought-affected locations increased during the post-shock year. Both urban and rural households demonstrated a positive migration trend. This finding suggests that policy aimed at creating resilience to the drought shock should be comprehensive and take into consideration its economy-wide effects.

Armed conflicts forcibly displace entire populations, yet these migrations go beyond mere geographical transposition. In Colombia, ethnic communities (Indigenous and Afro-Colombian) conceive their “territory” not solely as a physical space but as a vital network, a fabric of human and non-human relationships. This vision is embedded in a relational ontology where coexistence between species and natural elements forms an indivisible whole.
Forced displacement does not only entail material loss but also the fragmentation of living bonds. However, when these populations are compelled to move due to war, they carry with them their knowledge, traditions, and often, quite literally, their seeds. Sowing in exile thus enables the reconstitution of a living territory and the continuation of coviability between humans and non-humans. This phenomenon extends beyond the mere preservation of traditional agricultural practices; it constitutes an active socio-ecological repair, allowing displaced individuals to rebuild a home in exile and maintain cosmovisions where nature is not a resource but a subject of rights.
This paper will examine how Colombia’s war-displaced communities redefine “home” through the continuity of agricultural and cultural practices in new spaces. It will draw on recent rulings by the Jurisdicción Especial para la Paz (JEP) recognizing the notion of “territory as a victim” and ethnographic studies of displaced communities. Far from being a mere adaptation to displacement, this territorial mobility of ancestral knowledge challenges conventional transitional justice frameworks and proposes an alternative vision of reparation, where nature plays a central role in rebuilding social and environmental ties.

Tenure security is essential to realise people’s rights. But mainstream notions of tenure security rest on a (mostly implicit) ontological assumption of spatial fixation, of people relying on sedentary livelihoods. This leads to conceptual and policy limitations when considering the tenure (in)securities of people on the move; because of violent conflict or climate change, or because they are pressed by states to relocate (for development, investments, (climate) security etc). How can we re-think tenure security of people who become spatially un-settled? Tenure security is now widely regarded as “perceived”, but what do we know about perceptions of tenure security when many other aspects of people’s lives are insecure, including where they will live and for how long? How do people obtain some form of tenure security in displacement? Do they maintain or recover tenure security in the places left behind? Do they attach value and derive benefits from the lands left behind? How do they compare tenure securities in these different locations where they have different belongings? It is increasingly acknowledged that people who move, do not simply abandon their places of origin, but maintain translocal connections that bear on resource access. This paper looks into people’s multiple and fluid tenure securities in both communities of origin and in displacement, and how these securities evolve over time, drawing on empirical research in different African settings (amongst others DRC, Mozambique, and Burundi). A better understanding of the ontologies that shape tenure security for people on the move may inform land policies.

Climate change poses an escalating threat to agriculture-dependent communities in Southeast Asia, particularly in Thailand, Vietnam, and Cambodia. Extreme weather events such as floods, droughts, and sea-level rise increasingly force farmers to abandon their land, leading to displacement and economic instability. While various adaptation strategies have been implemented, a proactive and preventive approach to climate action and policy is required to reduce loss, damage, and forced displacement. This study explores land allocation governance as a planned relocation strategy for climate-displaced farmers, ensuring secure land tenure, sustainable livelihoods, and climate resilience.

By examining three case studies in mainland Southeast Asia, the research investigates how land ownership, access to resources, and policy frameworks influence the success of planned relocation efforts. The study highlights the necessity of just and sustainable land allocation mechanisms that integrate livelihood reconstruction, social integration, and climate resilience planning. The research also seeks to address policy gaps in land rights, governance, and environmental sustainability, advocating for a participatory approach that includes vulnerable communities in decision-making.

Through this research, we aim to raise awareness about the urgent need for proactive climate policies that mitigate displacement risks while fostering long-term stability for affected farmers. By aligning planned relocation strategies with sustainable land governance, the study offers critical insights into ensuring that displaced farmers not only recover but thrive in the face of climate change.

Legal research on climate-induced displacement (CID) has uncovered a mismatch between existing protection regimes and climate mobilities. Not only is CID frequently within state borders – pointing to the ill-suitedness of post-war protection mechanisms like the 1951 Refugee Convention –, novel legal conundrums like the erasure of Pacific island states by rising sea levels are entirely unaddressed by current mechanisms. The inability of legal regimes to account for diverse mobilities jeopardises climate justice, both from an intragenerational and intergenerational perspective. As regards the former, CID may under exceptional circumstances threaten core entitlements such as the right to life, as affirmed by the Human Rights Committee in Ioane Teitiota v New Zealand. Additionally, CID incurs intergenerational questions, where abrupt or slow-onset environmental change forces individuals or even entire peoples to abandon ancestral homelands.

