Climate change, migration and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development

This briefing report looks at the anticipated impacts of climate-induced migration on efforts to achieve the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) on climate change – SDG13. More specifically, this brief describes the SDG targets relating to climate change and the particular challenges to each in the context of increasing climate-induced migration.

The paper offers three conclusions with recommendations to build climate resilience through measures aimed at helping people to adapt and minimise risk. They find that forced climate-induced migration and displacement can lead to further risk accumulation in cities, climate policies do not take future migration into account because the timing of forced migration and displacement is unpredictable, and that voluntary climate-induced migration can be supported and planned for as an adaption strategy.