Open research questions in Climate Change, Adaptation, Migration

What the literature leaves open

• The gap is the lack of consideration of social vulnerability in flood risk management. The paper identifies a need to understand women's perceptions and social vulnerability to flood risk. The research gap is the limited understanding of the spatial distribution of women's flood vulnerability.

  Women facing flood risk: exploring perceptions and indexing social vulnerability in the Vega Baja del Segura, Alicante (Spain) · 2026 · DOI

• The study identifies climate fluctuations and socio-ecological stressors as key challenges faced by the Bakarwal community. The research highlights the importance of addressing limited institutional support and marginalization. The study emphasizes the need to cope with climate extremes, such as heat waves, torrential monsoon rainfall, and winter snowstorms.

  Pastoral Nomads at a Crossroads: Investigating the Resilience of the Bakarwal Community to Climate and Socio-Ecological Challenges · 2026 · DOI

• The study identifies a gap in the understanding of the Bakarwal community's adaptive strategies and internal capacity to cope with climate and socio-ecological challenges. The research highlights the need for inclusive, community-driven policies to strengthen resilience. The study emphasizes the importance of investigating the community's resilience to climate and socio-ecological challenges.

  Pastoral Nomads at a Crossroads: Investigating the Resilience of the Bakarwal Community to Climate and Socio-Ecological Challenges · 2026 · DOI

• examining how human mobility is conceptualized across dimensions of agency and temporality, - exploring how climate hazards are linked to mobility outcomes, - better understanding of how risk perception and policy interventions influence movement patterns

  A review of the relationship between environmental change and internal-human mobility · 2026 · DOI

• The literature remains geographically uneven and predominantly micro-level, with stronger evidence for short-term weather shocks than for long-term climatic processes. The field has been receiving growing attention, but progress in understanding this complex topic has been hindered by inconsistencies in definitions, conceptual and theoretical frameworks. The paper identifies a gap in the understanding of how risk perception and policy interventions influence movement patterns.

  A review of the relationship between environmental change and internal-human mobility · 2026 · DOI

• The need for new understandings of climate injustice due to climate turbulence. How existing frameworks of environmental injustices are engaged or exacerbated by climate turbulence.

  Revisiting Capabilities and Climate Justice: How Climate Turbulence Undermines Capabilities, and How to Design Just Adaptation in Response · 2026 · DOI

• The increasing frequency and intensity of multiple climate hazards. The need to integrate climate hazards into a framework for adaptation-oriented decision making. The challenge of identifying distinct vulnerability profiles and their implications for adaptation-oriented decision making.

  From climate vulnerability to climate governance: a multi-hazard framework for adaptation planning evidence from Greece and implications for climate-sensitive regions · 2026 · DOI

• Climate vulnerability assessments have traditionally focused on socioeconomic and demographic conditions, neglecting the impact of climate hazards. Few composite vulnerability indices explicitly integrate climate hazards into a framework for adaptation-oriented decision making. There is a need for a framework that combines conventional vulnerability drivers with climate-hazard exposure.

  From climate vulnerability to climate governance: a multi-hazard framework for adaptation planning evidence from Greece and implications for climate-sensitive regions · 2026 · DOI

• The paper identifies the challenge of critically examining the concept of adaptation-resilience and its implications for development policy. It highlights the need to consider the ethical implications of using traditional communities as research subjects. The paper also identifies the challenge of developing alternative models of community-rooted development that do not rely on the exploitation of marginalized populations.

  Sustainable Disaster: Fantasies of Resilience, Global Adaptation Science, and East Asia’s Seawomen · 2025 · DOI

• The paper identifies a gap in the understanding of how adaptation-resilience discourse emerged and was taken up by international science and development organizations. It highlights the need to critically examine the concept of adaptation-resilience and its implications for development policy.

  Sustainable Disaster: Fantasies of Resilience, Global Adaptation Science, and East Asia’s Seawomen · 2025 · DOI

• The paper identifies a gap in liberal theories of justice in addressing the moral dilemmas that arise in response to climate migration. It argues that these theories may have difficulty in understanding how to rightly respond to the moral claims that emerge in the face of widespread migration. The paper suggests that this gap represents a new site of intergenerational injustice.

  Climate Migration, Moral Dilemmas, and Moral Motivation · 2025 · DOI

• Those fleeing climate disruption share many traits with refugees and asylum seekers but are not understood to have the same legal rights granted to refugees and asylum seekers; I will therefore use the broader language of migrant, while acknowledging that migrants fleeing climate change are comprehensible as involuntary migrants, rather than economic migrants.

  Climate Migration, Moral Dilemmas, and Moral Motivation · 2025 · DOI

• Further research is needed to explore the intersection of demographic characteristics, socio-economic conditions, and flood risk, - Studies should investigate the effectiveness of flood risk management measures, - Research should examine the role of individual and collective preparedness in responding to flood events

  Women facing flood risk: exploring perceptions and indexing social vulnerability in the Vega Baja del Segura, Alicante (Spain) · 2026 · DOI

• Investigate new understandings of climate injustice required by climate turbulence - Explore just transition and adaptation strategies further

  Revisiting Capabilities and Climate Justice: How Climate Turbulence Undermines Capabilities, and How to Design Just Adaptation in Response · 2026 · DOI

• Yet, there is limited evidence to what degree, under what conditions, for whom, and with which limitations this is effectively the case.

  Translocal social resilience dimensions of migration as adaptation to environmental change · 2024 · DOI

• The study highlights the challenge of interacting stakeholders with disparate preferences in coastal adaptation planning. The study notes the complexity of climate adaptation governance, which can be distinguished between four categories: hierarchy, market, network, or community. The study identifies the need for careful consideration of governance structure, financing, and discounting in adaptation planning.

