Editorial: Climate migration research and policy connections ... - ReliefWeb

Editorial: Climate migration research and policy connections: progress since the Foresight Report - World | ReliefWeb

Kees van der Geest, Alex de Sherbinin, François Gemenne and Koko Warner

Abstract

The Foresight Report on Migration and Global Environmental Change (2011) was a first major effort to build the evidence base on the linkages between environmental changes and migration and explore the policy options to promote adaptive migration, avoid forced displacement and provide protection for displaced people and “trapped populations." This first special issue of Frontiers in Climate Mobility sought to revisit the Foresight Report and its recommendations.

The editorial introduction to this special issue identifies three lasting impacts of the Foresight Report:
It helped to attenuate the influence of environmental determinism in academic and policy debates and generated more sophisticated approaches that acknowledge the complexity of the relations between environmental change and migration.
The report highlighted that millions of people will be unable to move away from locations in which they are extremely vulnerable to environmental change. This led to the birth of a new area of research on trapped populations or involuntary immobility.
The Foresight Report helped frame migration in the context of global environmental change not just as a problem or risk, but also an opportunity, emphasizing the links between migration and adaptation.

Furthermore, the editorial describes three main developments in this field of research since the publication of the Foresight Report (2011):
Many scholars have started to prefer the term “climate mobility” over “climate migration”. Research on Human Mobility in the context of climate change recognizes the multiple ways in which people are mobile or constrained in their mobility.
Following the surge in empirical studies on environmental migration after Foresight (2011), many meta-analyses and systematic reviews were conducted. These helped reveal patterns beyond the unique and context-specific findings of localized case studies.
More and more scholars have started to use the Aspirations & Capabilities Framework” to study climate mobility and immobility. The framework posits that people move when they perceive it is in their interest to move and when they are able to do so.