HABITABLE Panel “Exploring habitability in migration systems – How local environmental changes contribute to global transformations” – 2023 IMISCOE ANNUAL CONFERENCE

The HABITABLE team will be present at the 2023 IMISCOE ANNUAL CONFERENCE “Migration and inequalities. In search of answers and solutions” (Warsaw & online, 3-6 July 2023).

The HABITABLE panel will take place on Thursday July 6 – 09:00 – 10:30, and is entitled “Exploring habitability in migration systems – How local environmental changes contribute to global transformations“.

Abstract: In 2020 alone, disasters such as floods, droughts and storms internally displaced more than 30 million people around the world. Many more people are moving because their environment is gradually deteriorating. There is, however, significant uncertainty around the climate-migration nexus, including how environmental drivers interact with other determinants of departure such as socio-economic factors. The capacity of a socio-ecological system to sustain and support the lives and livelihoods of its population (i.e. its habitability) is also dependent on individual perceptions of changes and other mitigating factors, such as the resilience of this system, and political intervention. This has important implications for geopolitical order. The HABITABLE project brings together over twenty research organisations across Africa, Asia, and Europe, with the objective of significantly advancing our understanding of these interlinkages between climate impacts and migration and displacement patterns. The project is centred around the concept of habitability and aims to formulate a broader and interdisciplinary conceptualisation of social tipping points as an innovative way to analyse how environmental disruptions can potentially trigger major social changes. This panel will share insights from this international research collaboration, which will allow us to better understand and adapt to increasingly interconnected global environmental challenges.

Papers:

• Title: Conceptualizing habitability: linking climate change, migration, and political responses
• Title: Mapping the literature on gender, climate change and human mobility: A scoping review to inform policy and future research
• Title: Integrating feminist political ecology (FPE) into the Fuzzy Cognitive Mapping (FCM) method: Development and application of FCM in examples from Ghana, Ethiopia, Mali, Sudan and Thailand under the HABITABLE project.
• Title: Hot, wet, and deserted: Critical Thresholds for Climate Change and Internal Displacement in India, Peru, and Tanzania

Authors: Blocher, Vinke, Upadhyay, Bergmann