Inside HABITABLE: Investigating climate-driven migration in rural Thailand

Climate change is already impacting human migration and displacement.

Extreme weather events displace tens of millions of people every year, while multi-year droughts and rising sea levels are making many densely populated regions increasingly hostile to human habitation.

However, the link between climate change and migration is complex.

A person’s decision to leave home depends on a range of factors, including their socioeconomic situation, their family connections and the politics of their home country.

To better understand these interlocking factors, an EU-funded research project known as HABITABLE is carrying out tens of thousands of interviews with rural communities in Sudan, Ethiopia, Ghana, Mali and Thailand.

The four-year project, which ends later this year, aims to “significantly advance our understanding of the current interlinkages between climate change impacts, migration and displacement patterns, and to better anticipate their future evolution”.

The team will use their findings to help develop “guidelines and recommendations to allow policies to better address the migration patterns associated with climate change”.

For Thailand specifically, researchers from the Raks Thai foundation conducted more than 1,000 surveys over several months in 2023, travelling to 63 farming villages in the provinces of Chiang Rai and Udon Thani.

Full article available here : Inside HABITABLE: Investigating climate-driven migration in rural Thailand (carbonbrief.org)

In-depth Q&A: How does climate change drive human migration? (carbonbrief.org)

Investigating climate-driven migration in rural Thailand (youtube.com)

Authored by Ayesha Tandon

Source: CarbonBrief