Financial borders and climate migration: The political economy of adaptation and mobility
- routedmagazine
- Jul 28
- 4 min read
Updated: Jul 30
By Paola Crisci | OMC 2025

Climate mobility is fundamentally shaped by financial governance. Beyond environmental triggers, the distribution of and access to adaptation resources increasingly determine who migrates and who remains trapped in climate-vulnerable locations. The dominant discourse on climate migration emphasises environmental drivers—rising seas, extreme weather events, agricultural failure. Yet this narrative obscures how economic structures fundamentally shape migration outcomes. Applying a Political Economy Analysis (PEA) reveals how financial architectures simultaneously create both migration pressures and immobility traps for climate-vulnerable populations, producing differential mobility regimes—systems of power that shape who can move, how, and under what conditions—reflecting broader inequalities in adaptation and access to mobility in the face of climate change.
The World Bank's updated Groundswell report found that by 2050, climate change could force 216 million people to migrate within their own countries across six world regions—with Sub-Saharan Africa potentially seeing 86 million internal climate migrants. Yet these projections only capture those with sufficient resources to relocate. For many vulnerable communities, financial constraints create "immobility traps" where neither adaptation nor migration is financially feasible.
First, climate finance distribution systematically fails to reach the most vulnerable. The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) Adaptation Gap Report estimates adaptation needs in developing countries at US$215-387 billion annually, with only US$21 billion in public finance delivered in 2021. Moreover, only 17% of adaptation finance was directed towards building resilience at the local level—highlighting a systemic failure to support locally led adaptation and compounding existing financial barriers for those most in need.
Access to adaptation finance remains uneven. Countries such as Somalia, Eritrea, Haiti, Sudan, and Yemen—among the most climate-vulnerable—have struggled to access project funding from major instruments such as the Green Climate Fund, largely due to weak institutional capacity and challenges in meeting procedural requirements. At the same time, climate vulnerability is not the primary criterion shaping the allocation of resources. Instead, funding tends to follow indicators of institutional readiness and alignment with donor interests. As a result, many high-risk areas and communities are structurally excluded from support.
The Horn of Africa illustrates disparities: Ethiopia received just US$1.7 billion in climate finance in 2019/20, against an estimated need of US$25.2 billion and less than 2% of its GDP. Recent World Bank estimates confirm and deepen this mismatch: climate investment needs until 2050 are projected at US$27.6 billion (NPV), while current flows are limited to US$0.6–3.2 billion per year, in a context of fiscal fragility, with a tax-to-GDP ratio of only 7% and pastoralist communities in the region frequently lack adequate access to adaptation financing.
Second, debt burdens severely constrain adaptation investment. Debt service in lower income countries is on average 5 times higher than climate adaptation spending. Developing countries experience a significant increase in public debt following natural disasters, with debt growing 2.3% to 3.6% higher during the three years after a disaster compared to unaffected economies. Small Island Developing States (SIDS) are particularly vulnerable to climate-related debt increases. For instance, Tonga's Debt Sustainability Analysis shows that natural disasters historically caused damage equivalent to 28.2% of GDP, leading to debt-to-GDP ratio increases of approximately 14%. A staggering 93% of countries most vulnerable to climate disasters are drowning in debt, with 38 out of 63 climate-vulnerable countries cutting essential public services to meet debt payments. Chad illustrates this pattern with particular clarity: escalating debt servicing costs, compounded by structural macroeconomic fragility, continue to constrain fiscal space, limiting investment in critical sectors such as education despite pressing developmental needs.
Third, substantial inequalities persist in adaptation funding distribution. Financing often reinforces existing power asymmetries rather than addressing vulnerabilities. The emphasis on "bankable" projects has led to a concentration of financing in urban contexts versus rural areas, despite the latter hosting the most vulnerable populations in developing countries. Gender disparities are particularly pronounced, with only 7% of startup founders in the energy sector being women.
By reframing climate migration as a failure of adaptation governance, we understand how financial mechanisms determine access to resources that enable resilience. In a 2.0-2.6°C warming scenario, climate change could reduce global GDP by 11-14% by 2050, further constraining adaptation options for vulnerable populations. This analysis aligns with the Aspirations-Capabilities Framework, which sees migration as shaped by both aspirations and capabilities within geographic opportunity structures. Climate-vulnerable populations increasingly lack the financial means to adapt or migrate, resulting in involuntary immobility.
Yet, promising innovations exist. Kenya’s County Climate Change Funds have channelled adaptation resources to marginalised communities, while Ethiopia’s Productive Safety Net Programme links social protection and climate resilience, supporting over 8 million people. Effective responses to climate migration require a shift in adaptation finance governance—ensuring direct access for vulnerable groups, debt relief for climate-affected nations, and reforms to financial structures that hinder local adaptation. At the global level, effective implementation of the Loss and Damage Fund is crucial, alongside a shift from loan-based to grant-based financing and debt reform including automatic debt suspension mechanisms following climate disasters. Innovative debt instruments such as debt-for-climate swaps and climate-resilient debt clauses represent promising steps toward a system that doesn't force vulnerable countries to choose between debt service and protecting their populations—the former allowing debt relief in exchange for domestic climate investments, and the latter enabling the temporary suspension of debt repayments in the aftermath of climate-related shocks.
Climate migration is not merely a mobility crisis, but one of financial access. It must be framed as a distributive justice issue, articulating a “right to adaptation” that complements—but does not replace—the right to mobility. Addressing the economic structures that shape adaptation options enables fairer, more effective responses to displacement. Migration decisions unfold within financial constraints that expand or limit adaptive choices, reinforcing the need to democratise access to resources in global climate governance. As climate mobility intensifies, solutions must ensure an equitable distribution of responsibilities, resources, and risks. Only by dismantling financial borders can migration become a choice rather than a necessity.


Paola Crisci
Paola is a PhD candidate in International Studies at the University of Naples “L’Orientale”. Her research focuses on the political economy of climate-induced migration, with particular attention to the role of climate finance and global financial governance in shaping vulnerability and adaptive capacity. In 2023, she received the Italia–USA Foundation scholarship as one of Italy’s top students and is currently deepening her research through a visiting period at ISCTE – Business School in Lisbon.