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Open research questions in Climate Change, Adaptation, Migration

59 unresolved questions extracted from the limitations and future-work sections of 1,452 Climate Change, Adaptation, Migration papers in our library. Each links back to the study that raised it.

What the literature leaves open

  • With gender inequal- ities likely to be exacerbated by climate change impacts on water, our findings point to the need for further research on the power relations that govern outcomes of water-related adaptation, such as household bargaining over adaptation resources, negotiations and social norms that determine who takes on additional water-related work, and who has a say in how the climate resilience of WASH services are developed.

    Beyond adaptive capacity: Assessing how power relations shape household responses to climate impacts on water and sanitation · 2026 · DOI

  • warrant involve participatory community mapping identifying acknowledgment. Cross-sectional design precludes informal networks and leaders, explicit engagement of temporal inference regarding causality; while we women and marginalized groups in adaptation present transnational networks as predictors of decision-making, and integration of traditional adaptation success, the reverse causal pathway— knowledge and social structures into modern whereby successful adaptation enables maintenance adaptation frameworks.23 The substantial correlation of transnational connections—cannot be excluded.

    Transnational Networks and Social Cohesion Among Climate-Displaced Populations: A Cross-Sectional Study in Coastal Indonesia · 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

  • While the paper references spatio-temporal quantitative links between climatic extremes and population flows from the Murray–Darling Basin in Australia (Bakar & Jin, 2018), the integrated spatial framework has not been systematically applied to compare environmental migration mechanisms across different geographic and climatic regions beyond the U.S. context.

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

  • The spatiotemporal approach to environmental migration analysis in this study covers only the 1970–2010 period in the United States; extension of this spatial regression methodology to post-2010 data and comparison with more recent climate extremes and migration patterns would clarify whether the identified spatial dynamics persist under contemporary environmental conditions.

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

  • 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.

    To what extent do climatic stressors drive human mobility in the world’s drylands? A systematic review of empirical evidence · 2025 · DOI

  • Future research should focus on the localinterplay of multiple drivers that influence whether the climate will increase the risk of conflict, and Neo Malthusian theory suggesting that as populations continue to increase, competition for resources will also increase, and could lead to conflict as the inequalities increase between those in control of resources and those who do not have access [1].

    EXPLORING THE IMPACT OF MIGRATION, ENVIRONMENT AND CLIMATE CHANGE ON NORTH MACEDONIA: A SYSTEMATIC REVIEW · 2024 · DOI

  • However, in this article, we argue that there are uncertainties surrounding Climate Change Induced Displacement (CCID) that are partly caused by discursive ambiguity around the notion of ‘displacement’ – a concept that remains poorly defined in the context of climate change research – and a conflation between displacement due to quick-onset disaster events and the cumulative pressure of living in an environment marked by a disrupted climate.

    Beyond migration: a critical review of climate change induced displacement · 2022 · DOI

  • We learned that the mandate spurred SLR planning, but that local SLR planning responses varied widely, ranging from complacent compliance to progressive planning responses.

    Mandated Planning for Climate Change · 2021 · DOI

  • Jointly, they demonstrate significant climate impacts on social unrest in urban settings; they point to the complexity of the climate–migration–unrest link; they identify how agricultural production patterns shape conflict risk; they investigate understudied outcomes in relation to climate change, such as interstate claims and individual trust; and they discuss the relevance of this research for user groups across academia and beyond.

    Security implications of climate change: A decade of scientific progress · 2021 · DOI

  • Little is known about urbanisation and migrants, in the context of these vulnerabilities, in part because demographic inquiry and training (with a few notable exceptions) has only begun in the last decade to embrace new, spatial data and methods of analysis—especially those involving earth‐observing satellites.

    Urbanisation and differential vulnerability to coastal flooding among migrants and nonmigrants in Bangladesh · 2020 · DOI

  • However, heeding calls within the policy mobilities literature to avoid fetishizing mobility and attending to the contradictions between global flows and local institutional specificity, the article finds limited evidence of replication in noted sites of emulation.

    Mobile Adaptation and Sticky Experiments: Circulating Best Practices and Lessons Learned in Climate Change Adaptation · 2015 · DOI

  • Abstract: Climate change and growing populations are dual stresses that are particularly challenging to communities along the US/Mexican border where adaptive capacity is limited, infrastructure is lacking, and economic resources are scarce.

    Climate Vulnerability and Adaptive Strategies Along the Rio Grande/Rio Bravo Border of Mexico and the United States · 2012 · DOI

  • Finally, the last part argues that although a solid body of new research documents the contemporary migration–environment nexus, additional work is needed to reembed the environment more firmly within migration theories, taking into account the increased focus on the nature–society nexus, which has recently expanded in geography.

    From “Primitive Migration” to “Climate Refugees”: The Curious Fate of the Natural Environment in Migration Studies · 2012 · DOI

  • While local case studies show costs depend on the economically optimal timing of actions and adaptation tipping points, this remains unexplored on global and continental scales.

    The economically optimal mix and timing of coastal adaptation in Europe to 2150 · 2026 · DOI

  • Research on mobility in mountainous regions provides crucial insights into adaptation, livelihoods, and place attachment, yet nationally representative quantitative evidence remains scarce45.

    Household mobility responses to weather extremes in Kyrgyzstan · 2026 · DOI

  • A key limitation of the binding-constraint approach is that it intentionally reduces multidimensional information by highlighting a single limiting dimension.

    Unravelling the Relational Dimensions of Wellbeing in Flood-Prone Slum Communities in Indonesia: One-Size-Fits-All? · 2026 · DOI

  • It is increasingly clear that further investigation into moments of community agency, or rather when communities took matters into their own hands, is one of the best possible courses of action to begin to understand this climate world that is to come.

    "It's In Our Hands" - Communities, Climate Change, & Agency in Island States · 2026 · DOI

  • Despite well-established insight on environment-induced migration, the interplay between environment and financial remittances, an integral part of migration in many contexts, remains underexplored.

    Remittances in response to environmental shocks: a panel study of rural Thailand and Vietnam · 2026 · DOI

  • Despite its importance, migration remains difficult to measure consistently: existing data are sparse, concentrated in high-income settings and are fragmented across incompatible definitions, temporal resolutions and data types 6–8 .

    Deep learning four decades of human migration · 2026 · DOI

  • Abstract Urban areas face growing climate pressures from projected heat increases and rapid urbanisation, yet empirical studies assessing Indigenous population distributions relative to climate exposure and green infrastructure remain scarce.

    Spatial associations of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander populations with climate exposure, green cover, and socioeconomic advantage in New South Wales, Australia · 2026 · DOI

  • Future research should examine how per- ceived exposure relates to support for concrete mitigation and adaptation measures, and whether objective climatic indicators reinforce or diverge from subjective assessments.

    Climate impacts and public support for government action in Africa · 2026 · DOI

  • Two aspects of climate refugees also remain understudied; how climate refugees are perceived, since they are viewed through the dual lenses of climate risks and migratory flows and how these perceptions impact policies.

    Climate Refugees in India: Seeking Security between Disaster Diplomacy and Strategic Ambiguity · 2024 · DOI

  • However, studies of migration after tropical storms have led to inconsistent results and have not analyzed post-storm migration from the viewpoint of exposure to future events.

    Estimating excess migration associated with tropical storms in the USA 1990–2010 · 2024 · DOI

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59 open questions have been extracted from the limitations and future-work passages of 1,452 Climate Change, Adaptation, Migration papers in our library. Each one below links back to the study that raised it, so you can read the original claim in context.

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