Ricardo Safra de Campos

• PhD
• Senior Lecturer at University of Exeter

Vulnerability to climate change is highly uneven in society because it is determined by underlying social structures. Pat of the vulnerability of society to the impacts of climate change is the risk of involuntary displacement from place of residence. Such displacement risks have been shown to be increasing due to changes in climate that increase t...

It is widely recognised that environmental events may trigger permanent and seasonal migration but less attention has been given to the way they shape the everyday mobility that shapes household livelihood strategies. This dearth of attention can be traced to a lack of statistical data, the difficulties of collecting information on local space-time...

Planned relocation has been shown to have significant impacts on the livelihoods and wellbeing of people and communities, whether the resettlement process is inclusive or coercive. For states, planned relocation represents risks to those communities but also to government investments and political legitimacy. Evaluations of relocations commonly foc...

As global climate change intensifies, the question of what makes a place habitable or uninhabitable is critical, particularly in the context of a potential future climate outside the realm of lived experience, and the possible concurrent redistribution of populations partly associated with such climatic shifts. The concept of habitability holds the...

New migrant populations in rapidly growing cities globally are often socially and politically marginalized, limiting their potential to contribute to the positive transformation of urban futures. Such marginalisation can potentially be overcome through deliberate efforts to build empathy between groups. Here we apply insights on empathic action to...

Non-technical summary Cities typically treat migration and sustainability as separate policy domains. When migration is highlighted in the context of sustainability in urban destination areas, it is typically understood to have no, or at worst, negative impacts on sustainability. As a result, migration and migrants are commonly left out of sustaina...

To understand the implications of migration for sustainable development requires a comprehensive consideration of a range of population movements and their feedback across space and time. This Perspective reviews emerging science at the interface of migration studies, demography, and sustainability, focusing on consequences of migration flows for n...

The role of migration as one potential adaptation to climate change is increasingly recognized, but little is known about whether migration constitutes successful adaptation, under what conditions, and for whom. Based on a review of emerging migration science, we propose that migration is a successful adaptation to climate change if it increases we...

Research on the impacts of COVID-19 on mobility has focused primarily on the increased health vulnerabilities of involuntary migrant and displaced populations. But virtually all migration flows have been truncated and altered because of reduced economic and mobility opportunities of migrants. Here we use a well-established framework of migration de...

This paper examines how global trade shapes and intensifies disasters. Juxtaposing three basic, everyday consumer goods – a t- shirt, a brick, and a tea bag – with disasters manifesting in their respective global supply chains, it high-lights how climate change, local environmental degradation, and carbon emissions are dynamically shaped by consump...

Disasters like floods, droughts and landslides are a growing risk for millions of people in the global South. Yet in our globalising world, they are increasingly connected to processes originating in the global North. Focusing on imports from Cambodia, Sri Lanka and the South Asian ‘brick belt’, this project examines how British trade shapes the di...

Low-lying atoll islands are especially threatened by anticipated sea-level rise, and migration is often mentioned as a potential response of these island societies. Further, small island states are developing population, economic and adaptation policies to plan the future. Policies, such as raising of islands or land reclamation, require a long-ter...

Mobility is a key livelihood and risk management strategy, including in the context of climate change. The COVID-19 pandemic has reinforced long standing concerns that migrant populations remain largely overlooked in economic development, adaptation to climate change, and spatial planning. We synthesize evidence across multiple studies that confirm...

While material conditions of migrant populations on average tend to improve over time as they become established in new destinations, individual trajectories of material and subjective well‐being often diverge. Here, we analyse how social and environmental factors in the urban environment shape the subjective well‐being of migrant populations. We h...

Migration represents a major transformation of the lives of those involved and has been transformative of societies and economies globally. Yet models of sustainability transformations do not effectively incorporate the movement of populations. There is an apparent migration-sustainability paradox: migration plays a role as a driver of unsustainabi...

Environmental change influences population movements at various temporal and spatial scales. Yet individual decisions to migrate involve multiple motivations including perceived environmental risks and economic opportunities. We analyze how perceptions of environmental risks affect migration decisions and future migration intentions. We use cross-s...

It is widely suggested that migration is a key mechanism linking climate change to violent conflict, particularly through migration increasing the risks of conflict in urban destinations. Yet climate change also creates new forms of insecurity through distress migration, immobility and vulnerability that are prevalent in urban destination locations...

The coastal areas of the Ganges-Brahmaputra-Meghna delta are acknowledged hotspots of environmental and social concerns. This reflects a large, mainly rural population of 56.7 million, which is exposed to a range of natural hazards exacerbated by climate change, sea-level rise and subsidence. There are high levels of poverty and limited social well...

Addressing sources and drivers of precarity among marginalized migrant populations in urban spaces is central to making cities inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable for all. Yet dominant policy discourses continue to frame migrants as problematic causes of insecurity and tend to exclude them from policy processes. Deliberative democratic theor...

The term ‘vulnerability’ is used to examine the interlinkages between humans and their social and physical surroundings. This approach is similar to the IPCC AR4's (2007) conceptual framework of vulnerability to climate change. The IPCC AR5 (2014) introduces a new approach and terminology that is in line with the concept of risk, thus differing fro...

The science of resilience suggests that urban systems become resilient when they promote progressive transformative change to social and physical infrastructure. But resilience is challenged by global environmental risks and by social and economic trends that create inequality and exclusion. Here we argue that distortionary inequality and precarity...

Purpose of Review South Asia is highly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change, owing to the high dependency on climate-sensitive livelihoods and recurrent extreme events. Consequently, an increasing number of households are adopting labour migration as a livelihood strategy to diversify incomes, spread risks, and meet aspirations. Under the Co...

Deltas exemplify trends of great acceleration in the Anthropocene, including the shape of demographic and mobility transitions. The human core of the Anthropocene involves three principal phenomena: Increased human health evident at the population scale; movement of people to urban settlements; and growth in aggregate populations. Based on this res...

Migration is transformative both for those who move and for the places and economies of source and destination. The global stock of migrants, depending on definition, is approximately 750 million people: to assume that the world is static and that migration is a problem to be managed is inaccurate. Since migration is a major driving force of planet...

Studies of climate change at specific intervals of future warming have primarily been addressed through top-down approaches using climate projections and modelled impacts. In contrast, bottom-up approaches focus on the recent past and present vulnerability. Here, we examine climate signals at different increments of warming and consider the need to...

By 2050 more people of Bangladesh will be living in urban areas than rural areas. Therefore, instead of viewing migrants as source of urban problems, long term planning is required to create sustainable cities for all. • Learning from lived experiences of new migrants can lead to more effective and sustainable solutions. • Migrants of Chattogram ar...