Abstract

The increasingly tangible impacts of climate change are fueling concerns over the future of humanity having to live in a narrowing ‘human climate niche’. On this basis, a recent intervention anticipates an ‘inevitable global redistribution of people’ from the Global South towards habitable spaces of the Global North. Such a view is indicative of a wider trend in policy and academia that is increasingly interested in the study and implications of uninhabitability of certain parts of our planet.

There is no doubt that global warming has major implications for humanity and ecosystems. At the same time, we argue in this perspective that scientists, social scientists, and other analysts should avoid defining or declaring places ‘uninhabitable’ without consultation with the communities living there. Habitability cannot be determined through top-down models and projections only. In addition to environmental and climatic factors, habitability is actively shaped by local socio-economic contexts, human agency, policy choices, and financial support for local adaptation; knowledge of these factors is always crucial. While there can be real declines in habitability—not just owing to climatic factors but also resulting from governance failures, conflicts, or lack of financial support—any premature or insufficiently contextualized declaration of uninhabitability from afar risks discouraging necessary investments in adaptation by governments and donors, thereby undermining the right of people to stay and adapt in place. For example, government officials in the Marshall Islands have indicated that aid and climate finance institutions already discount the need for, and right to, bold in situ adaptation out of fear that their investments will be in vain if parts of the islands are later deemed uninhabitable. In Costa Rica, the government has declared entire villages uninhabitable due to increasing environmental and climate risks, which prevents these communities from accessing public funding for local adaptation. Families have been requested to relocate. However, the majority have remained, exposing them to a combination of escalating climate risks and institutional abandonment. In Fairbourne (United Kingdom), villagers have actively protested against a top-down declaration of future uninhabitability of their place by the government, demanding the right for their village to remain and for them to be included in any decision-making on this matter. These examples demonstrate that in-situ adaptation must remain central to science-policy attention, and that communities must always be actively involved in decision-making on habitability.

We provide five recommendations to guide further research about habitability, seeking to overcome potentially harmful generalizations that might guide future policymaking. Each of these recommendations is rooted in commitments to the right to self-determination and to preserving human dignity as the foundation for climate justice. Their focus is on enabling locally-relevant assessments of habitability and subsequent decisions about possible in-situ adaptation or relocation that are based on the preferences, needs, and capabilities of local populations. We offer these recommendations as a diverse group of social and environmental science scholars, working in related fields of climate adaptation, mobilities, humanitarianism, international development, covering different geographical regions in the world.