The planned relocation of communities away from areas of climate-related risk has emerged as a critical strategy to adapt to the impacts of climate change. Empirical examples from around the world show, however, that such relocations often lead to poor outcomes for affected communities. To address this challenge, and contribute to developing guidelines for just and sustainable relocation processes, this paper calls attention to three fundamental tensions in planned relocation processes: (1) conceptualizations of risk and habitability; (2) community consultation and ownership; and (3) siloed policy frameworks and funding mechanisms. Drawing on the collective experience of 29 researchers, policymakers and practitioners from around the world working on planned relocations in the context of a changing climate, we provide strategies for collectively and collaboratively acknowledging and navigating these tensions among actors at all levels, to foster more equitable and sustainable relocation processes and outcomes.

Urbanization proceeds globally and is often driven by migration. Simultaneously, cities face severe exposure to environmental hazards such as floods and heatwaves posing threats to millions of urban households. Consequently, fostering urban households’ resilience is imperative, yet often impeded by the lack of its accurate assessment. We developed a structural equation model to quantify households’ resilience, considering their assets, housing, and health properties. Based on a household survey (n = 1872), we calculate the resilience of households in Pune, India with and without migration biography and compare different sub-groups. We further analyze how households are exposed to and affected by floods and heatwaves. Our results show that not migration as such but the type of migration, particularly, the residence zone at the migration destination (formal urban or slum) and migration origin (urban or rural) provide insights into households’ resilience and affectedness by extreme weather events. While on average, migrants in our study have higher resilience than non-migrants, the sub-group of rural migrants living in slums score significantly lower than the respective non-migrant cohort. Further characteristics of the migration biography such as migration distance, time since arrival at the destination, and the reasons for migration contribute to households’ resilience. Consequently, the opposing generalized notions in literature of migrants either as the least resilient group or as high performers, need to be overcome as our study shows that within one city, migrants are found both at the top and the bottom of the resilience range. Thus, we recommend that policymakers include migrants’ biographies when assessing their resilience and when designing resilience improvement interventions to help the least resilient migrant groups more effectively.

Climate change threatens habitability, leading communities to relocate out of sites of high exposure. Partial relocations, whereby only a portion of the community relocates, are understudied but increasingly common as relocating in one move is not always possible nor necessarily desired. Drawing on two climate-related partial relocations in Fiji—one community-driven, currently underway, and one government-assisted, undertaken ten years ago—we use Q Method to explore subjective wellbeing outcomes and identify shared narratives across the two communities. We find that partial relocation continues to strongly shape the wellbeing and lives of individuals, even ten years after relocating, and highlights different outcomes between those who relocated and those who did not. We argue that these shared narratives are strategic tools that can be drawn upon to understand nuanced experiences, shape people-centred policies, and, ultimately, inform relocation efforts that are more just, effective, and sustainable.

Drylands cover a significant portion of the Earth’s surface and support a large share of the global population. They are particularly vulnerable to climate change due to low and highly variable precipitation, changes in precipitation patterns, drought, and desertification. Historically, human mobility has been a critical adaptive response in drylands, supporting communities to cope with climatic and environmental shocks. We use a systematic review of the case study literature in the Web of Science (1976–2023) to assess the effects of climatic stressors on human (im)mobility in drylands. The keywords we use capture various forms of mobility and immobility (migration, displacement, pastoralism, relocation, and immobility) and climatic stressors (rapid-onset, slow-onset, and climate variability) in the world’s 107 countries that have at least 1% of territory classified as drylands. More than nine in ten (91%) of the papers identified climatic stressors as influencing human mobility and immobility, with 76% finding an increase in mobility and involuntary immobility, compared to 15% reporting a decrease in mobility. Migration is the predominant type of mobility assessed by the literature, with droughts and anomalies in precipitation and temperature being the primary climatic stressors. Rapid-onset stressors are more frequently found to increase displacement than slow-onset stressors or climate variability. Climatic stressors tend to have a stronger impact on human mobility in drylands compared to global analyses, which include non-dryland regions. We also show a deficit of empirical studies on pastoralism and immobility, limited research on the effects of compound events on human (im)mobility, and a disproportionate focus of studies on China, the USA, and Mexico, leaving African and South American dryland regions understudied.

Community-acquired pneumonia (CAP) is one of the most frequent causes of death among infectious diseases worldwide. There is a growing concern about weather impacts on CAP. However, no studies have examined the effects of comorbidities and personal characteristics alongside the twofold impact of weather conditions (meteorological and air quality) on CAP. Our study investigates how personal characteristics (age, sex, and BMI) and comorbidities (asthma, chronic heart disease, COPD, diabetes, heart insufficiency, smoking, and tumor) and care influence the twofold compound impact of weather on CAP admissions. We match medical data from a German multicentre cohort of 10,660 CAP patients with daily regional weather data, using logistic regressions to calculate the “Pneumonia Risk Increase Factor” (PRIF). This factor quantifies the heightened risk of CAP admissions due to weather conditions. We demonstrate that individuals with specific personal characteristics and those with comorbidities are more susceptible to weather impacts in the context of CAP than their counterparts. People with COPD have a PRIF of 5.28, followed by people in care (5.23) and people with a high BMI (4.02). Air pollutants, particularly CO and PM_2.5, play a significant role in increasing CAP hospitalizations. For meteorological conditions, air pressure and lower temperatures, combined with air pollutants, lead to high PRIFs. Our findings emphasize the increased weather vulnerability of old, high BMI, and males and people with comorbidities. This provides invaluable information to support at-risk individuals through protective measures and provides healthcare providers as well as health policymakers with insights for resource planning before and during pneumonia-contributing weather conditions.

Climate change is associated with increasing frequencies and intensities of extreme weather events. These can, directly and indirectly, shape human (im)mobility. While most research on migration in the context of climate change focuses on climate as a migration driver in origin areas, there is a gap in knowledge on the role of migration for climate resilience in the destination areas. This paper studies differences in resilience (resistance and recovery) to climatic shocks between migrant and non-migrant households in Ethiopia, a country that is highly exposed and vulnerable to climate change. We use longitudinal data from the Living Standards Measurement Study (LSMS) conducted by the World Bank to construct a comprehensive Well-Being Index, which is used to analyze the impacts of climatic shocks and identify households that are more or less able to resist and recover from shocks. We use fixed effect panel regression approaches to model the impacts of climatic shocks on well-being over time for migrant and non-migrant households. Further explorative mediation analyses yield insights into mechanisms explaining differences between households. We find that migrant households have an overall lower climate resistance as they experience double as high well-being impacts when exposed to climatic shocks compared to non-migrant households. Climatic shocks significantly reduce the food security of all affected households and, in addition, negatively impact access to basic infrastructures and health for migrant households. Mediation analyses suggest that these differential climatic impacts are mainly driven by characteristics of migrant-origin regions, including poverty. Migrant households originating from less prosperous regions still face disadvantages even if they now reside in more prosperous regions. This contrasts the experience of non-migrant households whose resilience benefits from increased prosperity in their region of residence. While migrant households show a lower resistance to climate shocks, they recover faster from climatic shocks, which can be associated with diversified livelihoods and remittances that take time to unfold. This research is highly relevant to policy as it improves the understanding of underlying factors shaping differential vulnerability to climate change impacts and supports targeted interventions to increase the resilience of affected households.