Making Meaning from Reality: Uncovering the Paradox of Human Mobility as Climate Change Adaptation Response

Abstract

The global incidence of human mobility is increasingly gaining visible traction in climate change research, as an aspect of environmental change. Emerging findings and ongoing debates reveal a nexus between human mobility and climate change. This revelation has generated much interest among scholars and policymakers, including other stakeholders. Today, human mobility is being interrogated from the lens of a complex interaction within socio-ecological systems, as an instrument for adaptation response. The idea is also unsurprisingly, widely conceptualized in a transformative and development perspective, sometimes in relation to historical identities. This development has inspired more interest for scouting further research on human mobility particularly within the academia and policy arenas. One critical aspect of human mobility is that it can be shaped or induced by a failed adaptation, a scenario that is of serious concern to the climate change process and framing of mobility within adaptation context. Besides, existing research rarely examined interspersed socioeconomic consequences of human mobility on climate change management in particular and society in general, but rather, focuses more on the possible positive outcomes. This study challenges a somewhat simple-minded knowledge that human mobility is a panacea for promoting climate change adaptation. The central argument is that human mobility is chancy and, accordingly, intensifies the adaptive needs of migrants by degenerating into a vicious circle scenario-like, despite its likely context-based benefits in responding to adaptation. The study applies analytical approach and synthesizes ideas for forward thinking, at least, in understanding human mobility implications for global adaptation to climate change.