Dr. Kira Vinke, Head of the Center for Climate and Foreign Policy at the German Council on Foreign Relations (DGAP)

DOI: 10.65398/YAGX9997

The depth of the Amazon rainforest, the dry belt of the Sahel, remote islands in the Pacific and the expanse of the Arctic circle – humanity has conquered rather inhospitable regions, turning them into their habitat. Thriving on healthy ecosystems, human population has grown and prospered, benefiting from relative climate stability over the past 11,700 years, the Holocene period. During this period, the neolithic revolution triggered civilizational development and humans permanently settled across the world. Human population growth correlates with the resulting technological and per capita income or resource changes of this period. Ten thousand years ago, the human population comprised only 4 million individuals and saw a growth rate of 0.04% per annum until the 18th century, eventually reaching one billion around 1800 (Roser & Ritchie, 2023). Global life expectancy at the beginning of the 20th century was at only 32 years and has since doubled. The past 200 years have been marked by stark population growth, with a peak during the 1960s of an annual growth rate of more than 2%, marking exponential increase (United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division, 2022). In 2025, the global population consists of more than 8 billion people.

The rapid expansion of the human population, sedentary agriculture, city formation and the concomitant human development achievements – all occurred during the very short Holocene time-period. This is a remarkable acceleration of development, considering the existence of Homo sapiens which spans approximately 300,000 years. Humanity’s oldest cities, such as Jericho and Damascus were formed just 10,000 years ago. Many of the cultural UNESCO world heritage sites are much younger, such as Aksum of the 1^st century, Mesa Verde, dating back to the 6th century, or the Cologne Cathedral which was completed in 1880 after several centuries of construction.

For more than 288,000 years, humans survived solely as hunter gatherers in the Pleistocene. This form of living also enabled them to cope with large changes in global mean temperature, for example during the ice ages (Hofreiter & Stewart, 2009). However, the human population faced bottlenecks throughout this time and sometimes probably only narrowly escaped extinction (Tallavaara et al., 2015). The last glacial maximum which occurred about 20 000 years ago, saw global mean temperatures only 6°C cooler (Tierney et al., 2020), a fact that highlights the severity of changes which occur at several degrees of deviation in the global mean temperature. In the case of the last ice age, ice sheets covered vast parts of North America and Europe, with 200-meter-thick glaciers over Berlin. The Holocene period, which started after the last ice age, also gave rise to the industrial revolution, with far reaching consequences, including the disruption of the glacial-interglacial cycle (Ganopolski et al., 2016).

The beginning of the Anthropocene

Arguably, the industrial revolution eventually ended the Holocene period and pushed Homo sapiens into the Anthropocene, the time-period in which humans are significantly altering the earth system, shaping natural environments on a global scale, sometimes irreversibly (see for example the stark temperature change over the past 100 years: Kaufman et al., 2020). While the International Union of Geological Sciences rejected the proposition to recognize the Anthropocene as a geological epoch, the signs of the fundamental shifts that are underway are undeniable (Carrington, 2024).

While the burning of fossil fuels on an industrial scale has enabled steep economic development in many world regions, it also set off the greatest common threat: climate change and other adverse effects of the overuse of natural resources. The great acceleration of global consumption, trade, travel, and the intensification of industrial agriculture over the past decades have driven the rise of greenhouse gas emissions (Steffen et al., 2015, 2018). Through the burning of fossil fuels, CO₂ levels in the atmosphere are as high as they were last 2 million years ago, long before the existence of the Homo sapiens (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), 2023a, p. 676). This fact alone shows that humanity has inserted itself into an experiment with uncertain outcomes. The high concentration of greenhouse gas emissions has already led to warming of 1.46°C above pre-industrial levels in 2024 (Lindsey & Dahlman, 2025). The impacts of this temperature increase have been observed across all oceans and continents. They include, inter alia, rising sea levels and the acidification of the ocean by 0.1 units on the pH scale, the shifting of climatic zones and intensification and increased frequency of extreme weather events. The timeline of these changes is crucial for risk assessment. If the Amazonian forests, which for 65 million years were able to withstand climate variability, are suddenly starting to lose resilience and succumbing to human interference by way of warming and deforestation, it signals a transition reaching far beyond human timescales (Albert et al., 2023; Flores et al., 2024; Gatti et al., 2021). Considering the short period of humanity’s modern civilizational development in the Holocene, it is evident that the climate trends are now on track to disrupt humans’ success story.