The Warsaw International Mechanism’s 2024 update to the technical paper on non-economic losses (NEL) acknowledges loss of territory and habitability as drivers of climate mobility. Though facilitative in nature, this constitutes a recognition of CID as NEL by state parties to the international climate regime. In light of the 2024 update, this project expands existing legal research on CID, approaching the topic from an international environmental law perspective. It explores the applicability of states’ customary duty to prevent transboundary harm to CID as a dimension of NEL, arguing that this obligation extends to immaterial dimensions of climate harm, including CID. In doing so, this research advances a holistic vision for protection in the context of different climate mobilities.

Although no unified nomenclature is widely accepted for human mobility in the context of environmental and climate change (HMECC), global stakeholders and frameworks share an understanding of its complexities, manifestations, and limitations.
This research examines the role of knowledge production in establishing dominant paradigms for complex and uncertain global issues, using the development of the HMECC concept in publications by the UN Agency for Migration (IOM) and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) between 2010 and 2022 as a case study.
Drawing on Oliver Nay’s theory of the production of hegemonic knowledge (2014), the study analyses HMECC conceptualisation, its evolution over time, and its incorporation into global frameworks. Nay’s theory highlights the uncertainties surrounding migration governance and climate change, the mandate competition among multilateral organisations, and the integration of cross-cutting issues such as gender, youth, health, and conflict.
The findings reveal that IOM and UNHCR’s knowledge production between 2010 and 2022 followed Nay’s three-stage process. Both organisations selected aspects to emphasise or omit for political and legitimacy reasons, producing a partial understanding of the phenomenon and reinforcing calls for further research. However, the theory overlooks partnerships among international organisations and the intersection of overlapping agendas, including climate change, disaster management, humanitarian response, and desertification.
Ultimately, IOM and UNHCR’s knowledge production serves as a political tool to shape collective understandings of HMECC, influence global frameworks, and reinforce their legitimacy in a competitive international landscape.

Up to two million people from Small Island Developing States face permanent displacement due to climate change—yet no legally binding international protection exists for them. In response, the German Advisory Council on Global Change (WBGU) and the German Green Party have proposed a Climate Passport, granting environmentally displaced persons from affected islands the right to residency in safe countries. This proposal has sparked a political debate: Does Germany have a moral obligation to host environmentally displaced persons who would bear such a Climate Passport?
The intersection of climate ethics and migration ethics is still in its infancy, and current discussions often rely solely on the Polluter Pays Principle (PPP) to deduce moral responsibility. However, I argue that this is insufficient. While the PPP holds historical emitters accountable, it does not address the capacity of states to provide refuge. Germany, as both a major contributor to climate change and a state with significant financial and infrastructural means, must also be held to the Ability to Pay Principle (APP). The combination of these principles strengthens the claim that Germany has a moral obligation to host Climate Passport holders.
By critically engaging with the Climate Passport proposal in the broader context of climate mobility, this argument challenges the international community to rethink its moral obligations towards environmentally displaced persons in light of historical entanglements and the moral imperatives of climate justice. Rather than viewing climate change-induced displacement as an inevitable crisis, it urges a shift toward proactive, justice-based migration policies.

Climate-induced displacement in Mogadishu, Somalia, demands locally grounded solutions to advance climate justice. This study, conducted collaboratively by junior researchers based in Mogadishu, investigates planned relocation as a strategy for adaptation and equity. Centering community voices, the research employs participatory methods—including community-led interviews, focus group discussions, and policy analysis—to assess existing relocation programs, governance challenges, and socio-economic barriers. Findings reveal a critical lack of formal relocation frameworks, exacerbated by fragmented governance, inadequate infrastructure, and policy gaps that overlook displaced populations’ agency. Local researchers highlight how top-down approaches alienate communities, while grassroots insights emphasize the need for inclusive decision-making and infrastructure tailored to urban informal settlements. The study identifies opportunities for integrating local knowledge into policy, such as co-designing relocation plans and strengthening community-led monitoring systems. By foregrounding the experiences of displaced Somalis and the contributions of emerging local scholars, this work challenges dominant narratives in climate mobility discourse and advocates for adaptive governance rooted in equity. Aligned with ECMN’s transdisciplinary ethos, the research underscores the transformative potential of embedding local expertise in global climate adaptation strategies, offering a model for participatory action in the Global South.