Climate Migration for Health indicators

The Climate-Migration Indicators for Health workstream, coordinated by Ilan Kelman, focuses on defining indicators and metrics to detect and attribute (natural and human-caused) climate change impacts on human health and on human migration/(im)mobility. These indicators are developed with the Lancet Countdown in mind. The Lancet Countdown is an international collaboration that annually tracks progress on health and climate change across 40+ global indicators.

As determining such indicators and metrics is not always easy, this document serves to compile thoughts, ideas, possible directions, and limitations to effectively track how climate change affects health and migration in tandem.

The development of these indicators is driven by strategic objectives to ensure the resulting metrics are useful, usable, and utilized for high-level impact. The work specifically aims to communicate evidence and results directly applicable to policy formulation and action. The indicators are also designed to enable disaggregated analyses across different domains, contributing to the research agenda by identifying knowledge gaps. Furthermore, we strive to ensure ethical methods by focusing on systemic issues (e.g., consumption, critiquing GDP) rather than individuals, thereby avoiding Malthusian arguments.

The outcome of this work could lead to improved indicators for the next rotation of the Lancet Countdown report, as well as a potential publication in an international journal summarizing CliMigHealth’s vision for this.

Please contact Ilan at ilan_kelman@hotmail.com with any comments or thoughts. You can also contribute directly to the document with your input.