International audienc

Mitigation and adaptation projects will lead to increased population displacement, calling for new research and attention to past lessons.

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Migration continues to be pictured in public debates as a failure to adapt to changes, while policymakers explore adaptation measures as a means to reduce migration pressures, and scholars have contended that migration processes exist within a larger framework of strategies for adapting to damaging climate change impacts. So what are the impacts of migration on the adaptive capacities and vulnerabilities of the origin and host communities, as well as of the migrants themselves? The objective of this conceptual and methodological paper is to identify possible different options for research into the consequences of migration for adaptation. The first section reviews how the migration-adaptation nexus has been addressed in the literature, confirming the potential of human mobility to build resilience and to increase adaptive capacities within complex and potentially maladaptive processes. The next section explores the potential impacts of migration that need to be studied, from three main vantage points: the migrants themselves, the community of origin, and the community of destination. A final section weighs the possible approaches and suggests solutions that may exist to advance empirical study of the migration-adaptation area nexus, so that it can address not just the causes, but also the consequences of migration in the context of environmental changes.

Attention to the linkages between climate change and security has been punctuated in the past decade by high-level political discourses and a wide array of diverse publications. Yet these linkages remain often portrayed in a catastrophic and deterministic framing that does not make for rational debate on the impacts of climate change on human security. This paper seeks to engage social sciences in assessing the causes and consequences of climate change on human security, so that these can be supported by plausible and testable theories and models, and not just policy rhetoric. In this paper we review the state of knowledge on security dimensions of climate change; set out the major conclusions from the series of studies in this special issue, and point to emerging issues in the agenda for sustained research in this area.

The acceleration of ice sheet melting has been observed over the last few decades. Recent observations and modeling studies have suggested that the ice sheet contribution to future sea level rise could have been underestimated in the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report. The ensuing freshwater discharge coming from ice sheets could have significant impacts on global climate, and especially on the vulnerable tropical areas. During the last glacial/deglacial period, megadrought episodes were observed in the Sahel region at the time of massive iceberg surges, leading to large freshwater discharges. In the future, such episodes have the potential to induce a drastic destabilization of the Sahelian agroecosystem. Using a climate modeling approach, we investigate this issue by superimposing on the Representative Concentration Pathways 8.5 (RCP8.5) baseline experiment a Greenland flash melting scenario corresponding to an additional sea level rise ranging from 0.5 m to 3 m. Our model response to freshwater discharge coming from Greenland melting reveals a significant decrease of the West African monsoon rainfall, leading to changes in agricultural practices. Combined with a strong population increase, described by different demography projections, important human migration flows could be potentially induced. We estimate that, without any adaptation measures, tens to hundreds million people could be forced to leave the Sahel by the end of this century. On top of this quantification, the sea level rise impact over coastal areas has to be superimposed, implying that the Sahel population could be strongly at threat in case of rapid Greenland melting.

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Largely dependent on rain-fed agriculture, the West African populations could be severely impacted by climate change and variability. In this paper, we performed a literature review relating to perceptions of climate change and variability in West Africa, followed by an indepth comparison between perceptions by rural dwellers of Burkina Faso and trends in meteorological data to discuss the importance of perceptions vis-à-vis climate trends in migration decision. Results showed that respondents perceived increasing temperature and worsening rainfall conditions over 1988-2007 matching with findings of previous studies but inconsistent with the trends observed in rainfall data. Given that climate change is recognized as a key driver of mobility on the one hand and the fact that climate change perceptions influence decision to migrate on the other hand, our results suggest to jointly include perceptions and climate data in future research on environmental migration in order to improve the understanding of household's decision in response to climate change.