Climate change is increasingly challenging the ability of millions of people to sustain livelihoods as the places where they live become uninhabitable. The relocation of populations as individuals, households, and communities within countries and across international borders demonstrates the complexity of climate change impacts. Looking at the literature, some researchers argue that relocation caused by climate change can be an effective strategy to adapt to localized changes, whereas others argue that the movement away from ones' homeland is more neatly captured in the climate change lexicon as ‘loss and damage’. We argue here that the relocation of people as a result of the impacts of climate change can be both adaptation and loss and damage. Drawing on examples from Alaska and Kiribati, we show that dividing this issue between the two concepts is unhelpful in resolving key issues around the types of appropriate support for these transitions to sustain and protect livelihoods and to open up possibilities for self-determined futures. Policy Relevance Climate-induced relocation poses a significant challenge for the populations affected as well as the government agencies tasked with providing technical assistance and funding. At present, policies and institutional frameworks have not yet been developed to accommodate these challenges, despite the urgent need to do so. When the relocation of populations can be planned, participatory, and people centred, then it can be an adaptation strategy that will protect people from the permanent loss of land and livelihoods. If these movements are decided, driven, managed, and undertaken by those affected, then there is the potential for the relocation to also be a transformative opportunity for people to respond to the impacts of climate change, and sustain their livelihoods and possibly even improve certain livelihood outcomes. However, these relocations also cause significant loss and damage. The extent of the loss and damage will partly depend on the ability to have these relocations planned and ensure that human rights protections are embedded in institutional frameworks. The article shares a series of lessons and learnings that are of policy relevance at a variety of scales.

This is an advance summary of a forthcoming article in the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Climate Science. Please check back later for the full article. A fast growing body of academic literature, countless reports by governmental institutions and NGOs, and strong media interest all demonstrate how politically and emotionally charged is the discussion on how climate change is driving human migration. This discussion raises issues that go to the heart of social and environmental justices and developments in the 21st century. Since the 1990s, research has been dominated by issues around the prediction of future migration trends and numbers, the so-called minimalist vs. maximalist debate, and discussions of the terminology relating to environmental migration and refugees. The appropriateness of migration as an adaptive response to climate change and ways of measuring and identifying direct interrelationships between environmental change and migration decisions have been heatedly discussed. Many of these questions remain unanswered, and their lingering persistence makes most scholars cautious of making such direct links. Instead, current research tends to focus on how the complex and multiple mechanisms forcing migration processes, as well as more voluntary or even emancipative projects, are nonetheless linked to environmental change. From the outset, the debate has embraced legal aspects relating to questions of voluntary or forced migration and safeguards for the rights of environmental migrants. Discussion has considered options for new treaties connected to the 1951 Refugee Convention or to the UNFCCC (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change) treaties, which would offer better protection for internal (e.g., The Peninsula Principles) and international (e.g., the Nansen Initiative) migrants alike. So far these efforts have evolved in the realm of soft law and largely policy-oriented approaches, such as declarations and initiatives. Rights-based solutions for environmental migrants that go beyond humanitarian duties have not emerged. Climate change can cause slow-onset degradation, such as sea-level rise and changing weather patterns, but also acute disruptions, such as droughts, floods, and severe storms. Owing to their geographies and natural environments, but also due to their densely populated coasts, some regions of the world are particularly vulnerable to climate change. New strategies for current and future environmental migrants in places such as Bangladesh, Africa, and the Pacific region need to be found. Climate justice often plays an important role in these negotiation processes, and the solutions found could be of interest for other regions. Recent debates have taken up the theoretical impetus emerging from analyses of the discourse of climate change migration, from challenges to power relations in general, and the relationship between knowledge and power in particular. Some researchers advocate a re-politicization of the debate and contest the image of passive victims frequently associated with the “drowning” climate change migrant; they criticize the alarmist voices that may trigger perceived security interests of the countries of the Global North. Postcolonial perspectives and critical theories are utilized to analyze facets of the debate that have racist, de-politicizing, or naturalizing tendencies or that exoticize the “other.”

Reducing vulnerabilities is at the core of climate change adaptation interventions. This goal is usually approached from the perspective of increasingly universal adaptation methodologies, tools and services that are grounded in Western scientific thought and knowledge. Questions of (in-)justices and new or reproduced vulnerabilities play a marginal role in adaptation interventions. In this paper, we argue that a failure to acknowledge, let alone address, the intricate linkages between knowledge and power risks creating fundamental injustices as part of well-intended adaptation processes and their outcomes. Using the Kiribati Adaptation Project (KAP) as a case study, we examine how knowledge hegemonies lead to unsatisfactory adaptation processes and outcomes when viewed from a justice perspective. Environmental justice lenses provide a useful framework for applying distributional, procedural and epistemic notions of injustice to tackle and interrogate the knowledge-power relations, which we identify as a profound part of adaptation interventions.

This paper discusses research results from anthropological fieldwork carried out in Malta in 2007. The island, which is situated in the central Mediterranean Sea between Tunisia, Libya and Italy, is a focal point regarding the continuing refugee situation. One of the research aims was to investigate the situation at sea concerning Search and Rescue (SAR) operations for migrants and refugees crossing the Mediterranean by boat. In the year 2006, 556 missing and drowned migrants were registered in the central Mediterranean between Libya, Malta and Italy, this number increased to 642 in 2008.1 The goal of the research in Malta was therefore to understand why an increasing number of migrants were dying at sea and what role the European security forces play in this context.

Die Außengrenzen sind zu einem umkämpften Raum der EU-Politik zwischen Grenzkontrollen und Flüchtlingsrechten geworden. Silja Klepp stellt diese Aushandlungskämpfe in einer Ethnographie der Seegrenze dar. Forschungsreisen entlang der Küsten von Libyen, Italien und Malta verbinden sich zu einem einzigartig dichten Blick auf die Zwänge und Handlungslogiken der Akteure im Grenzraum. Auf der Spur der Flüchtlinge von Süden nach Norden werden die Lage der Migrantinnen in Libyen, die Grenzschutzagentur Frontex und die Verhältnisse auf See sowie schließlich Haftzentren und andere Grenzeinrichtungen in den Ankunftsorten Malta und Süditalien illustriert und auf die europäische Politik rückbezogen. Eine intensive Perspektive auf einen umstrittenen Teil der europäischen Außenpolitik.