Methods of attributing human mobility to climate change: evidence from East Africa

East Africa’s population is vulnerable to weather and climate-related events because of its reliance on pastoralism for livelihoods, economic security, and development. Recent weather and climatic extremes have included both recurring droughts and floods. This is paired with an ongoing humanitarian crisis, poverty, and conflict prompting changes in existing human mobility. However, the processes involved in these changes and the extent to which human-induced (anthropogenic) climate change plays a role are not yet understood. Despite awareness of climate impacts on society and the economy, weather and climate-related events and attributable links to anthropogenic climate change have received limited attention in research and policy. To circumvent this issue, an integrated attribution approach is developed which assesses the full chain of causality with human mobility as outcome, weather and climate-related events as human mobility drivers and potential inputs of anthropogenic climate change. This thesis focusses on the concepts, tools and techniques needed for the attributability of weather and climate-related events and human mobility in East Africa to anthropogenic climate change. It emphasizes the need for general models to account for the complexities of human mobility and how these can be applied in the context of a range of weather and climate-related events facing this region. These range from disentangling the diverse drivers of human mobility, to characterising climate-related human mobility, to modelling the probability and attributability of anthropogenic climate change. There is a need and responsibility to redesign climate science outputs to be proactive, agile, and socially just when confronted with increasingly likely compounding risks. New approaches must be utilised to feed into this need of science for society and regional decision-makers alike. Here, several examples of such approaches are presented which outline practical steps to improve our understanding of climate-related human mobility in East Africa and attributable links to anthropogenic climate change. This thesis concludes that an integrated attribution approach can be used to attribute weather and climate-related events and human mobility to anthropogenic climate change and is a promising method for modelling future implications of climate-related human mobility.