Human agency

Abstract

The scholarship on climate mobilities has evolved to pay attention to human agency and cultural adaptation. In this viewpoint, we argue that the international organizations (IOs) with formal mandates related to migration governance, refugee protection, and climate adaptation are still falling short in this aspect. Currently, these actors tend to neglect agency and adaptation because they view 'climate mobility' as a macrotrend and analyze it within a framework of polycrisis. This polycrisis or macrotrend framework (1) does not focus on specific contexts or agents, making drastic events seem inevitable and solutions impossible, and (2) is based on the idea of a negative feedback loop demanding extraordinary measures rather than local socio-political solutions. By focusing on human agency and culture to understand climate mobility, international organizations can better analyze the circumstances in which migration decisions are being made and what people need from policymakers while undertaking their preferred adaptive strategies. Bringing a human agency and culture lens more fully IO reports on climate mobility will help us to better understand the causes and, more critically, the solutions to these global but also highly localized issues.