Paper short abstract:

This paper presents thoughts on framing an analytical approach to climate change, human mobility and local governance for the new research programme: Governing Climate Mobility (2019-2022). It reframes climate change-migration discussions by raising the importance of local-level governance in shaping households’ and individuals’ mobility options and practices. Given the challenges around climate change and mobility, the policy implications of such research cannot be underestimated.

Paper long abstract:

This paper presents thoughts on framing an analytical approach to climate change, human mobility and local governance for a new research programme: Governing Climate Mobility (2019-2022). The programme examines how governance contexts affect mobility options and decisions in areas affected by climate change. Development literature and interventions have long emphasized local governance, particularly policies on government decentralisation. This focus has waned, however, in recent years just as the global governance of climate change has grown in focus. Yet attention to the local level is extremely important in understanding households’ and individuals’ climate-related mobility. Local government and informal authorities can shape both climate change responses and mobility practices, yet this role is under-researched. The paper presents key considerations when studying the linkages between climate change, local governance and mobility and raises the need to investigate how such linkages play out in contrasting political contexts. Finally, it explores the potential for a common theoretical and analytical framework across the three fields of climate change, local governance and mobility. This involves reframing climate change-migration discussions by raising the importance of governance in the local context. Given the challenges of climate change and migration that we face today, the policy implications of such research cannot be underestimated.