Climate Displacement and Diversification: Changing Patterns of Migration and Peri-urban Settlement

Jamila Hamidu, Fidelis Udo

Climate change is already triggering and changing processes of displacement in many places around the world. As temperatures rise and various landscapes become increasingly uninhabitable, existing migration trends will be greatly exacerbated and lead to large-scale movements to, and processes of ethnic, linguistic, religious, age and gender diversification within, already highly diverse peri-urban areas that are also subjected to challenges of climate change. Further, such future displacements and diversifications will likely produce new, complex patterns of translocalism, temporality, environmental stress, conflict and cooperation. Based on comparisons in Ghana and South Africa, this project examines how existing strategies and trajectories of in-country and international migrants might relate to future patterns of climate-related displacement and settlement. The project is being developed jointly by the Max Planck Institute, the University of Oxford, the University of Ghana and the University of the Witwatersrand.