Sea level rise related mobility in European contexts
Within the climate change research field there is a tradition of studying how island nations and communities will be impacted by environmental change and particularly sea level rise (see e.g., Esteban et al., 2019; Thomas & Benjamin, 2018). These studies have focused mainly on low- and middle-income nations and communities, that are extremely vulnerable to climate change impacts and are already experiencing varied extreme climate events (Rigaud et al., 2018). The emergent climate migration or environment migration field has paid far less attention to Europe as a context for regional and intra-continental environmentally induced mobilities in the present moment or in the near future. However, several places in Europe, including many island areas and communities are at particular high risk of sea level rise. Therefore, climate change and sea level rise related mobility should not only be seen as something that will influence Europe from the outside through climate migration. This research project seeks to contribute to this research gap by exploring climate mobility in a European context by exploring how mobility (to Europe as well as within Europe) is perceived as an adaption strategy to sea level rise in comparison to other adaption strategies such as protection and accommodation.
We are interested in various stakeholders´ perceptions particularly in European local and national contexts influenced by sea level rise. As contexts, we focus on the Netherlands, Italy and the UK and the stakeholder perspectives we focus on are a) policy makers´, b) local residents in areas at particular risk of sea level rise c) some of whom may be migrants themselves, d) experts such as researchers and project managers in the field of sea level rise and climate related mobilities, and e) the mainstream media.
The project is conducted in 2024-2027.
The project is funded by the Kone Foundation.
