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Conclusion: Migration as Adaptation: Conceptual Origins, Recent Developments, and Future Directions

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Migration, Risk Management and Climate Change: Evidence and Policy Responses

Part of the book series: Global Migration Issues ((IOMS,volume 6))

Abstract

This chapter traces how migration has increasingly been seen as a form of adaptation to environmental change. Historically, the term ‘adaptation’ was used only to describe adjustments migrants make as they attempt in integrate into receiving areas. The use of the term ‘adaptation’ with respect to migration decision-making and causality arose in the 1990s with the signing of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the reporting activities of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, in which responses to the impacts of climate change are framed in the language of vulnerability and adaptation. Under the UNFCCC’s Cancun Adaptation Framework and National Adaptation Plans for climate change, migration is explicitly identified as a means of adaptation that should be supported where appropriate. At the same time as these policy initiatives were unfolding, researchers independently and through coordinated projects like the UK Foresight study of global environmental migration began developing empirical evidence to support to conceptualization of migration as a form of adaptation. Although now widely accepted by researchers and policymakers, this conceptualization is not without its critics. Framing environmental migration research in terms of adaptation makes research immediately accessible to policymakers, but may at the same time constrain other promising avenues for theoretical development and policy discussion. This chapter offers concluding thoughts on future directions research on this subject may take.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    For example, some scholars have suggested that rural Oklahomans of the 1930s were an inherently transient, migratory people, although this is inconsistent with their behavior once they reached California, where most settled down permanently as soon as socio-economic circumstances permitted them to do so. See Manes (1982) and McDean (1986).

  2. 2.

    The term “least-develop country” is one that is explicitly used in the UNFCCC. For a list, see http://unfccc.int/cooperation_and_support/ldc/items/3097.php

  3. 3.

    I use the term ‘undesirable’ deliberately, for not all environmental migration is unwanted or unbeneficial. Retirees moving to sunnier climes of young people from Australia and Japan moving to Whistler for the skiing are examples of desirable environmental migration; desirable from the perspective of the receiving area and, most importantly, of the migrants themselves.

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Acknowledgement

The author’s research on environmental migration is actively supported by an Insight Grant from the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Geography & Environmental Studies, Wilfrid Laurier University, Waterloo, ON, Canada

    Robert McLeman

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  1. Robert McLeman
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Correspondence to Robert McLeman .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Inst for Environm & Human Security, United Nations University, Bonn, Germany

    Andrea Milan

  2. German Development Institute, Bonn, Germany

    Benjamin Schraven

  3. Inst for Environment & Human Security, United Nations University, Bonn, Germany

    Koko Warner

  4. Inst for Environmental & Human Security, United Nations University Inst for Environmental & Human Security, Bonn, Germany

    Noemi Cascone

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McLeman, R. (2016). Conclusion: Migration as Adaptation: Conceptual Origins, Recent Developments, and Future Directions. In: Milan, A., Schraven, B., Warner, K., Cascone, N. (eds) Migration, Risk Management and Climate Change: Evidence and Policy Responses. Global Migration Issues, vol 6. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-42922-9_11

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-42922-9_11

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