  More than the climate: an exploration of coordinated governance for sea level rise adaptation in Boston · 2026 · DOI

• The study identifies a gap in existing research on coastal adaptation governance, which has considered the topic from multiple lenses but few models capture differences between adaptation outcomes under contrasting governance regimes. The study highlights the need for a framework to compare the performance of different governance structures under uncertainty.

  More than the climate: an exploration of coordinated governance for sea level rise adaptation in Boston · 2026 · DOI

• Distress migrants face significant challenges in adapting to new contexts, including social affiliation and moral compatibility. The study highlights the need for targeted interventions to support migrants in these areas. The research also identifies the lack of understanding of how distress migrants cope with their dissatisfaction as a major challenge.

  From Crisis to Peri-Urban Precarity: The Dynamics of Place Disutility in Distress Migration · 2026 · DOI

• The study used non-probability accidental sampling, which may limit the generalizability of the findings. The sample size was 110 respondents, which may not be representative of the larger population of distress migrants. The study did not use probability-based sampling due to the unknown size of the distress migrant population.

  From Crisis to Peri-Urban Precarity: The Dynamics of Place Disutility in Distress Migration · 2026 · DOI

• Recovery migration behavior after environmental disasters (Curtis et al., 2015; Fussell et al., 2014) is documented in the literature, but the paper does not integrate a migration systems approach with spatial regression models to distinguish between permanent environmental migration and temporary displacement-recovery patterns across county-level spatial units.

  Spatial perspective on environmental migration: Empirical insights from a spatiotemporal approach in the United States, 1970–2010 · 2026 · DOI

• The paper acknowledges Arctic North America climate impacts on migration (Chi et al., 2024) but does not implement the spatiotemporal approach to analyze how spatial autocorrelation and regional spillover effects differ in polar versus temperate environmental migration systems.

  Spatial perspective on environmental migration: Empirical insights from a spatiotemporal approach in the United States, 1970–2010 · 2026 · DOI

• The cumulative effects of climate change on Caribbean small island developing states. The need for climate adaptation and climate funding for Caribbean SIDS. The challenge of ensuring the 1.5 °C global temperature goal remains a binding benchmark for action.

  Caribbean small island developing states and the climate change advisory opinions: engagement and potential use · 2026 · DOI

• The need for Caribbean SIDS to strengthen and deploy regional climate science. The need for a powerful legal tool for SIDS to demand accountability, secure climate finance, and ensure the 1.5 °C global temperature goal remains a binding benchmark for action.

  Caribbean small island developing states and the climate change advisory opinions: engagement and potential use · 2026 · DOI

• The narrow interpretation of 'persecution' in the Refugee Act of 1980. The failure to account for modern forms of forced migration. The need to modernize refugee law to ensure protection for vulnerable populations.

  The Failure to Recognize Climate Refugees: Domestic Law vs. International Reality · 2026 · DOI

• The current Refugee Act of 1980 fails to account for climate change and environmental harm. The exclusion of climate-refugee claims from U.S. refugee frameworks is a significant protection gap.

  The Failure to Recognize Climate Refugees: Domestic Law vs. International Reality · 2026 · DOI

Most-cited papers in Climate Change, Adaptation, Migration

• Climate change and evolutionary adaptation · Nature · 2011 · 2,891 citations
• Social Capital, Collective Action, and Adaptation to Climate Change · Economic Geography · 2003 · 1,714 citations
• Adaptation to climate change in the developing world · Progress in Development Studies · 2003 · 1,273 citations
• Overcoming the tragedy of super wicked problems: constraining our future selves to ameliorate global climate change · Policy Sciences · 2012 · 1,209 citations
• Social Vulnerability to Climate Change and Extremes in Coastal Vietnam · World Development · 1999 · 872 citations
• Adaptation interventions and their effect on vulnerability in developing countries: Help, hindrance or irrelevance? · World Development · 2021 · 655 citations
• Equity Impacts of Urban Land Use Planning for Climate Adaptation · Journal of Planning Education and Research · 2016 · 589 citations
• The risks and reconstruction model for resettling displaced populations · World Development · 1997 · 543 citations
• Global environmental change I · Progress in Human Geography · 2013 · 493 citations
• Socioeconomic Vulnerability and Adaptation to Environmental Risk: A Case Study of Climate Change and Flooding in Bangladesh · Risk Analysis · 2007 · 450 citations

Most recent work

• Agri-labour mobility in a changing climate: A systems approach to vulnerability and precarity among migrant farmworkers · World Development · 2026
• Climate-related Planned Relocation as Domicide: The Multi-dimensional Destruction of Home in the Philippines · Habitat International · 2026
• Deep learning four decades of human migration · Nature · 2026
• Bridging planned and autonomous adaptation for flood resilience in multi-ethnic communities along China's Tea-Horse Road · Chinese Journal of Sociology · 2026
• (Re)Pairing With Water: Climate Finance and the Prefigurative Positions of an Ocean Counter‐Politics · Antipode · 2026
• Adaptation in the Plantationocene · The Journal of Peasant Studies · 2026
• From Sprawl to Sustainable Urbanization in the Global South: Migration, Urban Growth, and Environmental Governance in Pakistan · SAGE Open · 2026
• Applying the analytical hierarchy process to assess environmental migration drivers in coastal Bangladesh · Discover Sustainability · 2026
• Remittances in response to environmental shocks: a panel study of rural Thailand and Vietnam · Population and Environment · 2026
• Empirical evidence of direct and indirect relations between environmental pressure and conflict · Conflict Security and Development · 2026

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