Climate Migration: Towards a New Policy Paradigm
Yaroslav Lissovolik
With climate change emerging as one of the key vulnerabilities for the global economy, there is a greater emphasis placed by scholars on pro-active and anticipatory policy responses to such challenges. Rather than waiting for further escalation in climate-related risks before launching any palpable relief measures, the anticipatory approach favors ex-ante preparation and modeling of the most affected regions and areas of policy response. Such an anticipatory paradigm is particularly important in the sphere of climate migration, where existing research suggests that ad hoc and ex-post policy response to climate change may be fraught with a shift of labour resources into informal economy. An anticipatory approach may render climate migration more effective in bolstering economic growth in recipient economies and supporting the affected donor regions via targeted transfers and remittances. The BRICS and the Global South more broadly are already developing important collaborative mechanisms that may promote the emergence of such an anticipatory response system, rendering the developing world more resilient to climate change risks.
Climate migration: drivers and affected regions
According to the Groundswell report of the World Bank (pessimistic scenario – “without early and concerted action”), up to 216 million people could become internal climate migrants by 2050. Broader estimates of potential climate migration/climate refugees that take into account migration due to natural disasters suggest even higher levels of adversity for the world economy – in particular, Zurich Insurance estimates suggest that the number of climate refugees could reach 1.2 bn by 2050. Climate migration of that scale entails notable costs, including the costs disruptions in labor markets, the need for retraining and reallocating labor to other regions and sectors of national and regional economies. Some of the recent estimates suggest that the costs of adaptation for the labor force in the affected regions may be more significant compared to earlier estimates – as argued in a 2024 paper by Paul Clements, “with average annual numbers of people displaced by sudden-onset weather events who return home rising from around 30 million a year in the 2020s to around 59 million a year in the 2040s, average costs for supporting them would rise from below $4.6 billion to below $9.1 billion a year”. Such higher estimates in turn according to the study call for greater focus on climate migration on the part of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).
In terms of the regional impact of climate change on migration, Sub-Saharan Africa is projected by the World Bank to register the highest number of internal climate migrants, where this figure could reach as high as 85.7 mn people (4.2% of the projected population); East Asia and the Pacific are projected to register 48.4 mn internal climate migrants; South Asia 40.5 mn (1.8%); North Africa 19.3 mn (9%). As the World Bank report notes, “hotspots of internal climate migration could emerge as early as 2030 and continue to spread and intensify by 2050”, with the scale of migration flows being particularly significant in the climate-vulnerable and poorest areas. Across the main regions of the Global South, Sub-Saharan Africa tops the global economy in the absolute size of climate migrant flows, while Northern Africa leads in terms of the share of these migrants in the region’s population. This in turn renders the challenge of climate migration particularly palpable for the developing world, raising the risks of widening income disparities and development gaps across the Global South.
According to studies that focus on the regional patterns of climate migration, “most of these movements are local or inter-regional. South–South international migration responses are smaller, while the South–North migration response is of the “brain drain” type and induces a permanent increase in the number of foreigners in OECD countries in the range of 6–9% only”. While the importance of local migration within climate migration flows does suggest that national policies geared towards mitigating climate risks will play a key role, it also lays bare there the significant scope of liberalization in international migration flows to relieve the pressures at the national level and create greater optionality in the adjustment instruments to cope with climate change and climate migration.
Another study undertaken by Yang, X., Chen, D., Wahab, I. et al. (2025) assessed the sensitivity of international migration to climate change across 160 countries and regions, with the results showing that “migration patterns are strongly influenced by a country’s baseline climate and economic conditions… A simple predictive model based on projected changes in climate and GDP suggests that populations in low-GDP, low-latitude countries will face worsening conditions and increasing migration pressure by the end of the 21st century. The results underscore the growing influence of economic factors on migration and call for urgent integration of climate justice into migration policy to support vulnerable populations in a warming world.”.
With climate migration risks particularly afflicting underdeveloped areas of the global economy, there may be a need to explore the scope for ex-ante/preventive labor migration that addresses the development needs of the affected regions and at the same time relieves the ex-post/subsequent pressures from escalating climate change risks. The need to shift to an anticipatory framework is starting to be increasingly recognized in academic literature, with one of the recent papers by Hanna Marcus calling for “a shift towards anticipatory, rights-based adaptation planning that recognizes mobility as both a potential risk and an adaptive strategy in response to climate change”.
An anticipatory framework for climate migration
The problem with ex-post/ad hoc response in climate migration is that it may result in a significant shift of migrant labor into the informal sector, thus reducing the benefits to both the recipient and donor economies. The idea of a pro-active paradigm would then be to facilitate ex-ante labor, seasonal and urban migration in regions that are experiencing an escalation in climate migration pressures. In a way, this strategy involves employing various categories of migration, including regular, ongoing labor migration in such a way that subsequent pressures associated with climate migration are alleviated. The scope to pursue such a strategy is facilitated by commonalities in the regional patterns of climate migration pressures and labor/urban migration – as mentioned above, existing research points to the significant role played by regional/local migration, including from depressed rural areas into urban agglomerations in driving climate migration flows.
Accordingly, rather than treating migration as an ad hoc response to climate-related crises, the proposed approach is to look at migration as a pro-active and planned adaptation tool. Such a paradigm of “migration as an adaptation tool” would have to be predicated on sequencing of key policy steps in a way that relies significantly on the insights provided by detailed labor market data.
