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Natural resources, human mobility and sustainability: a review and research gap analysis

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A Correction to this article was published on 28 February 2022

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Abstract

Pressures on natural resources, such as from environmental change, have influenced the global human mobility landscape. In this article, we review the scientific evidence on the interlinkages between natural resources, human migration and sustainability. Drawing on a review of the existing literature in combination with the authors’ research experience, we consider a range of conceptual perspectives and empirical studies covered in the literature since the turn of the millennium. Our analysis considers the broad mobility spectrum—from adaptive migration to forced displacement and immobility. Climate change both acts as a natural resource threat in this context as well as having the potential to influence mobility drivers, which, in turn, can influence natural resource availability. The review aims to provide scholars of sustainability science with a coherent curation of the research thus far on the topic for charting a way forward for more constructive and original investigations. To overcome scientific gaps identified, finally we suggest that the multiplicity of linkages and feedbacks between natural resources and migration across different spatial, temporal and social scales lends itself to a complex adaptive (sub)system (CAS) framing within larger socio-ecological systems. As a CAS, the outcomes of migration and natural resources linkages are highly non-linear and can be emergent: the sustainable management of them, therefore, requires flexible, robust and equitable approaches.

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Notes

  1. https://www.resourcepanel.org/glossary

  2. ‘Resources’ is often in literature on environment and migration, but not necessarily deployed in our meaning. Resources often referred to a variety of types of capital, for example, or the ‘resources to migrate’. Therefore, in many cases, we had to comb through studies to assess their relevance for our purposes. Thus, the inclusion of authors from a variety of fields and expertise and consultation with external experts offering relevant literature was invaluable to this study.

  3. SCOPUS, and the CLIMIG database, compiled by the University of Neuchâtel offered important databases for this review, https://climig.com/

  4. This, however, is less prominent in reviewed literature, which in many cases highlighted the impacts of climate change over, for example, development projects.

  5. Following Borras and Franco (2013: 1725), land grabbing is defined as ‘the capturing of control of relatively vast tracts of land and other natural resources through a variety of mechanisms and forms, carried out through extra-economic coercion that involves large-scale capital, which often shifts resource use orientation into extraction, whether for international or domestic purposes’.

  6. Guatemala, Peru, Ghana, Tanzania, Bangladesh, India, Thailand and Vietnam

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Funded by United Nations Environment Programme, International Resource Panel.

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Correspondence to Caroline Zickgraf.

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Handled by Federico Demaraia, University of Barcelona, Spain.

The original online version of this article was revised due the name of funding institution was published incorrectly and corrected in this version.

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Zickgraf, C., Ali, S.H., Clifford, M. et al. Natural resources, human mobility and sustainability: a review and research gap analysis. Sustain Sci 17, 1077–1089 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11625-021-01073-z

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11625-021-01073-z

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