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The relationship between climate change and migration has been researched for over three decades, and yet remains fragmented and fraught with the attribution question: are migrants forcibly displaced because of climate change or other factors?

It is by now clear that multicausal environmental conditions, such as floods or loss of land produce severe or extreme distress are driving forced evacuation or other catastrophic need for movement away from danger. We also understand some of the associations with long-term and temporary migration as well as domestic versus cross-border moves (Kaczan and Orgill-Meyer 2020). Other conditions, such as prolonged exposure to sporadic hazards, are manifested in heightened insecurity and are stochastic with fuzzy patterns of out-migration (Pedersen 1995; Piguet, Pécoud, and de Guchteneire 2011; Wiederkehr, Beckmann, and Hermans 2018).

In the mitigation space, secondary and tertiary level carbon emissions (Scope 2&3 emissions) are clearly understood as being ancillary effects of the consumption cycle, such as transportation or packaging. It is therefore relatively easy to generate policies at an organisational or product level to examine a supply chain in its entirety. In migration studies, however, a similar extension has not been made of secondary or tertiary effects of climate change as well as other conditions, including social and economic capital, on a household’s decision to pack up and move.

Part of the difficulty is that the links between climate change and migration are at least two or three steps away and multicausal. If a farmer moves from a rural community to the nearby urban settlement, it might be because his crops failed and the non-farm enterprise that his son managed collapsed due to macroeconomic conditions, which themselves have a strong connection to energy geopolitics. Similarly, a widow might lose her farm and her job at the local school and use her meagre inheritance to pay a broker for international passage.

Each of these conditions might be linked partly or wholly to climate change combined with lack of institutional support and other factors. Conventional attribution studies will not link these events satisfactorily in complex social systems, even by modelling their combined effects on families to climate change, because their imputed relationships are too simplistic and do not account for emergent effects while aggregating assumed orthogonal factors.

Nevertheless, in a growing number of empirical cases, there are clear proximate and distant connections between climate change and migration. Establishing these with scientific verity is important because the outcomes of rising migration are especially alarming, a rise in overall impoverishment, lack of meaningful life activities, worsening crime and violence, and so on (Longhi 2012; Jørgensen 2016). This means that there is a wide field for exploration in the social dimension of adaptation strategies to climate change that include migration.

This special issue of Frontiers in Climate aims to compile a diverse selection of papers, including empirical and theoretical contributions to addressing contemporary questions around climate change and forced migration.

Set against this background, we welcome papers that:

•    Propose viable legal and regional political arrangements for asylum seekers
•    Analyse global political conditions that may act as barriers or opportunities for addressing asylum seekers in the future
•    Identify sources of vulnerability in climate-change induced displacement hotspots
•    Report examples and case studies of human migration as expressions of climate change adaptation
•    Report on field studies that add insights to drivers and conditions for migration (and trapped populations) and the mitigating roles of social networks and support provided by NGOs and other charitable action during and following disasters
•    Provide empirical and conceptual contributions exploring the linkages between climate change and migration in areas of causation, attribution, human rights, and/or justice
•    Propose other ethical arguments for addressing the needs of asylum seekers

For more information, see https://www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/52738/current-research-in-climate-change-and-forced-migration

Abstract Submission Deadline 30 July 2023
Manuscript Submission Deadline 30 November 2023

The organizers are excited to announce the call for abstracts for the sixth ICARUS workshop, 29 September – 1 October 2023. The workshop brings together scholars, researchers, students, decision-makers, and activists working on adaptation to climate variability and change.

This year's workshop themes are: Transformation; Justice; Responses and Solutions.  Read more about the workshop, themes, and how to submit your abstract at https://umsusdev.org/icarus-conferences/icarus-vi/  

We are thrilled to invite you to join us for the 2023 Human Planet Forum, which will take place from 11-12 July in New York, NY. The focus for this year’s Forum will center around “Post-Pandemic Priorities for the Human Planet: Strengthening Community Connections.” It will be hosted by the European Commission, the Group on Earth Observations, the United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network (UN SDSN), and the Columbia Climate School’s Center for International Earth Science Information Network (CIESIN).

-    Day 1 (July 11) of the event will take place at The Forum, Columbia University (125th & Broadway, Foyer).

-    Day 2 (July 12) of the event will take place at the Diplomat Room, Millennium Hotel (One UN Plaza)

Hotel rooms are available through the Columbia Visitors & Personal Travel site, where you can find CU preferred vendors and get CU Rates. Guests are required to create a one-time account to access the online booking tool and then to enter their own credit cards. Guests are responsible for booking or canceling their individual stays.

For more information and to register visit: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/human-planet-forum-2023-tickets-609557802797

Registration for this event closes 30 June 2023.

Building on the success of the 2019 and 2021 conferences on Managed Retreat, the Columbia Climate School is pleased to announce that the next conference, At What Point Managed Retreat?: Habitability and Mobility in an Era of Climate Change, will be held from 20-23 June 2023 at Columbia University. The organizers are inviting session proposals for traditional academic paper sessions, roundtable panels, and workshops, as well as paper and poster presentation abstracts.

The deadline for the call for sessions is 2 December 2022, and the deadline for the call for paper is 20 January 2023.

For a full list of conference themes and submission instructions and forms, visit https://adaptation.ei.columbia.edu/managed-retreat-2023

Organizers of this event are pleased to invite you to participate in the Policy Dialogue, held on the 26th and 27th of June 2023 in Geneva, Switzerland, and organized in the context of the HABITABLE EU project. This project aims to significantly advance the understanding of the links between climate change effects and human mobility, to better anticipate their future evolution and adequately address climate migration challenges.

The main objectives are to:
•    present the initial results of the research undertaken in the framework of this project, including the first policy recommendations;
•    discuss, inform and challenge, with the audience, our proposed measures, with the aim of ensuring coherence, efficiency and policy integration across the different sectors, most notably climate adaptation, migration, disaster prevention, and protection of human rights.

The event is meant to attract primarily practitioners and experts on human rights-related issues, namely representatives of NGOs, international organisations, and universities, as well as members of the Human Rights Council.

The event will be divided into two sessions. The Policy Dialogue, taking place on June 27th, will be preceded by a technical session, organized on June 26th, where the HABITABLE consortium will be present to share preliminary results from the different project Work Packages and engage in deeper exchange.

Technical session: June 26th, afternoon (4 hours), International Environment House

Policy Dialogue: June 27th, policy dialogue, lunchtime (90 minutes), Palais des Nations (TBC)

For more information about the event, these different sessions, and the HABITABLE project, see https://habitableproject.org/event/policy-dialogue-what-is-habitability-climate-change-and-human-rights/.

Attendees are encouraged to confirm their participation by registering via the registration link before Friday 16th of June 2023. A detailed agenda, as well as the practical access details, will be communicated a few weeks in advance to those who have confirmed their attendance. The event will be conducted in English.