Changing Climate, Changing Migration

The coordinated global response to climate change-driven displacement is relatively new. Just a few decades ago, virtually no governments were paying attention to the ways in which people were being displaced by extreme weather, sea-level rise, and other climate events. Although the international response remains a work in progress, significant strides have been made to bring the world together.

One of the people responsible for th...

Climate change can be devastating for individuals’ health and safety. Climate-linked natural disasters can cause physical injuries and damage health-care systems, while slow-onset changes such sea-level rise can lead to the spread of disease and make it harder for people to obtain care.

In that context, leaving a climate-vulnerable place can potentially lead to better health outcomes—but only under the right circumstanc...

Climate change is making home insurance more expensive and less available, as the multibillion-dollar losses caused by hurricanes, wildfires, and other disasters increase in scale. Rising insurance premiums can push some people to relocate or force others to either pay more money to remain in their home or go without insurance and risk catastrophe if disaster strikes. Residents, insurance companies, and policymakers in high-income ...

Refugees are often some of the people most vulnerable to climate change. After fleeing armed conflict or persecution, many refugees end up in camps located in rural areas, with few resources and little support. That can leave them vulnerable to floods, storms, extreme heat, or other impacts of climate change.

This episode focuses on these impacts, with insights from Ayoo Irene Hellen, a South Sudanese refugee in Uganda and climate ...

Many Indigenous people have a deep connection to their ancestral homelands that dates back centuries. What happens when climate change and other factors force them to move away from those lands? This episode discusses issues affecting Indigenous people, especially in the Americas. Our guest is environmental scientist Jessica Hernandez, a climate justice and Indigenous advocate. She discusses the factors compelling migration for Ind...

Africa may be the most climate-vulnerable region of the world, with drought, extreme heat and storms, and other impacts affecting millions across the continent. These environmental events have forced people from their homes and in some cases even contributed to conflict between different groups. By far, most climate-affected individuals who migrate stay either within their own country or go elsewhere on the continent, rather than m...

It is not guaranteed that someone harmed by a natural disaster or other environmental change will leave their home. A complicated web of factors affects whether climate-vulnerable individuals want to—or even can—move. One of these factors is financial: How much money or other resources someone has at their disposal.

In this episode, we speak with Kelsea Best of The Ohio State University about climate (im)mobility and th...

Children are especially vulnerable to displacement linked to climate change. Each year, millions of young people are displaced by weather-related disasters, as schools and other services break down and adults send children away to find safety. Forced from their homes, children often face new challenges, including being unable to access education or medical care, and even heightened risk of violence and other dangers. Despite the un...

Within the next few decades, rising sea levels could wipe some small Pacific Island nations off the face of the earth. The prospect that the physical territory of countries such as Kiribati and Tuvalu is no longer habitable raises the prospect that their nationals could lose their citizenship, becoming stateless. It also poses profound questions for international law and the obligations of other countries.

How likely is this possib...

It is no easy task to say with certainty that a particular storm, drought, or other extreme weather event causes human displacement, or that those individual events are due to human-caused climate change. Hurricanes, wildfires, mudslides, monsoons, and other sudden-onset events, as well as slow-onset ones such as drought, extreme heat, and sea-level rise, have happened for millennia. To attribute specific impacts to human-made envi...

The small island nations that make up the Caribbean are incredibly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. Many people and businesses are concentrated along the coastline, exposing them to intensifying hurricanes and rising sea levels. Are these hazards prompting greater displacement, either within the region or beyond? And could they reduce tourism, prompting economic shocks to countries dependent on vacationers? This episode...

Does AI have a role to play in mapping and predicting climate migration trends? In this episode of the podcast, we explore the issue with John Aoga, a postdoctoral researcher at UCLouvain in Belgium. He led a study using machine learning algorithms to trace how climate shocks affected migration intentions in several countries in West Africa. We discuss his findings and the broader promise and peril of using these types of technolog...

Under the right circumstances, climate-induced migration can aggravate the drivers of violent conflict. In places such as the Middle East and West Africa’s Sahel region, migration during times of environmental precarity can upset delicate social and demographic balances and place additional pressure on local authorities. Left to fester, the results can be deadly. This episode explores this connection between climate change an...

Floods, drought, extreme temperatures, and other climate events have devastated parts of Afghanistan and Pakistan. Repercussions of climate change come on top of years of conflict, which have left countless numbers of people unable to adapt to changing conditions. In response, many have fled, either in short-term displacement or permanent migration. Our podcast speaks with researchers Maryam Abbasi and Nasrat Sayed about how climat...

Natural disasters and other impacts of climate change are already affecting migration, but often in complex ways. This episode, we speak with Julia Neusner, a lawyer and researcher with the International Refugee Assistance Project. She has conducted surveys and interviews with migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border about whether, where, and how they have experienced climate impacts, and offers some of their stories here. More than 40 p...

Many countries need more workers to fill jobs in clean energy and other sectors that are critical in the fight against a warming planet. Immigrants may be one part of the solution to the challenges posed by climate change. But governments have been slow to ramp up responses to recruit, train, or accredit foreign-born workers necessary for the green transition, with one model estimating a shortage of 7 million green workers globally...

The international humanitarian protection system that was built in the aftermath of World War II does not offer protection for people displaced by climate change. In this episode, former UN Deputy High Commissioner for Refugees T. Alexander Aleinikoff, who is now Executive Dean of The New School for Social Research, calls the refugee system “broken.” Rather than expanding to accommodate “climate refugees,” h...

The ways in which people talk about climate migration can affect how individuals are treated. While many activists frame climate migrants as blameless victims of circumstance and even refer to them as “climate refugees,” this approach does not always lead to public sympathy. Moreover, highlighting the role of climate in displacement can unintentionally cause a backlash among host communities, who themselves likely are e...

The Arctic region is warming much faster than other parts of the world. Nordic countries—Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden—have a reputation for being at the forefront of efforts to combat climate change. But does their track record also extend to helping people who have been displaced by environmental impacts, internally and internationally? In this episode, we discuss the impacts and responses in the Nordi...