Walking into the Eye of the Storm: How the climate crisis is driving child migration and displacement

The Climate Crisis is one of the greatest emergencies of our time. It is a crisis that profoundly and disproportionately affects children, especially those from low and middle-income countries. It  is deeply inter-connected with another crisis of global proportion – that of forced migration and displacement. In 1990, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) stated that the greatest single impact of climate change could be on human migration  – with millions of people displaced by shoreline erosion, coastal flooding and agricultural disruption. The most recent data shows this gloomy prognosis to be true: two-thirds of new  internal displacements in 2020 were triggered by climate change. Whilst there are numerous studies looking at the impact of the Climate Crisis on migration and displacement, there is a still a need to advance our knowledge on the specific vulnerabilities of children and youth within this context.

 Walking into the Eye of the Storm seeks to respond to this knowledge gap and provide a new, child-focused perspective on how the Climate Crisis is driving migration and displacement. It places children’s voices at the heart of the study, speaking directly to 239 children, from 5 different countries and continents living in different types of climate conditions. We wanted to learn from them, and hear if and how the Climate Crisis is affecting their dreams and their lives.