The Risks and Challenges of EU Responses to Climate-Induced Mobility

“The impact of climate change is increasing. There is nothing in the rural areas. Agriculture is almost dead and there are no jobs.” 

This testimony from a community in Gambia, drawn from new Action Aid International research​ on human mobility and climate change​, comes at the end of the hottest year on record - which has had profound effects on people’s lives everywhere.  

Whether it is droughts in the Sahel or the recent deadly floods in Valencia, climate change is posing an increasing threat to lives and livelihoods, and forcing people to move in search of safety or viable work. 

The scale of the challenge is not reflected, however, in European leadership. Ursula von der Leyen’s Commission launched last week on a platform of “competitiveness, security, and defence”, with seemingly little awareness of the urgent risk posed by climate impacts to all of those ideas. 

The EU should instead maintain and extend ambitious decarbonisation. But even in a best-case scenario, climate will disrupt people’s way of life across and beyond Europe.  

It’s time to change the approach. Where the EU does focus on migration, it does so almost exclusively through attempts to control and restrict movement; rather than adapting its approach to environmental reality. 

There is no one model of climate-linked mobility. Weather, sea levels, soil quality, or the viability of agriculture contribute to people’s decision to move both following short-term emergencies, and as a longer-term adaptation strategy. 

The EU is both an affected area and a neighbour to many affected areas. Most people displaced by climate change move within their countries, but with conditions worsening and few opportunities arising, climate change is shaping regional an international migration too.  

The EU’s current approach is to shut the door, keeping people away from borders no matter the human or financial cost. It is preparing a raft of new deportation deals and “partnerships” with third countries with little regard for the safety of people moving, pouring public money into border forces, and even tightening its internal borders. 

The EU’s New Pact on Migration and Asylum mentions climate change as a driver of migration, and the European Green Deal also makes a nod toward addressing climate-linked mobility. But climate justice groups fear the Green Deal is on course to be dismantled by the European right, whilst the Pact also focuses on enforcement, not support.   

Enforcement will not work. The Migration Pact, which promised to neutralise the polarised political debate around migration, has already failed to do so.  

More border forces will not reduce the number of people who need to leave places that are becoming uninhabitable. It will not create new opportunities in countries.  

And it will not dismantle the political and economic relationships - many of which Europe is deeply involved in - that cause instability and environmental degradation in countries where people are departing from. 

But what if some of the funding being poured into border enforcement to satisfy the insatiable demands of the European right was instead assigned to addressing the challenge of climate-linked movement?  

So far, EU policy has focused on keeping people where they are; promoting local adaptation in vulnerable regions through (heavily limited) development aid and climate finance.  

People deserve the right to be able to stay in their homes, and such investment in defending communities, building resilience, and ecological renewal is important. But people also deserve the right to move safely when they need to. 

The EU should ensure people in areas that are becoming less habitable can move in a safe way and with dignity, rather than waiting for the chaotic context of a disaster. 

Without widening legal protections, opportunities, and safe pathways for people affected by climate change, the EU risks falling asleep at the wheel as humanitarian crises worsen.  

The recent COP29 agreement highlighted powerful countries’ sluggishness in adapting to reality. 

Whilst the deal eventually agreed upon could have been worse, the support offered is nowhere near in line with what climate-vulnerable communities need. 

Our research, based on sustained engagement with such communities, emphasises the urgent need for a comprehensive approach to climate change, migration, and development.  

These areas are currently fragmented​ and incoherent​ - the EU’s climate policy is ambitious but under attack, its migration policy treats movement only as a problem to be prevented, and its development policy squares poorly with its continuing dependence on fossil fuels and resource depletion in its neighbouring regions. 

And yet the EU, as a forum of multiple countries with deep links in the regions surrounding it, is uniquely placed to develop a coherent approach and lead globally.  

The worst of the climate crisis could be prevented through a sustained focus on blending climate finance, sustainable development aid, and new legal protections for people affected by migration and displacement into a single, integrated framework. 

Such efforts will require boldness and vision. Europe would need to drop its obsession with preventing movement, and recognise that people move - and have always moved. 

Climate change is both a shared problem and a shared opportunity to demand a response fit for the task, rooted in the human rights and human values Europe claims to hold dear. 

The EU stands at a crossroads. It can ignore the floods, droughts, job losses and ecosystems at risk in and around Europe, and the human impacts they have.   

Or we can take a creative and proactive turn, providing a model for the world to follow that prioritises human rights, dignity, and flourishing in a safer world.