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Climate change will have a progressively increasing impact on environmental degradation and environmentally dependent socio-economic systems with potential to cause substantial population displacement. The key concerns in Less Developed Countries (LDCs) will include serious threats to food security and health, considerable economic decline, inundation of coastal areas, and degradation of land and fresh water resources (Reuveny in Polit Geogr, 2007). The relationship between environmental change and potential humanitarian crises has been captured by: McGregor (Geography and refugees: patterns and processes of change,

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The Ganges–Brahmaputra delta enables Bangladesh to sustain a dense population, but it also exposes people to natural hazards. This article presents findings from the Gibika project, which researches livelihood resilience in seven study sites across Bangladesh. This study aims to understand how people in the study sites build resilience against environmental stresses, such as cyclones, floods, riverbank erosion, and drought, and in what ways their strategies sometimes fail. The article applies a new methodology for studying people’s decision making in risk-prone environments: the personal Livelihood History interviews (N = 28). The findings show how environmental stress, shocks, and disturbances affect people’s livelihood resilience and why adaptation measures can be unsuccessful. Floods, riverbank erosion, and droughts cause damage to agricultural lands, crops, houses, and properties. People manage to adapt by modifying their agricultural practices, switching to alternative livelihoods, or using migration as an adaptive strategy. In the coastal study sites, cyclones are a severe hazard. The study reveals that when a cyclone approaches, people sometimes choose not to evacuate: they put their lives at risk to protect their livelihoods and properties. Future policy and adaptation planning must use lessons learned from people currently facing environmental stress and shocks.

Global environmental change, including climate change, is increasingly affecting ecosystems and the communities who rely on them. Reflecting on the manner in which the environment changes can help provide insights into the different mechanisms by which humans respond and adapt to deal with the environmental stress they face. When it comes to migrating as a response strategy to environmental stress, the pace of change in the environment will have a significant influence on the mode of displacement and migration-related decisions. Determining the exact extent that environmental stresses play in forcing people to move is complex for at least two reasons. First, deciphering which of several push and pull factors influence a decision to move is difficult as multiple factors (e.g., social, political and economic factors) often act simultaneously. Second, environmental degradation processes are often a consequence of the degradation of social, economic and political conditions and vice versa. Reflecting on the concept of social-ecological systems and the notion of ecosystem services is useful for understanding this complexity and can help in determining the extent to which ecosystem degradation plays a role in forcing people to migrate. An attempt is made to address the gap in conceptualising environmental change and migration by sketching a decision framework for categorising people moving due to environmental stressors. The approach examines the circumstances leading to a decision to move, including the state of the environment and coping capacities ⁄ adaptive abilities of those individuals or communities affected. This conceptualisation is not a final scheme but

Loss and damage is already a significant consequence of inadequate ability to adapt to changes in climate patterns. This paper reports on the first ever multi-country, evidence-based study on loss and damage from the perspective of affected people in least developed and other vulnerable countries. Researchers in Bangladesh, Bhutan, Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, the Gambia, Kenya, Micronesia, Mozambique and Nepal conducted household surveys (n=3,269) and more than a hundred focus group discussions and open interviews about loss and damage. The research reveals four loss and damage pathways. Residual impacts of climate stressors occur when: 1) existing coping/adaptation to biophysical impact is not enough; 2) measures have costs (including non-economic) that cannot be regained; 3) despite short-term merits, measures have negative effects in the longer term; or 4) no measures are adopted -or possible -at all.

This article analyses the dynamics between rainfall variability, food insecurity and human mobility in eight case studies, namely Ghana,