Abstract
This chapter reviews the evolution of environmental migration research over recent decades and summarizes key conceptual developments. It identifies priority areas for current and future research, with a particular focus on research that supports policymaking. Environmental migration processes are much more complex than once thought, and there is more still to learn about drivers and connections with broader socio-economic processes. Particular attention should be given to linkages between climate adaptation and labour migration flows, and identification of thresholds at which adaptation switches from in situ options to migration. The gender dimensions of environmental migration are especially understudied. Existing international agreements provide reliable policy guidance – particularly the Global Compact on Safe and Orderly Migration – but have yet to be widely implemented, providing impetus for continued scholarly efforts to identify how migration patterns are likely to evolve in a climate-disrupted future.
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Notes
- 1.
In doing so, the author echoed similar, earlier neo-Malthusian warnings made by Paul Ehrlich, the Club of Rome, the WorldWatch Institute, and others of an impending global food crisis.
- 2.
See McLeman and Gemenne (2018) for a detailed review.
- 3.
This observation was made to me a decade ago by the accomplished scholar Myron Gutmann, and I have repeated it often.
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McLeman, R. (2022). Environmental Migration Scholarship and Policy: Recent Progress, Future Challenges. In: Hunter, L.M., Gray, C., Véron, J. (eds) International Handbook of Population and Environment. International Handbooks of Population, vol 10. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-76433-3_24
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