Deltas contain large populations totalling about 500 million people worldwide. Deltas are extremely
fertile and often support high population densities based on agriculture/fisheries. They are thus
important for food security. Despite their importance and advantages for agriculture, many of the
people living there are poor and reliant on subsistence livelihoods. Even though a range of
temporary and permanent migration is already a widespread phenomenon in deltas, the fear is that
future sea level rise and sinking land levels coupled with other climate change triggered
environmental changes (e.g. drought, flooding, etc.) might mobilise large numbers of people and
thus cause mass internal and international migration (e.g., Milliman et al., 1989; Ericson et al., 2006).
The DECCMA project seeks to understand migration within deltas: how climate change and sea-level
rise might influence it, and the extent to which it serves as an effective adaptation. Furthermore, it
aims to provide better evidence to inform policy makers about the possible futures of deltas, how
adaptation can mediate potentially adverse impacts of climate change, and the potential role of
migration as an adaptation option.
The focus of DECCMA is on climate change and sea level rise; however, many other drivers such as
economic changes or political conflicts can affect migration and other in-situ changes. These various
drivers may be mutually reinforcing. Thus, although DECCMA places a special focus on climatic and
environmental change, the integration activities have to consider other non-climatic influences to
better represent reality and ensure credibility and usefulness to stakeholders. By definition, any
response to a climate driver that reduces vulnerability to future climate risk can be considered as an
adaptation (Suckall and Vincent 2015, see glossary). DECCMA aims to assess the adaptation options
in the study areas (i.e. that reduces vulnerability, including that of households, the local community
and the environment) and to identify the unsustainable coping and mal-adaptation strategies (see
Glossary). Finally, DECCMA acknowledges that migration can have both negative and positive
impacts on social systems. It aims to assess the motives of migration and under what conditions the
migration is considered as successful. With this respect, migration can only be successful if both the
wellbeing of the household and the migrant is increased. Thus DECCMA aims to provide an insight
into not only the larger scale processes, but also to unpack the local community processes and the
intra-household dynamics, including how gender roles and relations, are affected by migration and
migration-as-an-adaptation. To achieve such an ambitious goal, an integrated assessment
framework and an integrated model is proposed as a mechanism to promote integration and
discussion across disciplinary boundaries.