Displacement, forced migration and other forms of involuntary human mobility must be central to addressing climate change-related loss and damage. Climate-related displacement undermines human rights, well-being and development, resulting in a broad range of adverse impacts on individuals, communities, societies and States, raising important questions and concerns regarding climate justice. Any comprehensive approach to addressing climate-related loss and damage must …

The recent creation of a loss and damage fund under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change was heralded as a major breakthrough for Global South negotiators. As details of the fund are currently being negotiated, some analysts are calling for ‘objective’ means through which funding would be allocated to ‘particularly vulnerable’ developing countries. On the basis of a …

Globally, people are disproportionally affected by climate change consistently and are enforced to adapt, with or without external assistance. Nonetheless, the current mitigation and adaptation efforts have been deemed insufficient to resist losses and damages (L&D), particularly in vulnerable countries from the Global South. Amongst this countries, mainly women, people with disability, and other marginalized communities with less adaptive capacity, …

“Local communities say, climate change is creating ‘cascading effects of climate change from which we cannot recover’” At Climate Refugees we believe frontline communities should be at the center of informing decision-making processes. Extreme weather and climate change-related events are disproportionately impacting the world’s poorest and marginalized people. We are not alone in our beliefs, with just about every policy …

Global human mobility in the context of climate change and associated environmental degradation and disasters has become a subject of high-level political interest. There is strong demand for evidence-based quantitative understanding of how climate has affected mobility thus far and how it may do so in future. This report by the International Organization for Migration (IOM) Global Data Institute explores …

IMAGE: Davilynn Severson and Hano Ganer look for belongings through the ashes of their family’s home in the aftermath of a wildfire in Lahaina, western Maui, Hawaii on August 11, 2023.  (Photo by PATRICK T. FALLON/AFP via Getty Images) The devastation in Maui as a result of the deadliest wildfire there in a century prompts the inevitable question: what next for the …

The planned relocation of entire communities to less hazard-exposed destinations is an increasingly salient climate change adaptation strategy but often results in maladaptive livelihood outcomes. There needs to be understanding of how planning decisions affect outcomes—relocated people’s access to sustainable livelihoods, including physical, economic, natural, human, social and cultural assets. Here, drawing on data from 14 completed flood-related relocation cases, …

Climate-induced displacement has direct implications for non-economic loss and damage, including threats to health and wellbeing and loss of culture and agency. Displacement due to extreme events is particularly challenging for small island developing states (SIDS) given their high exposure and vulnerability to tropical cyclones. Devastating hurricanes in the Caribbean in 2017 exposed non-economic loss and damage associated with prolonged …

A Non-Economic Loss and Damage Explainer WHAT IS NON-ECONOMIC LOSS AND DAMAGE? Due to a failure of rapid mitigation and effective adaptation, climate change negatively affects human societies and the natural systems they rely on for material and immaterial wellbeing. This abject failure of countries, particularly in the Global North, to stabilise their greenhouse gas emissions and enable sufficient and …

Climate impacts are heating up in 2023. Marked by heatwaves and wildfires across the globe, the month of July was the hottest on record for the planet. Recent events that have devastated climate vulnerable countries including the havoc created by Cyclone Freddy in Malawi, Mozambique and Madagascar, severe heatwaves in Asia, Cyclone Mocha and its aftermath in Myanmar and Bangladesh, to name just a few. These disasters bring home the reality of …