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Meeting the looming policy challenge of sea-level change and human migration

Nature Climate Change volume 9, pages 898–901 (2019)Cite this article

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Minimizing the adverse consequences of sea-level change presents a key societal challenge. New modelling is necessary to examine the implications of global policy decisions that determine future greenhouse gas emissions and local policies around coastal risk that influence where and how we live.

Current and future sea-level rise and the accompanying increase in sea-level extremes (collectively, sea-level change) present a key challenge to coastal inhabitants and others living in destinations where retreating coastal migrants may settle over coming decades to centuries1. Although the physical processes that lead to coastal inundation are crucial in triggering migration decisions, the key dimensions of human mobility resulting from sea-level change — the number of displaced people and migrants, the forms of mobility that people use, the timing of migrations, their likely destinations and the socioeconomic condition of their departures and arrivals — are largely dependent on global policy decisions that determine future greenhouse gas emissions, and on local policies around coastal risk that influence where and how we live.

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Fig. 1: Migration under sea-level change and policy scenarios.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center (SESYNC) under funding received from the US National Science Foundation DBI-1639145.

Author information

Affiliations

  1. College of Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences, Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR, USA

    D. J. Wrathall, P. U. Clark & K. Abel

  2. School of Politics and Global Studies, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, USA

    V. Mueller

  3. International Food Policy Research Institute, Washington, DC, USA

    V. Mueller

  4. School of Geography and Environmental Sciences, University of Ulster, Coleraine, UK

    P. U. Clark

  5. Department of Environmental Studies, New York University, New York, NY, USA

    A. Bell

  6. Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs and Department of Geosciences, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, USA

    M. Oppenheimer

  7. Department of Sociology, Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL, USA

    M. Hauer

  8. Climate Central, Princeton, NJ, USA

    S. Kulp

  9. Department of International Development, Community and Environment, Clark University, Worcester, MA, USA

    E. Gilmore

  10. Department of Geography, King’s College London, London, UK

    H. Adams

  11. Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Rutgers University, Piscataway, NJ, USA

    R. Kopp

  12. National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center, Annapolis, MD, USA

    M. Call

  13. Department of Economics, Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, USA, 43210

    J. Chen

  14. Center for Information Earth Sensing Information Network, Columbia University, Palisades, NY, USA

    A. deSherbinin

  15. Population Studies and Training Center, Brown University, Providence, RI, USA

    E. Fussell

  16. Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, Boston College, Chestnut Hill, MA, USA

    C. Hay

  17. Institute for Demographic Research, City University of New York, New York, NY, USA

    B. Jones

  18. Department of Geography, University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, AL, USA

    N. Magliocca

  19. Department of Anthropology, Oregon State University Cascades, Bend, OR, USA

    E. Marino

  20. Department of Estuarine and Delta Systems, NIOZ Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research and Utrecht University, Yerseke, the Netherlands

    A. Slangen

  21. United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, Bonn, Germany

    K. Warner

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  1. D. J. Wrathall
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Contributions

All authors were involved in the conceptualization of this paper. D.J.W., V.M., P.U.C., M.O., M.H., B.J., S.K., E.G., H.A., A.B. and R.K. were responsible for original drafting and preparation. K.A., M.C., J.C., A.deS., E.F., C.H., B.J., N.M., E.M., A.S. and K.W. reviewed and substantively edited content. D.J.W. and M.H. prepared figures. D.J.W., V.M. and P.U.C. supervised manuscript preparation. All authors were substantively involved in the acquisition of funding.

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Correspondence to D. J. Wrathall.

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Wrathall, D.J., Mueller, V., Clark, P.U. et al. Meeting the looming policy challenge of sea-level change and human migration. Nat. Clim. Chang. 9, 898–901 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-019-0640-4

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