The North Atlantic island communities were hit particularly hard when the Little Ice Age encroached upon them in the fifteenth to eighteenth centuries. The islanders had settled during the warm medieval period and had established well-functioning societies. In Iceland this had resulted also in the creation of a remarkable literary canon.

When the climate changed, Icelandic society became unsettled – literally and metaphorically. The original pattern of independent farmsteads, containing both owners and farmhands, broke asunder. With decreasing production, the farms could support fewer people, and an increasing number of people became vagrants in a landscape of scarce opportunities. Within Icelandic society, as established by the settlements and as enforced through consecutive laws, vagrancy was illegal, however. The uprooted were victims of hard times, but they were also increasingly seen as a threat to the social order by the settled members of society. History shows how the vagrants (flakkarar) were gradually dehumanized, sometimes even demonized, as they struggled to find a foothold in a hostile environment.

The general idea of this chapter is to discuss how categorization infiltrates and possibly aggravates the plight of people who are uprooted in the wake of climate change. This also calls for a careful reconsideration of causality in history.

This chapter addresses traditional Inuit societies and their responses to climatic changes. It is argued that, due to the Arctic region's island-like status concerning environment, climate, geography, and cultural history, and due to an interdisciplinary Arctic research tradition, this region is particularly favourable to study and learn from, with regard to societies and climate change. Moreover, it is argued that societal response to climate fluctuations is best understood in an intergenerational time perspective and at large geographical scales, as can be provided in the deep archaeological time-scale within the Arctic world. From recent fieldwork in north-east Greenland, this area's prehistory is discussed in relation to climate change. This case is followed by a discussion of four aspects of Inuit prehistory of the eastern Arctic that are considered crucial to the Inuit adaptation and success during the centuries, i.e. (1) the initial Thule culture migration into the eastern Arctic; (2) breathing-hole sealing technology; (3) snow house technology; and (4) Inuit long-distance travels in the eighteenth century. In the chapter it is concluded that the Inuit did not invent new strategies or technologies in relation to stress induced e.g. by climate change. Instead they relied on an inherent flexibility in their living and being in the Arctic, involving high mobility and frequent migrations at the individual level, which enabled them to overcome crises caused by social conflicts as well as environmentally dependent changes. Further, it is concluded that the Inuit had an ability to creatively integrate technologies and life-ways resulting from their cultural encounters, e.g. with people from the Late Dorset culture, European whalers, and Moravians, that were successfully employed when climatic-induced environmental changes affected their life and societies.

This chapter explains the likely consequences of proposals to resettle large numbers of people away from the Pacific Islands for the people left behind. It does this by describing the effects of large-scale migration away from the small island state of Niue, which is a very good analogue from which lessons for other islands can be drawn.

The chapter begins by examining the discourse on large-scale migration as a solution to save the people of the Pacific Islands from the impacts of climate change. The discourse of draining the people from these remote island backwaters of the world persists even though understanding of vulnerability and adaptation to climate change in the Pacific Islands remains extremely limited. In this discourse there is little concern for the needs and rights of migrants, and no consideration of the consequences of such movements for those people who cannot or do not wish to move. It is this latter issue that this chapter examines.

There has been large-scale migration from Niue since 1971, to the extent that 80 per cent of the people born in Niue now live in New Zealand. There are six principal effects of this depopulation on those who remain on the island, namely that it leads to: distortions in markets; obsolescent political and administrative institutions; a hyper-concentration of social capital; increased demands on labour; difficulties in defining and maintaining that which is ‘traditional’; and an erosion of Niuean identity.

Based on this examination, the chapter argues that migration is likely to be an impact of climate change as much as it is to be an adaptation. Mitigation and adaptation must therefore be the preferred strategies, although there may be scope for carefully managed labour migration as part of a suite of adaptation strategies.

Arctic societies experience the impacts of climate change at great speed as global warming is amplified in the Circumpolar North. This challenges northern people in several ways. For hunters and fishermen this often means a shrinking landscape due to a decline in mobility and resource access, whereas for Greenland as such the increased accessibility to land and sea has offered new industrial and urban opportunities. In Alaska, a number of small communities face total relocation due to exposure to extreme weather conditions. These climate related challenges and possibilities affect the social dynamics in many regions and force regions, communities, and households to rethink their short- and long-term strategies and aspirations. Human mobility has always been applied as a strategy and this chapter argues that people in the Circumpolar North are hyper-mobile and place-polygamous. However, the role of human mobility takes on a new importance in relation to the present climate change challenges as people have to make choices of a scale not seen before because it forces them to think of future possibilities in new ways – possibilities that may transform the societies radically.

