Environment-related human mobility

Abstract

The idea that global warming and its negative consequences will lead to migration fluxes from the Global South to Northern countries seems to be a common refrain recited by political leaders, international organizations, media and scientists. Nonetheless, if there is strong evidence concerning the environmental and social impacts of climate change, its consequences in respect of massive migration from 'poor' to 'rich' countries, remain very controversial: and even if could be sound tautologically, the difficulties in identifying this phenomenon cast doubts on the basis of the phenomenon itself (Baldwin and Bettini 2017, among others).The vagueness of the concepts used in defining the scope and nature of climate-related mobility, the lack of legally adopted definitions and the differences in the methodologies used to produce statistics and scenarios, create an enormous debate, not only within public opinion, but also in academia. Furthermore, this vagueness, compounded by statistical biases (the available data are insufficient or only cover specific geographical areas or environmental drivers), undermines the possibility of using reliable and comparable datasets to produce scientific analyses over different temporal and spatial scales (Zetter 2007).All this constitutes a key problem in the recognition/misrecognition of the phenomenon of mobility related to climate/environment, 1 and brings about significant research, policy and operational challenges to distinctly define different categories of mobile people -which has, in turn, implications on potential legal protection and assistance regimes that could be applicable to the different groups in an increasingly security-obsessed world. Even the 2018 United Nations (UN) Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration, adopted by 164 countries, identifies climate change as a driver of migration and promotes international cooperation in order to implement governance measures addressed to people who are moving because of natural hazards and climate change.While data are still lacking, gloomy projections about the global scale of climate-related mass migration tend to be misleading as they are often based on little evidence and only rarely take into account the role of adaptation in exposed communities.The more pressing questions, even if they could appear rhetorical, to clarify the issue seem to be:• How many people are involved in 'climate/environment-related human mobility'? • Which categories of people? • When will they move? • Where will they go? It could also be interesting to understand how the issue of 'climate/environment-related human mobility' is constructed and who is responsible for its definition. These questions help shed light on the complexity of this phenomenon which, owing to its ties with environmental,