Climate Change and Community Relocation

Overview

As more and more people acknowledge the reality of human-induced climate change, entire communities worldwide are already paying a personal price: the need to relocate in order to survive the escalating frequency of extreme weather events and slow-onset changes such as rising sea levels and desertification.

While people have moved in response to environmental changes throughout human history, the intensity and rapidity of global warming has led to projections that hundreds of millions of people will move in the coming decades. According to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), mobility compelled by climate change can take three different forms: migration, displacement, and planned relocations.

Following a brief overview of climate mobility, this brief focuses on planned relocations — the least studied of the three forms of mobility, but one which is likely to become more common in the future.

The Basics of Climate Migration

Most Migration Is Internal

In spite of headlines about climate refugees or “climate migrants” arriving at the borders of developed countries, most climate-induced migration will take place within the borders of individual countries. For example, the Africa Climate Mobility Initiative projects that between 70 and 88 million people will move internally in Africa by 2050 because of climate change — but only 1.2 million will move across national borders, mainly in Southern Africa.

One reason for internal migration is that a legal gap exists for those moving across borders. With a few exceptions, individuals who move because of disasters or the long-term effects of climate change are not considered refugees under the 1951 Refugee Convention and governments are under no obligation to allow them entry. While displacement experts and legal scholars have bemoaned this fact, and have even drafted new conventions on climate mobility, these changes have virtually no chance of being adopted given the difficulties in determining who is a climate migrant and the reluctance of states to adopt new binding legal obligations.

Economics and Climate Migration 

Most of those who move because of climate change will move to cities where economic opportunities are greater. The most commonly cited projections from the World Bank, for example, estimate that 216 million people are likely to migrate internally because of the effects of climate change. In America, the National League of Cities similarly predicts that cities in the U.S. will be on the frontlines of climate change. Some cities will experience population declines, others will experience rapid inflows as people are displaced from disasters occurring nearby, and some cities may attract greater populations as they become climate destinations or havens.

Although developing countries will be most affected by climate change (which, it should be noted, is driven by greenhouse gas emissions by developed countries), climate change affects individuals and families from all economic backgrounds. But globally, it also seems clear that those people most at risk are also the ones with the least ability to cope. For example, indigenous people, whether in the U.S. or elsewhere, often live on land that is more susceptible to disasters — yet also more likely to be marginalized in policy deliberations.

Another key aspect of human-induced climate migration is that it is never driven by climate change alone. Rather, it is the interplay of socioeconomic factors and environmental hazards that lead people to move. Even during the most severe weather events, there are always some people who remain where they are — either because they do not want to move or they are unable to do so. Often it is the elderly who do not move (because of limited physical mobility or lack of financial resources), racial/ethnic minorities, or people with physical or mental disabilities. And in the rebuilding that occurs after disasters, those with more resources — such as homeowners — are more likely to receive assistance recovering than those who rent homes or whose tenure is insecure.

In short, the research puts forth that people with economic resources are better able both to adapt in place and to migrate safely. It is also evident that those who are unable to move are likely to be more vulnerable and more at risk than those who migrate. Those left behind tend to have fewer resources, to have limited mobility because of age or disability, or to be caregivers for other family members who are unable to move.

Climate Migration Can Lead to Even More Climate Risk

Unfortunately, climate-driven decisions to move are not always taken with environmental risk in mind. As pointed out in a 2011 Foresight report, many people move from areas of environmental risk to places where they are at an even greater risk of disasters. In the U.S., people are moving toward areas of higher environmental risk — often to Florida and the Southwest where the possibility of flooding and wildfires is highest. This is particularly troubling for older adults, who are more vulnerable to the effects of climate change. As the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP) reports, “From 1970 to 2010, U.S. coastal regions saw an 89 percent increase in the number of residents age 65 or older… As a result, the nation’s oldest adults routinely find themselves in the path of rising seas, and a growing number of nursing homes and assisted living facilities are now in flood-prone coastal areas.”

Not All Climate Migration Is Voluntary

Three forms of climate-driven mobility have been identified by the UNFCCC. Migration is usually assumed to be voluntary and is often anticipatory in nature. For example, a family may decide to move away from a disaster-prone area, in part to avoid the risk of having to evacuate from yet another hurricane or wildfire. These individuals are considered migrants and are part of a much larger movement of people moving internally within their countries for a variety of reasons. For the most part, however, these voluntary climate migrants remain uncounted. In fact, it is hard to attribute their decision to migrate solely to the climate or environment as other factors always come into play, including age, gender, economic resources, and individual risk tolerance.