This chapter introduces the concept of ‘horizons of expectations’ and relates it to perceptions of community in order to develop a new understanding of the perceptions that influence attitudes and responses to climate related conditions. On the basis of three contemporary examples of climate change related mobility discussions and mobility patterns in the Arctic, the chapter focuses on how different understandings of community are mobilized and used in order to deal with the rather complex situations faced by northern peoples.

Projections of sea-level rise generally imply that Pacific low-lying reef and atoll islands will be subject to considerable environmental changes, gradually diminishing their habitability. As a result, the option of abandoning the islands either through increased migration and/or relocation has been proposed as a potential adaptation strategy. Drawing on insights from Solomon Islands, this chapter explores how outlying island communities both historically and recently have engaged in human mobilities and partial relocations beyond the islands and in what ways these practices form active and deliberate adaptation strategies. Based on findings, it is argued that moving people into new locations as a response to climate change could have large socio-cultural, economic, and environmental consequences, potentially creating new vulnerabilities for the communities involved. Thus, any required future relocation of communities must be planned carefully, in order to select appropriate destinations for resettlement, and to guarantee long-term ownership or user rights to land and other resources in order to secure people's livelihood opportunities.

History tells us that humans are perfectly capable of adapting to a changing environment. The past ice ages are proof of the great adaptive capacity of our kind. Anthropogenic climate change will happen – and, if unabated – with catastrophic consequences. More extreme weather events, sea-level rise, and a hotter and drier climate are some of the predicted outcomes seriously affecting people's choice of where to live on an increasingly crowded planet. Climate-induced migration is not new, as already in the past people moved when faced by environmental change; but today, population densities have increased dramatically, and arable land has become more limited. Large cross-border streams of ‘climate migrants’ or ‘environmental refugees’ caused by tropical cyclones, associated flooding and landslides, droughts, and sea-level rise could trigger resource competition with violent outcomes in the receiving country or region. But can these claims be substantiated? This chapter examines different types of natural hazards relevant for climate-induced migration, and argues that without an analysis identifying the people most vulnerable to natural hazards (for example, where they live and how they are affected), it is difficult to access the conflict potential of climate-induced migration.

Christian actors and institutions in the Pacific have taken to integrating themes of climate change, sea-level rise, and migration into their religious discourses and practices. Here what interests me is the deliberate reception, processing, and incorporation of the climate change cum migration problematic into the Christian governing practice. Foucault's conception of governmentality – how political power is exercised in the modern era – supplies the analytical instrumentarium for exploring this practice. A series of official declarations by Pacific churches, as well as three case studies from different regions of Oceania (Fiji, Kiribati, and Papua New Guinea), offer a window into the relationship between Christianity, forced migration, and climate change. I examine how Christian churches and actors now position themselves in the conflicted terrain of climate change and displacement as moral authorities and indispensable mediators on the local, national, and international levels.

This chapter offers an overview of the history of human migration, conditions pertaining to past migrations, and the types of evidence that allow their study. The importance of scales of time and space is illustrated by ‘standing still’ for a thousand years at a busy crossroads in Europe, and observing the emergence of new social forms. How can these observations help to anticipate and formulate responses to contemporary population movements?

Millions of hectares of African land are currently being purchased or leased on the long term, as part of large-scale strategies by countries to secure food in the future and also to engage in the production of biofuel. The scale of these acquisitions is unprecedented since the colonial era, and is likely to have major regional, national, and global consequences. Many current land grabs are legitimated by a discourse that relies heavily on global warming and expectations of climate change, yet such strategies for coping with the effects of change reduce the resilience of local farmers and risk contributing to a new era of rural–rural and rural–urban migration. Drawing on historical and contemporary case studies from four African countries, this chapter explores past mistakes as well as experience gained through successful agricultural projects that helped small-scale farmers to cope with change.

This chapter offers an overview of the history of human migration, conditions pertaining to past migrations, and the types of evidence that allow their study. The importance of scales of time and space is illustrated by ‘standing still’ for a thousand years at a busy crossroads in Europe, and observing the emergence of new social forms. How can these observations help to anticipate and formulate responses to contemporary population movements?

Projections of sea-level rise generally imply that Pacific low-lying reef and atoll islands will be subject to considerable environmental changes, gradually diminishing their habitability. As a result, the option of abandoning the islands either through increased migration and/or relocation has been proposed as a potential adaptation strategy. Drawing on insights from Solomon Islands, this chapter explores how outlying island communities both historically and recently have engaged in human mobilities and partial relocations beyond the islands and in what ways these practices form active and deliberate adaptation strategies. Based on findings, it is argued that moving people into new locations as a response to climate change could have large socio-cultural, economic, and environmental consequences, potentially creating new vulnerabilities for the communities involved. Thus, any required future relocation of communities must be planned carefully, in order to select appropriate destinations for resettlement, and to guarantee long-term ownership or user rights to land and other resources in order to secure people's livelihood opportunities.