Governing Climate Mobility (GCM)

Understanding the impacts of climate change on human mobility is a serious challenge for the 21st century. DIIS’ new interdisciplinary research programme Governing Climate Mobility (GCM, 2019-2022) sets out to address this challenge. The programme examines how differing governance contexts, national and local, affect adaptive climate mobility. It will be conducted in partnership with researchers from the Centre for Migration Studies, University of Ghana and the Forum for Social Studies, Ethiopia.

The GCM programme’s focus on governance factors is a novel approach that offers a valuable contribution to understandings of climate-related mobility. Currently, explanations of climate-related mobility lack insight into the role of governance at the local level. Yet governance factors, such as local infrastructure, legal frameworks or support to livelihoods, are known to be crucial for local climate change adaptation. They are therefore potentially pivotal in shaping individuals’ and households’ mobility options and decisions in climate change affected areas. GCM focuses specifically on peri-urban and rural areas of Ethiopia and Ghana that are affected by slow-onset climate change. Knowledge on the implications of such slow-onset changes is limited, yet effects such as increasing temperatures or shifts in precipitation patters can impact significantly on local livelihoods, with implications for mobility practices.

The new insights GCM provides will support evidence-based policies for adaptive climate-related mobility. The programme’s findings will be used to identify opportunities and gaps in local and national government policies that affect climate mobility as well as providing input for international governance.

A research programme that looks at how the nature of governance in a country, local and national, effects mobility practices in the context of climate change.