Two epochal trends are thus converging in the 21^st century: a dramatically changing climate and environment due to anthropogenic pressures and a still growing population which may reach its peak by the end of the century. As climate change will adversely affect resource availability in many regions, including those densely populated, it can turn some areas less habitable. This means that the carrying capacity for a certain size of a population with limited outside resources may be reduced. If key resources such as land disappear or critical physiological thresholds in terms of heat and humidity are surpassed, some areas may be rendered virtually uninhabitable, especially considering higher warming scenarios.

Paradoxically, as humans have developed into such an influential force that they can shape ancient ecosystems on a global scale, the ability to use these capacities to proliferate environmental resources and form them for human benefit rather than just depleting them in singular extraction is so far largely absent. On the contrary, the compounding effects of climate change and biodiversity loss are now so pronounced that they threaten to undermine the habitability of certain areas in the future. Though some natural resource management and governance mechanisms point in the right direction, the surpassing of multiple planetary boundaries reflects the scale of the failure to shape our natural habitat for human prosperity and development at large (Richardson et al., 2023).

Observed changes undermining traditional livelihoods

The conditions of the earth system that have served human development well are increasingly under pressure (Xu et al., 2020). Livelihoods which have been shaped and adapted to harsh environments over thousands of years, are suddenly rendered obsolete by climate change impacts. Sometimes, other anthropogenic drivers of resource depletion and pollution, such as over-usage of fertilizers and pesticides or the introduction of PFAS (so-called forever chemicals) and plastic into natural environments, are further worsening scarcity or adversely affecting human health, leading to compounding risks. Across the world, humans are already faced with these changes which will intensify without rapid emissions reductions. The following examples illustrate some of the human dimensions of climate change:

• Fishermen find fewer large fish in many of the lagoons in the Marshall Islands, due to CO₂-driven acidification, ocean warming and the resulting coral bleaching events (see for example: The Republic of the Marshall Islands, 2025; Vinke, 2019). Disrupting the reef-ecosystems carries implications for food networks in the ocean as the reefs are habitat for many species. At the same time, coastal flooding, worsened by sea level rise, damages infrastructure and salinizes land and freshwater resources of the coral atolls, increasing dependencies on food imports (Grecni et al., 2025).
• Farmers in Burkina Faso are confronted with unpredictable rainfall patterns and rising temperatures which diminish their crops (Vinke et al., 2022). Nomadic pastoralists who have adapted to the dry Sahelian conditions through the transhumance are also struggling with the changes, some even have to sell their livestock to prevent it from dying. These environmental pressures have heightened tensions between the different groups. Urban dwellers also suffer from an increase in hot days and nights, rendering outside work more dangerous during warm spells (Sanou et al., 2023). People internally displaced by the armed conflict and violence of Islamist extremist groups are particularly vulnerable to weather extremes, as they tend to live in temporary shelters. Countries experiencing conflict-displacements also often see large weather-related displacements which may be linked to a lack of capacities, including adequate government responses (IDMC, 2025, pp. 13ff.).
• In the Amazon basin, droughts impact the Amazon River. In 2024, water levels in parts of the basin fell to record lows. People living on the affected tributaries are experiencing severe scarcity. The dried-out rivers were sources of income from fish stocks and tourism, as well as lifelines for inter-communal transport – all of which were disrupted, pushing people into poverty. Dry conditions also fortified wildfires which destroy habitats and worsen air pollution. The combined effects of deforestation and heating are threatening the tropical rainforest and its precious biodiversity with risks of disrupting precipitation patterns across the region (Flores et al., 2024).
• In the Arctic circle thawing permafrost is destroying infrastructure and impeding traditional hunting techniques, while reduced summer sea ice is allowing further progression of industrial fishing into the pristine environment of the high north. These changes are contributing to further urbanization. As a result of colonization and climate impacts, cultural practices tied to hunting and semi-nomadic lifestyles are increasingly lost. Many indigenous groups are fighting for their cultural heritage.
• In the United States, some housing prone to fires or tropical cyclones has become uninsurable. Insurance companies have withdrawn their coverage from some areas after increasing costs over the past years, including in states such as California, where wildfires have repeatedly caused damages in the hundreds of billions of dollars (Vincent, 2025; Wang et al., 2021). Similarly, in Florida many homes and infrastructure have been affected by hurricanes and rising sea levels which in turn increase the damages of storm surges (Coy, 2023; Picchi, 2023). Recent floods in Texas killed more than a hundred people, including many children in a summer camp along a riverbank. Even with financial support available, rebuilding in the same locations after these disasters hit can perpetuate risks by keeping people and assets exposed to more frequent and intense weather extremes.

