Compound impacts of extreme weather events and Covid-19 on climate mobilities.

Weather and climate-related human mobility (climate mobilities) including displacement are often viewed as security concerns. The recent coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic adds yet another layer of complexity which calls for unpacking these connections. This paper explores how existing patterns of migration and displacement that are driven by climate change impacts compound with the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. First, the paper outlines the links between extreme weather events and human mobility to then explore how the impacts from COVID-19 interact, cascade and compound pre-existing vulnerabilities of people on the move. Examining the ways in which climate change is potentially driving or shifting patterns of climate mobility allows to gain a shared understanding of this complex issue. This paper contextualises the compounding impacts with a geographical focus on Bangladesh, a well-known climate hotspot. The paper contributes to the debates on impacts and human responses to climate change and concludes with a set of policy recommendations.

Compound impacts from droughts and structural vulnerability on human mobility.

Extreme dry events already disrupt populations' ability to migrate. In a warming climate, compound drought events could amplify vulnerability and drive forced migration. Here, we contribute the first multi-method research design on societal impacts from compound drought events. We show how mobility patterns are shaped by the intersection of drought and social vulnerability factors in three drought-prone countries - Madagascar, Nepal, and Mexico. We find that internal migration in agricultural communities in Mexico increased by 14 to 24 basis points from 1991 to 2018 and will prospectively increase by 2 to 15 basis points in Nepal in case of a compound drought event in 2025. We show that consecutive drought events exacerbate structural vulnerabilities, limiting migrants' adaptation options, including long-range migration. We conclude that the additional social pre-conditions, e.g., social isolation and lack of accurate information, ultimately limit migration as an adaptation option for households vulnerable to compound drought events.