Mapping the Evidence on Food Security Outcomes and Initiatives Among Climate Refugees: A Scoping Review

TL;DR

This review maps evidence on food security among climate refugees, highlighting gaps in understanding and measuring outcomes.

Contribution

The study provides a scoping review of food security outcomes and initiatives for climate refugees, identifying key gaps in research.

Findings

Climate stressors like drought and flooding are linked to food insecurity and migration decisions.

Food security outcomes are inconsistently defined and measured across studies.

There is limited evidence on the effectiveness of food security initiatives for displaced populations.

Abstract

The increasing severity of climate change poses profound challenges to global food security, particularly affecting vulnerable populations such as migrants and refugees. This scoping review examines the nexus between climate change, food security, and migration, focusing on the impacts and responses within affected communities. Guided by the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses Extension for Scoping Reviews (PRISMA-ScR), this review synthesized literature across multiple databases, including Ovid MEDLINE, Embase, Global Health, Public Health, Web of Science, and PsycINFO. The search yielded 908 records, with nine articles meeting the inclusion criteria. Across studies, climate-related stressors such as rainfall variability, flooding, and drought were consistently linked to livelihood disruption and food insecurity, often shaping migration and displacement decisions. However, food security outcomes were defined and measured inconsistently, ranging from crop yields and food availability to coping strategies and self-reported hunger, limiting comparability across studies. Evidence on food security initiatives was largely descriptive, with few studies assessing intervention effectiveness or post-displacement food security outcomes. Overall, the mapped literature emphasizes food insecurity as a key mediating pathway between climate change and mobility, but reveals important gaps related to standardized outcome measures, evaluation of food security initiatives, and the food security experiences of displaced populations at destination.

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