As these few examples showcase, smallholder farmers and fisherfolk whose livelihoods are closely intertwined with the environment are at the forefront of these dramatic environmental changes. With little financial resources to maximize adaptation options, many poor populations are already faced with existential risks.

But even countries with large technological and financial capacities are confronted with limits to their management capacities of climate-related disasters. The displacement of people across the globe and uninsurability of housing that has occurred in industrialized countries reflect the outpacing of adaptation and innovation by increasing risks. Better forecasting methods and technological developments may help to reduce risks in the future, but considering the current pace of emissions reductions, human and economic costs will continue to rise.

Climate Change-Related Migration and Immobility

As a response to these changing environmental conditions many people are already on the move. Most of these movements are internal, not least because people prefer to stay close to home in the hope of a possible return. Moreover, transboundary pathways are often dangerous, prohibitively expensive or just not accessible to people in need. In 2024, the Internal Displacement Monitoring Center (IDMC) recorded a new record of 45.8 million internal displacements due to disasters (IDMC, 2025). The majority of them are weather-related and hence already shaped by climate change. In the past, there were also situations in which whole regions needed evacuation because of weather extremes. In the case of Barbuda, the entire island was evacuated after tropical cyclone Irma destroyed all of the island’s infrastructure in 2017.

While displacements are characterized as forced movements, there are additional movements which are more voluntary and can be seen as a form of adaptation to climate impacts - if they serve to maintain people’s standard of living. At the same time, climate change can also trap people in areas that are affected by dangerous, or even life-threatening hazards. Especially when financial resources are depleted or other factors, such as disability, hinder people from moving, involuntary immobility can result. When people feel strong place attachment, they may also decide to stay despite mounting risks.

Historically, migrations have been shaped by climatic conditions (Praetorius et al., 2023). However, the circumstances of the migrations that occur in connection with anthropogenic climate change differ fundamentally. Because of exponential growth, global population density is at its highest in human history, so migratory movements, especially rural-urban movements, will be directed at (densely) inhabited places. The speed and scale of anthropogenic climate change diverges from any experience humans have had since our civilization was formed during the Holocene period. Therefore, understanding present-day climate migration and habitability requires a civilizational lens that takes into account the most recent human development achievements that need to be preserved.

But also growing technological capacities should be considered when assessing modern climate migration or habitability. Faced with severe climate impacts, more and more in-situ adaptation options have been developed. From changing crops for cultivation, to shifting livelihoods or building dikes and artificial islands, human ingenuity delivered a wealth of possible ways to manage risks. However, financial and technological capacities to deploy such innovations are highly unequally distributed (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), 2023b, p. 26).

Concepts of Habitability in the Context of Anthropogenic Climate Change

When humans can even survive the heat of the desert and build on reclaimed land in the ocean, how can habitability be defined? As the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) assessed in its latest synthesis report, there are hard limits to adaptation. “Surpassing such hard, evolutionary limits causes local species extinctions and displacements if suitable habitats exist (high confidence)” is the conclusion of the IPCC (ibid., p. 84). In human systems thresholds for such limits are contested because many perceived limits can be considered as “soft”, meaning that through the allocation of technical or financial means or an improvement of governance and policy, adaptation could be successful. Even if the limits to adaptation in human systems can only be an approximation, what lies beyond those limits may begin with deprivation and end in uninhabitability.

In the context of climate change habitability is determined broadly by two factors: the severity and frequency of climate impacts and the capacities (financial, technological) and abilities (political, societal) to respond (Figure 1).

If the capacities to respond outweigh or are in equilibrium to the magnitude of climate impacts, the area can be considered habitable. For example, desert cities flourishing on high revenues from resource extraction (such as in the oil exporting states) could stay habitable for large populations for a long time, as resilience to increasing heat extremes is sustained through an omnipresence of cooling devices and abundant energy supply.

If capacities are structurally too low to respond to climate impacts and are not enhanced by outside assistance, the affected area may be considered uninhabitable and people may begin to move out or face existential threats. This is why even at current, moderate warming levels, soft limits to adaptation have already been reached because capacities in some areas are low, for example due to high levels of poverty, remoteness or other factors. As global warming accelerates, impacts may become so severe or frequent that they outpace even growing capacities, rendering larger areas uninhabitable.

