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Climate change-related human movement typically occurs within a complex web of commingled contributory causative factors. Hence the multicausality inherent in human movement makes attribution or disaggregation of causality an almost intractable problem. Nevertheless, climate change is now widely recognized as a key contributing migration push factor. Moreover, there is agreement among experts that its contribution to migration, relative to other causes, is growing. This suggests a possible, if not probable, influx in “climate refugees” (Reeves and Jouzel 2010), although this term is contested in the literature (cf. Zetter 2017; Ahmed 2018; see Box 1). Adopting a posture of “preparedness” emerges as an important priority for effective adaptation to climate change, where “migration” is seen not as a “failure to adapt” but rather as a “strategy to survive”. This discourse argues that quantitative scenarios of “climate refugees” are an essential prerequisite for anticipatory adaption to climate change.

Definition: Climate change-related human migration is an area of growing interest and policy concern. Although climate change is not easily isolated as the predominant cause of human movement, it is increasingly impossible to dismiss its role as a key contributing migration push factor. Moreover, there is agreement among experts that its contribution to migration, relative to other causes, will increase significantly as the effects of climate change impacts are progressively borne out in the future. This makes anticipatory migration-as-adaptation an important emergent priority (Brown 2007, 2008; Laczko and Aghazarm 2009; Hugo 2011; Luetz 2017; Ahmed 2018; Jha et al. 2018; Luetz and Havea 2018; Salerno 2018).