Migration, environment and climate change (Final report)

This final report provides an overview of key findings and identified gaps in data and knowledge, national climate policies and strategies, project planning and funding, regional responses, and international policy processes, as well as recommended entry points for further research and action. The linkages between climate change, environmental degradation, and migration are complex and multidimensional, with environmental change affecting human mobility in multiple ways.

This report summarises the findings of three papers produced during the research project, as well as the knowledge and policy gaps identified, along with approaches and entry points for addressing them. The first of the three papers is a review of literature on the topic of environmental migration and provides an up-to-date overview of key findings from the growing number of studies exploring the environment-migration nexus – including those examining how different forms of human mobility may support or undermine adaptation to environmental and climate change. Drawing on the literature review, the second paper, titled “Migration, environment and climate change: Impacts”, focuses on some of the key ways in which selected environmental phenomena shape human mobility. Further, it also delves into considerations of how other factors (e.g. political, economic, and demographic) come into play, providing insights to inform numerous policy areas, including climate change adaptation. Building on these two papers, the third paper focuses on policy implications and entry points for strengthening responses to human mobility in national and international climate-change adaptation policy and finance.