In contrast, displacement occurs when people are forced to leave their homes, often because of an environmental hazard or disaster. The most common image is of people fleeing the wrath of a storm or a wildfire, moving rapidly in the face of imminent danger. For most, this displacement is temporary and they are able to return when the flood waters recede or the fires are extinguished. But disaster displacement can become protracted and, depending on the level of destruction, return is not always possible.

Displacement also occurs with slow-onset disasters, such as a drought that destroys livelihoods. Rather than a sudden rise in displacement, the typical pattern is for one or more family members to move from a drought-affected rural area no longer able to sustain them to a city, where they can send money back home to support family members. As conditions worsen, often whole families will eventually move. Under international law, these individuals are considered to be “internally displaced persons (IDPs).”

And finally there are planned relocations — when whole communities are moved elsewhere to protect them from environmental risk. While there is a growing body of literature on both environmental migration and displacement, much less is known about planned relocations. Sometimes relocation will be initiated by members of the community themselves, as is the case with some indigenous groups in Alaska, who have been working for decades to raise the funds to relocate their communities. In other cases, governments may decide that a community must be moved to protect them from environmental hazards as is the case in Vietnam, where thousands of people have been moved to protect them from Mekong River floods. Sometimes a community will want to move before the situation becomes catastrophic, but more often relocations are carried out after a disaster.

The Scope of Planned Relocations

Unlike evacuations, which are intended as short-term measures to move people out of harm’s way, planned relocations are intended to provide a permanent solution for people at risk. Various terms are used — relocations, resettlement, retreat, or coastal retreat — and there are various definitions for these terms. The Brookings-UNHCR-Georgetown initiative defined planned relocations as, “a planned process in which persons or groups of persons move or are assisted to move away from their homes or places of temporary residence, are settled in a new location, and provided with the conditions for rebuilding their lives.”

In their survey of documented cases of planned relocations, Bower and Weerasinghe analyzed over 300 cases of planned relocations in 78 countries and found that most relocations occur over short distances and involve relatively few people (fewer than 250). About half were initiated by affected people themselves and the other half were instigated by governments. They also noted that planned relocations take time to implement, ranging from one to two years to decades.

Defining the Challenges

While it may seem like planned relocations are all about logistics — finding land, constructing new homes, and physically moving people — in fact, those are usually the easier aspects of carrying out planned relocations. The main issues posed by planned relocations, and the questions they trigger, include:

• Engaging the community: Is there a shared recognition of the environmental risk triggering the need to relocate? What happens to those who choose not to move? How and when do affected communities get involved in the planning and implementation process? These are all key questions that should be answered before successful relocation can take place, especially since the available evidence on community participation is mixed at best: people who have been relocated report that consultations with the affected population were minimal and often failed to address their concerns about livelihoods and land tenure.
  
  After Typhoon Yolanda in 2013, the Philippine government decided to relocate affected coastal residents to safer sites. Plans were made for a participatory approach involving local governments, civil society groups, and affected community members. But three years after the typhoon, when President Rodrigo Duterte ordered that the process be sped up, the participatory process was largely abandoned. Although the pace of relocation picked up following this order, there was a lack of coordination with both the welcoming and relocating communities. Community members were scattered to different sites and deficiencies in both housing and infrastructure limited the success of the effort.
   
• Establishing institutional frameworks: Who makes the decision that a community will be relocated? Are institutional mechanisms in place for the acquisition of new land? What happens to the vacated land and property of those relocated? Who decides on compensation? Will commercial businesses be relocated? 
  
  Only a small handful of governments have developed formal guidelines to answer these questions and detail how planned relocations are carried out, although planned relocations are given passing mention in at least some governmental policies on climate action, including a recent United Nations report. In Myanmar, the government developed a national framework for recovery after the 2015 floods and landslides, requiring that people who are displaced are compensated and assisted “so their economic and social future is generally as favorable as it would have been in the absence of relocation.”
   
• Restoring livelihoods and ensuring access to services: Will people who have been relocated be able to maintain their livelihoods in the new location? This issue is particularly obvious in the case of fishing communities who are moved inland and need to find new livelihoods, but it is also relevant in cases where people are relocated to areas not served by public transportation. Are the local government ministries and agencies prepared to provide the necessary infrastructure and services to the new community?
  
  The long-standing efforts by the Guna indigenous group to relocate their Gardi Subdub community in Panama are being driven by the indigenous community with the support of the government. One of the main concerns of the Gardi Subdub is the issue of livelihoods. The relocation will mean fundamental changes to the community’s traditional fishing-related occupations as their people will need to commute further to fish, will require more money for fuel to access traditional fishing grounds, and will need access to refrigeration in order to transport their fish to market. After many delays, the relocation finally took place in May 2024. It is too early to tell how their concerns about their livelihoods are being met, but researchers are monitoring the situation closely.
   
