Devastating consequences of a warming planet - changing landscapes, pandemics, fires, heatwaves, severe storms, droughts, floods, rising shorelines - will drive the potential movement of hundreds of millions of climate refugees across the planet. The U.N. expects tens of millions of people to be displaced due to the climate crisis in the next decade alone. A 2018 World Bank report predicted that 143 million people from South Asia, Latin America and Sub-Saharan Africa could be forced to migrate due to climate conditions by 2050. Other sources such as the 2018 Global Report on Internal Displacement also present dire numbers; more internal displacements have been due to climate-related disasters than to conflict: of the 30.6 million people displaced across 135 countries in 2017, 60 percent were a direct result of natural disasters.

The ‘Great Migration’ of vulnerable populations in all parts of the world will soon become one of the most pressing issues that the global community will have to face.

Climate migration will not only impact the livelihood of climate refugees themselves but also of the communities to where refugees will be relocated. Yet, institutions like the World Bank and the Red Cross/Red Crescent are most often left only with options of helping after destructive climate-associated changes have devastated communities and left them with few plans or  means of responding or adapting.

We need to address this emerging social crisis not only as a matter of planning, logistics, and communication, but also as an environmental justice issue that disproportionately impacts the most impoverished, marginalized, and disenfranchised people in our world.

How can governments and aid organizations engage with vulnerable communities to have this “hard” conversation about climate migration and how can they develop the apparatus for a responsive exchange with communities that possess little political power?

Our project seeks to equip and empower local groups facing severe climate stresses and likely migration to engage with outside forces — governments, NGOs, technologists, and others — from a community standpoint to plan out and establish workable options that will build resilience and channel resources. The participatory adaptation platform concept offers scalable and adaptable versions of a three-phase process that encourages power-sharing through the discovery of diverse cultural perspectives, the building of consensus, and the co-development of strategies for workable options. This project offers an approach to engaging with one of the urgent climate challenges of our time by addressing the communication gap between local communities across the globe and the diverse perspectives of climate expertise, planning, and policy as a matter of environmental justice.

Still image from documentary ‘Living on the Edge: Dovi’s Story’ by World Bank

MIT FACULTY AND RESEARCHERS

James Paradis (lead), CMS/W

Eric Gordon (lead), CMS/W

Yihyun Lim (lead), CMS/W, MIT CDI

Patricia Saulis, MLK Visiting Scholar

STUDENT RESEARCHERS

Lizzie Yarina, Dept of Urban Studies & Planning

Silvia Daneilak, Dept of Urban Studies & Planning

Tomas Guarna, Dept of CMS/W

Gabriela Degetau, Dept of Architecture

Mona VijayKumar, Dept of Architecture

EXTERNAL COLLABORATORS

Darren Ranco, University of Maine