1. The first stage would then focus on accumulating labor market data for regions affected by climate change as well as areas that may become the recipients of labor migrant flows. This would need to be accompanied by predictive modelling that would serve to identify the regions that are to be prioritized in terms of economic support and pro-active migration policy measures.
2. The second stage would focus on building ex-ante/anticipatory migration corridors, which may involve infrastructure development in the donor as well as the recipient regions. At the same time, such a strategy would need to be balanced and pursued with caution as there is a need to ensure sufficient support for the donor regions – as argued by Almulhim, A.I. et al, “adopting strategies to enhance communities’ coping and adaptive capacities can minimize the need for migration in the face of both gradual and abrupt changes”.
3. The third stage would target an array of measures associated with matching the labor supply and demand gaps, which in turn may involve: a. Skill pre-matching and retraining of the migrant labor force that is to relocate to the recipient regions from the zones affected by climate change; b. Phased placement of the migrants in line with the indications of where there may be excess demand for the labor force and scope to receive migration inflows
4. Managing ex-post remittance flows: the remittances from the ex-ante migration waves would be directed in part towards the areas experiencing climate pressures (donor regions) – this may be done via co-financing from the government or/and tax incentives.
5. Expanding the perimeter for migration adaptation: lowering the barriers/costs for migration flows across regions internationally across country borders. This may be facilitated by introducing initiatives into labor market regulations/integration road maps across the regional integration arrangements (RIAs) of the Global South. Such labor market policy packages for the respective RIAs may include the diplomas certification and mutual recognition, visa-free travel, professional competency standards harmonization/recognition, etc.
What role for BRICS+ and the Global South?
Within the international dimension, such an anticipatory paradigm may be difficult to construct across the North-South axis, given the rising pressures in the US and Europe associated with migration flows. There may be more scope to explore its potential in the South-South space and in particular on the basis of coordination undertaken by BRICS+ in this area. In particular, during the meeting of BRICS labor and employment ministers in India’s Hyderabad that took place on July 15, 2026 the bloc’s economies agreed on boosting cooperation in the digital space (with reference to the interoperability of labor platforms) that may raise the capabilities of BRICS to monitor trends and bridge gaps across BRICS labor markets. In this respect, the BRICS labor and employment ministers approved the creation of the BRICS CONNECT platform designed to advance the group’s cooperation in the labor market sphere – such labor market connectivity would be an indispensable component in the coordination of South-South climate migration.
Some of the key statements in the Ministerial Declaration that are relevant for the building of the proposed anticipatory framework for climate migration, most notably in the digital economy space, include the following:
- Para 16: We commit to strengthen collaboration in forecasting skills needs by analysing labour market trends in digital, green, care and other priority sectors.
- Para 18: We recognize the transformative role of digital technologies in expanding the outreach of social protection and enhancing inclusiveness and accessibility for workers’ welfare. This can facilitate the identification of eligible beneficiaries, providing them with the right support through interoperable labour platforms, with due regard to domestic digital governance and data protection frameworks.
- Para 24: We endorse the work done by Employment Working Group and progress made in building on Virtual Liaison Office. We adopt BRICS CONNECT (BRICS Cooperation Network for Capacity Building, Employability, and New Skills and Technologies), a streamlined, flexible platform with four components: ● Capacity Building for Advancing Social Security ● Women’s participation in the workforce ● Skills and Employability ● Digital Public Infrastructure
As noted in the press-release of the International Labor Organization (ILO), the meeting accorded priority to digital cooperation in the labor market space with the view to strengthening “labour market intelligence, improve skills forecasting and make training systems more responsive to demand in green, digital and care economies… The meeting also addressed the potential of digital technologies to improve worker protection. ILO and ISSA analysis identified key digital enablers including simplified worker registration, contribution collection, benefits management, identity verification, digital payments, mobile access, skills profiling, career guidance and job matching”.
The BRICS Labor and Employment Ministers’ Declaration may be accessed via the following link: https://southsouthpoint.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/DECLARATION-BRICS-14072026-1111.pdf
Conclusions
There is a rising sense of urgency of acting on climate migration as ongoing studies reveal new evidence of higher costs and secondary effects associated with climate change. In this respect, recent research suggests that as climate change progresses, the mobility of the affected population, particularly those with lower incomes, is adversely impacted. As stated by the authors of the study, “climate change induces decreases in emigration of lowest-income levels by over 10% in 2100 for medium development and climate scenarios compared with no climate change and by up to 35% for more pessimistic scenarios including catastrophic damages. This effect would leave resource-constrained populations extremely vulnerable to both subsequent climate change impacts and increased poverty”. Such estimates further strengthen the case for ex-ante migration adaptation solutions rather than policies based on ex-post adjustment to climate shocks – the longer the delays in policy response, the greater the costs associated with addressing the challenges posed by climate change.
Overall, building an anticipatory framework for climate migration could benefit from ex-ante modeling and matching of labour, urban, seasonal and extra-regional migration flows with the potential flows associated with climate migration. The BRICS Connect/BRICS+ platforms could work together with the International Organization for Migration (IOM) as well as NDB and regional development banks to build capacity for a data-driven effort to optimize migration flows and render them a more effective adaptation tool with respect to climate change. Supplementary measures associated with cooperation in the digital space (to improve ex-ante modeling capacity), building reserves for assisting migrants as well as rolling out of new payment systems among BRICS+ to facilitate remittance flows in national currencies would further improve the operational capabilities of the proposed anticipatory framework for climate migration.
Yaroslav Lissovolik is the Founder of BRICS+ Analytics.