Post by Columbia Climate School

What does the term "climate migrant" mean – and what does it leave out? A person’s reason for leaving can rarely be attributed to one cause alone. “You have forms of displacement, and then migration itself can be broken down into forced and voluntary. There is no binary,” says CIESIN director Alex de Sherbinin, PhD of Columbia Climate School. De Sherbinin also highlights the risks of “trapped” populations who are being adversely affected by climate change but are unable to move, often because of a lack of finances, documents, or fear of a loss of identity. A 2025 paper published in Nature Communications by de Sherbinin and colleagues (https://lnkd.in/ezjBdFpB) warned that while populations are increasingly vulnerable to climate change impacts, some “lack the agency to move out of harm’s way,” and this “involuntary immobility” is insufficiently addressed in policy. “We know enough now to say the poor and the least politically connected tend to suffer the greatest consequences. We need to do things to intervene and improve their ability to withstand these shocks in the future,” says de Sherbinin. Via Eco-Business. https://lnkd.in/eQAhcZws