• Financing: Planned relocations are extremely expensive to implement. While the expense of resettlement resulting from major infrastructure projects such as dams are usually factored into the resettlement plans (particularly those funded by multilateral development banks), this is not the case in relocations following disasters since governments are usually expected to foot the bills or people who relocate are forced to take on debt to cover the costs. These expenses can be substantial.
  
  The cost of relocating around 100 people from Isle de Jean Charles in 2024 Louisiana was over $48 million. Funding arrangements for planned relocations can also vary. Usually, a combination of different actors support different stages of the process. Fiji established a Trust Fund for planned relocation in 2019, financed partially through revenue from Fiji’s Environment and Climate Adaptation Levy as well as international contributions. The special rapporteur on the human rights of internally displaced persons believes that the Loss and Damage Fund, under the UNFCCC, should also be used to finance planned relocations, when relocation is required as a last resort measure and no alternatives are feasible and available.
   
• Achieving success: One of the biggest challenges associated with measuring the outcome of planned relocation strategies is coming to agreement on what constitutes success. A minimum standard is usually ensuring that relocated communities have at least the same standard of living as they had before the relocation, though the evidence on this is mixed. 
  
  In the case of Vietnam, surveyed respondents in one relocated community indicated that while people felt safer in their new locations, they had also incurred substantial debt. Similarly, in the Philippines, those relocated felt safer but had difficulties securing land tenure and finding new livelihoods. Finally, noneconomic losses are hard to account for, including the pain of waiting long periods for relocation and the loss of cultural heritage associated with their original habitats.

The Role of Government

Given the realities of climate change and the increasing risk that many communities will experience because of it, it is prudent for both governments and at-risk communities themselves to at least begin thinking about the possibility of relocation. In drought-prone areas and coastal regions, communities should at least begin discussions about what would be needed to maintain community cohesion through carefully-planned relocation. More than 126 million people, or about 40% of the U.S. population, live in coastal counties that produce more than $8.3 trillion in goods and services while 41 million Americans live within the reach of 100-year flood zones along rivers.

There are also political considerations that come into play when planned relocation is discussed. Tourism — a major component of many countries with beautiful coastlines — would likely be affected by mass relocations. Municipal governments would be concerned about the loss of their tax base, including sales tax revenue from tourists, if communities are relocated. Referring again to the U.S., the Union of Concerned Scientists warns, “Communities with fewer resources to start with, or that are otherwise disadvantaged, will likely be most heavily affected by chronic flooding and financial losses as well as communities with large percentage of elderly.” It also seems likely that those who are unable to migrate earlier have the least social and economic capital — and will be most in need of governmental support to relocate.

In her 2024 report to the council, the special rapporteur for the United Nations Human Rights Council concluded, “Planned relocations should only be undertaken in exceptional circumstances where they are unavoidable and absolutely required due to the impracticality of sustaining human settlements in areas prone to danger.” This conceptualization of planned relocations as a last resort — after all possible measures to enable people to remain in place have been taken — is accepted guidance and recognizes that most people do not want to move. And yet, there are downsides to waiting as the situation becomes increasingly untenable and young, economically-active people leave earlier on their own. This may mean that older adults, or those unable to move on their own, are the ones left behind — making it more difficult to reestablish a vital community in a new place, should relocation become necessary.

The same 2024 report by the United Nations’ special rapporteur asserts. “…provided that human rights and community well-being are fully respected, protected and prioritized throughout all phases, planned relocations can foster durable solutions for internally displaced communities who are unable to return to their former homes because affected areas have become uninhabitable or too dangerous for human habitation or, such as in the case of sea level rise or certain landslides, have simply disappeared as a consequence of natural hazards and the negative impacts of climate change.”

The Bottom Line

Planned relocations can provide a lasting solution for people whose habitats and communities are threatened by the effects of climate change — but careful planning is needed to ensure that community participation, adequate financing, and necessary institutional frameworks are in place. Ideally, such frameworks should be in place before disasters occur. Currently, in around half of the documented cases of relocations, plans are only made after disaster strikes. Given that evidence suggests the effects of climate change will continue to devastate more communities, governments at both the national and local levels should begin now to consider how planned relocations might be able to protect people in their communities.

This material may be quoted or reproduced without prior permission, provided appropriate credit is given to the author and Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy. The views expressed herein are those of the individual author(s), and do not necessarily represent the views of Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy.