Prioritizing involuntary immobility in climate policy and disaster planning

CIESIN researchers' Fabien Cottier and Alex de Sherbinin have contributed to a new perspective piece that was just published at Nature Communications on involuntary immobility in the context of climate change and natural disasters:

Thalheimer, L., Cottier, F., Kruczkiewicz, A., Hultquist, C., Tuholske, C., Benveniste, H., Freihardt, J., Hemmati, M., Kam, P. M., Pricope, N. G., Van Den Hoek, J., Zimmer, A., de Sherbinin, A., & Horton, R. M. (2025). Prioritizing involuntary immobility in climate policy and disaster planning. Nature Communications, 16(1). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-025-57679-9.

The article, written jointly with Lisa Thalheimer (IIASA & UNU-EHS Bonn), Andrew Kruczkiewicz (NCDP, Columbia), former CIESIN postdoctoral researchers Carolynne Hultquist (University of Canterbury) and Cascade Tuholske (Montana State University) and others, explores how involuntary immobility may result from climate change and natural disasters. Through a number of case studies, it identifies key economic, political, social and cultural drivers that cause immobility. The piece concludes with a series of evidence-based policy recommendations to ensure that better data on involuntary immobility is collected, populations at risk of involuntary immobility are provided adequate assistance and to establish an international mechanism to respond to situations of immobility.

This article was based on a World Café session that was held at the 2023 Managed Retreat conference at Columbia University. A succinct overview of the piece can be found on the State of the Planet's blog (https://news.climate.columbia.edu/2025/03/17/how-can-we-help-people-who-cannot-flee-high-climate-risk-zones/).