Abstract
Climate-related disasters, both slow- and sudden-onset, are increasingly driving internal displacement, especially in countries with entrenched socio-economic and environmental vulnerabilities. Conventional models treat climate displacement as linear outcome of discrete triggers, overlooking compounded vulnerabilities that determine who moves, who remains trapped, and why. This constrains policymakers’ ability to identify high-risk contexts and design strategies. This study develops a multicausal, systems-based model of climate-induced internal displacement as the outcome of nested, interacting vulnerabilities. Drawing on Ecological Systems Theory (EST), it situates displacement drivers across five interrelated levels—microsystem, mesosystem, exosystem, macrosystem, and chronosystem—capturing how individual, community, structural, and temporal pressures converge to shape mobility outcomes. A cross-national dataset for 104 countries in 2023 integrates displacement statistics with socio-economic, demographic, and development indicators, including youth unemployment, inequality, human development, agricultural yield change, and population size. Interaction modeling tests over 5,000 variable combinations, revealing that no single factor independently predicts displacement; rather, compound interactions drive outcomes—for instance, population size with yield decline and unemployment, or yield decline with human development and inequality. Results show that lower-income, low-HDI countries experience disproportionately high per-capita displacement, while inequality can suppress visible mobility by trapping the most vulnerable. Clustering highlights diverse vulnerability profiles, with hotspots such as Bangladesh, the Philippines, India, Turkey, and Somalia exhibiting distinctive systemic configurations. The model explains ~60% of cross-country variance, underscoring the value of multilevel interaction analysis. Findings advocate resilience strategies tailored to system-level dynamics, reframing climate displacement as the emergent product of co-produced vulnerabilities and offering a scaffold for integrated, context-sensitive interventions.
Presenters
Aratrika DebnathStudent, Ph.D. in Public and Urban Policy, The New School, New York, United States
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
2026 Special Focus—Unseen Unsustainability: Addressing Hidden Risks to Long-Term Wellbeing for All
KEYWORDS
Climate-Induced Displacement, Ecological Systems Theory, Multicausal Vulnerability, Nested Systems, Interaction
