Human Mobility in the Context of Climate Change: An overview of key terms, concepts and dynamics

This brief clarifies the three forms of climate change-related mobility introduced in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) at COP 16 (2010) in paragraph 14 (f) of Decision 1/CP.16 of the Cancún Adaptation Framework: "displacement", "migration" and "planned relocation". It also aims to clarify "immobility", which has more recently entered UNFCCC policy discourse. Mobilities and immobilities in the context of climate change all fall on a broad spectrum of agency and constraint, with important implications for human rights, protection and equitable policy and programming. Displacement, migration, planned relocation and immobility, while not the only forms of human mobility, offer a useful starting point for understanding why human mobility must become more central to climate action, including within UNFCCC workstreams. Definitions are followed by a brief discussion of common and interrelated dynamics across these various forms of mobility, stressing how climate-related mobilities are complex, multicausal and evolving, often with disproportionately adverse impacts on Indigenous Peoples and more marginalised populations.  

The brief has been developed by the Terminologies Working Group of the Advisory Group on Climate Change and Human Mobility and the Loss and Damage and the Challenges of Human Mobility and Displacement Working Group. Contributors to the brief include Erica Bower, Sarah Koeltzow, Steven Miron (ed.), Harald Sterly, Lucy Szaboova, and Evalyn Tennant, who wish to thank the following: Katherine Braun, Antje Ilberg, Una Murray, Ioannis Tsipouridis, Christian Wolff, and Michelle Yonetani.