For years, the global conversation about climate change has included a powerful image: vast waves of “climate refugees” forced from their homes by rising seas, scorching heat, and relentless drought.
But researchers studying communities already living on the front lines of climate impacts say the reality is far more complicated.
Jan Freihardt, a political scientist at ETH Zurich, has spent years studying climate-related mobility in Bangladesh, particularly along the Jamuna River—one of the most dynamic rivers in the world. During the monsoon season, the river swells dramatically, eroding farmland and sometimes entire villages as its banks collapse and wash away.
Freihardt and his colleagues have followed hundreds of families living along those riverbanks, watching what happens when people suddenly lose their homes and livelihoods.
What they’ve found challenges some common assumptions. Many people do move, but most move only short distances—often just a few kilometers away. Some relocate to nearby cities. Only a small fraction leave the country. And many families try to stay close to the communities where they were born, rebuilding again and again even after repeated losses.
Freihardt’s work suggests that climate migration is rarely a simple story of environmental disaster forcing people across borders. Instead, decisions about whether to stay or leave are shaped by land, livelihoods, family ties, economic opportunity, and the resources people have available to move.
Understanding those decisions—why some people move, why others stay, and why some cannot leave even if they want to—may fundamentally change the way we think about climate migration in a warming world.