Rejecting notions of climate determinism, scholars outlined multiple axes of habitability, including compounding and cascading risks, socio-cultural processes, intersectional vulnerabilities of affected groups and connectivity to other places (Sterly et al., 2025).

What is not yet fully explored are the differential thresholds for habitability this implies. Some of these axes point to potentially higher thresholds for habitability, due to connectivity gains that can increase resilience, as well as socio-cultural practices which are more sustainable and thus require less resource supplies. For this reason, adaptive capacities may be higher and therefore even areas marked by severe resource scarcity can be inhabited. At the same time, compounding risks and intersectional vulnerabilities point to lower thresholds to habitability. In the following, these lower thresholds are explored, expanding the definition of habitability beyond the ability to survive to reproduce in a specific area to include a civilizational, rights-based lens.

There are a number of minimum requirements for habitability, starting with basic ecosystem services (see Figure 2, elements of habitability). A combination of different climate change impacts act together with other anthropogenic stressors creating the risk landscape that can put the habitability of an area into question by destroying basic ecosystem services. Some of the dominant dangerous climate impacts in the habitability discourse include:

• extreme heat, which in combination with high humidity levels can lead to conditions deadly to humans (Kornhuber et al., 2024; Mora et al., 2017),
• sea level rise, causing coastal flooding that reduces the fertility of soils and the availability of freshwater through salinization,
• frequency and intensity of precipitation extremes, reoccurring droughts and floods can render subsistence agriculture unviable,
• frequency and intensity of tropical cyclones making landfall, destroying infrastructure in increasingly small intervals, leaving little time to rebuild.

Habitability for sedentary societies requires a degree of permanence. The decision to stay normally builds on the expectation of recurrence – including of seasonal change, yields, income or other factors. Recurrence of the basic ecosystem services may be disrupted by climate impacts.

Before a place gets so adversely affected that human life itself is in acute danger, there could be lower thresholds for habitability such as severe human rights violations. This is particularly relevant considering Article 25 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights pertaining to a standard of living adequate to maintain health and wellbeing. This threshold would then be measured against contemporary benchmarks for good health, such as present-day life expectancy. Article 25 also endows all humans security in the case of diminished livelihood in “circumstances beyond his control.” An area where basic human rights can no longer be met due to climate change impacts may therefore potentially be deemed uninhabitable.

Habitability, as described here, is therefore to be understood in the context of the desire to maintain civilizational achievements, such as the preservation of basic rights. Other factors such as the cultural importance of a place may also play a role in this assessment. It can relate to the existence of religious or cultural sites or the ability to practice traditions, some of which can be closely linked to the environment. Once previously fertile land is rendered barren and no longer provides ecosystem services, such as specific plants for rituals, this land may lose its meaning to people. Similarly, if heritage sites are destroyed by extreme weather events, subjective assessments of perceived habitability or at least the desirability of a habitat may change. On the flipside, the existence of culturally important sites may motivate people to invest in the protection of these areas and allocate resources to maintain habitability.

Conclusion: Increase Resilience, Decrease Emissions

Climate projections show that impacts threaten to render entire regions unsuitable for permanent habitation towards the end of this century. In order to reduce pressure on habitability, the two major parameters outlined in Figure 1 need addressing. First, to limit the severity of climate impacts decreasing greenhouse gas emissions as fast and as strongly as possible is pivotal. Managing ecosystems in such a way that restores and emboldens carbon sinks is additionally needed, as progress on mitigation has been too slow to only rely on eliminating future emissions. Second, increasing resilience in exposed areas will have to build upon connectivity (von Braun et al., 2022). Vulnerable populations in areas with strong climate hazards often have little leverage over the first dimension of ensuring habitability through emissions reductions. This is because their contribution to global greenhouse gas emissions is extremely low. As their livelihoods are impacted by the effects of the value creation of burning fossil fuels elsewhere, larger sums for adaptation funding need to be allocated to them from high income groups which contribute to climate change disproportionally. Cuts to USAID and other countries’ development and relief funds, as well as low international climate finance are undermining efforts to ensure habitability. In conclusion, to protect ecosystem integrity and shape the environment for long-term abundance, humanity has to master transboundary and intergenerational solidarity at the beginning of the Anthropocene.

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