Our Policy Brief on Climate Mobility Justice for COP30
Grounded in lessons and reflections from the 2024 and 2025 International School on Climate Mobilities (ISCM), and BCC’s ongoing work, the brief offers five key messages for centering justice, agency, and community leadership in climate (im)mobility:
- (Re)frame climate-related (im)mobilities to amplify agency, rights, and justice
- Confront structural drivers of vulnerability to promote equitable action
- Centre justice, agency, and community leadership in climate action and governance
- Prevent forced displacement through anticipatory, rights-based action
- Integrate cross-sectoral, multi-level, and community-led solutions
Climate mobility—spanning migration, displacement, planned relocation, and immobility—is not merely a challenge to manage. It is a critical site for justice, dignity, and systemic transformation. Those least responsible for the crisis—often Indigenous, rural, and smallholder communities—bear its greatest burdens while sustaining much of the world’s biodiversity.
This brief is not a wish list—it is a call to action for all actors shaping climate-related (im)mobility: policymakers and states, researchers, practitioners, funders, and advocates. Transformative change requires power-sharing and leadership rooted in lived experience, local knowledge, and community self-determination.
At COP30, decision-makers face a defining choice: will we continue managing displacement through control and containment, or reimagine mobility as a catalyst for justice and care? The future of climate mobility must be shaped with affected communities, not for them—anchored in rights, agency, and belonging.
Let COP30 mark the turning point—from vulnerability to agency—and deliver the justice this moment demands.
