Why climate migration is not managed retreat: Six justifications

Climate change and the planned relocation of people: A longitudinal analysis of Vunidogoloa, Fiji

Rising sea levels under a changing climate will cause permanent inundation, flooding, coastal erosion, and saltwater intrusion. An emerging adaptation response is planned relocation, a directed process of relocating people, assets, and infrastructure to safer locations. Climate-related planned relocation is an unfolding process, yet no longitudinal studies have examined outcomes over time. Vunidogoloa, a low-lying coastal village in Fiji, relocated to higher land in 2014. This paper considers the dynamic outcomes of relocation, based on qualitative data collected between 2015 and 2023. It examines: residents' changing experience of climate and environmental risk; governance and decision-making processes over time; improved access to many resources and services along with incomplete infrastructure; opportunities and threats to health; and changing social organization and place-based values. The paper foregrounds change over time and provides in-depth examination of dynamic planned relocation experiences and (mal)adaptation outcomes in Vunidogoloa, Fiji.

Managed retreat and planned retreat: a systematic literature review

Vulnerable locations, such as coastlines, are at a high risk of loss and damage. Such places will suffer deleterious impacts as climate change impacts are increasingly realized. As societies try to adapt to these impacts, managed or planned retreat-aimed at moving people and assets away from vulnerable locations-is gaining increased attention. Despite this increased attention, systematic literature reviews of the retreat literature remain scarce. This paper undertakes such review and uncovers a marked increase in retreat scholarly research papers in the past 5 years. An analysis of 135 managed and planned retreat journal articles is completed. Findings include a strong emphasis on regional or local case studies exploring governance, policy or institutional settings and levers across a range of geographies. Property rights and market interventions, such as compensation schemes, evidence the prevalence of neoliberal predilections. This emphasizes the importance of renewed engagement with political economy scholarship vis-à-vis climate change adaptation, also supported by the sharp increase in the evidenced social and environmental justice impacts. This article is part of the theme issue 'Nurturing resilient marine ecosystems'.

Climate change-induced migration: a bibliometric review

Background

This paper has reviewed the international research on the terms “climate change” and “human migration” from 1999 to 2019. To this end, a bibliometric and a cluster analysis by fractional accounting have been carried out using two of the most important databases: Web of Science (WoS) and Scopus. The research found and studied 140 documents from WoS Core Collection and 193 from Scopus.

Results

The results show a continual increase in the number of articles published and citations received during the whole period studied. The U.S., U.K., Germany and China have been shown to be the most productive countries and there is a predominance of North American organizations supporting and fostering research on these topics.

Conclusions

The main contribution of this article is the analysis of new tendencies. The trend shows a transition from concepts such as vulnerability, climate change, land degradation, refugees and security to others such as concepts such as international migration, climate justice, sustainability, human rights and disaster risk reduction. Future research in this field should address the comparison of results from research focused on human beings to a focus on other living beings.

Vulnerable City, recipient city, or climate destination? Towards a typology of domestic climate migration impacts in US cities

Globally, the impacts of climate change will uproot and displace millions of individuals, and American cities are on the frontline of these future population shifts. Our analysis of empirical documentation of migration factors as well as theoretical demographic models shows three predominate types of US cities affected by climate migration pathways: (1) vulnerable cities-those that will suffer significant losses in population and tax revenue; (2) recipient cities-those that serve as unsuspecting or unwilling "receiving communities" from sudden-onset disasters without preparation; and (3) climate destinations-cities seeking to rebrand their communities as "climate havens" that welcome displaced residents through equitable planning and preparation. Despite the evidence of such migration trends, there currently is limited guidance for governments at any scale to plan and prepare for these changes. Forced or unplanned migrations will have a profound and disproportionate impact on communities of color, the elderly, and other at-risk populations that are already experiencing the compounding effects of climate and environmental injustices. A lack of adequate preparation and resources dedicated to minimizing the impacts of planned and unplanned migration pathways could exacerbate existing economic, environmental, and social inequalities. Drawing from case studies in cities across the country that illustrate the typology outlined above, this paper presents a framework with preliminary strategies for policy makers to bridge knowledge gaps and design responses for both short- and long-term planning initiatives. In particular, we encourage the use of typological frameworks for implementing scenario planning that can help cities navigate the challenges of planning for future climate-migration to plan for more sustainable, inclusive, and equitable cities for all.