Robert Mcleman
Biographic Data
| ID | 86955 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Robert Mcleman |
| GIVEN NAMES | Robert |
| FAMILY NAME | Mcleman |
| SIGNATURE | MCLEMAN R |
| AFFILIATIONS | Wilfrid Laurier University |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-9593-1606 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 35 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 207 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 33 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 2 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2001 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 8 |
Migration and Displacement in a Changing Climate
This book provides insight into the impact of climate change on human mobility - including both migration and displacement - by synthesizing key concepts, research, methodology, policy, and emerging issues surrounding the topic. It illuminates the connections between climate change and its implications for voluntary migration, involuntary displacement, and immobility by providing examples from around the world. The chapters use the latest finding…
Coming to Terms with Deep Uncertainty in the Study of Climate-Related Displacement
On average, an estimated 20 million people each year are displaced by climate-related hazards. This number will increase in coming years due to global warming, sea level rise, and rapid population growth in areas highly exposed to floods, storms and droughts. Future levels of displacement will depend on future greenhouse gas emissions, future development trajectories in low- and middle-income countries, and future government migration and mobilit…
The Migration Intersections Grid
For this special issue of the International Migration Review, we develop and provide a comprehensive organizing framework, the Migration Intersections Grid (MIG), to inform and guide migration research in and through the remainder of the twenty-first century. We motivate our work by conducting a high-level scoping review of summaries and syntheses of different directions of travel in migration research over time. Informed by these results, we the…
Future prospects for backyard skating rinks look bleak in a warming climate
Each winter, purpose‐built outdoor skating rinks are constructed in backyards and community parks across much of Canada and the northern United States. Past research projects that warmer winters will make it increasingly difficult to build outdoor rinks without artificial refrigeration. Here we build upon previous studies by mapping areas of North America where present average January temperatures are generally suitable each year for building out…
A machine learning analysis of drought and rural population change on the North American Great Plains since the 1970s
Inequalities through the lens of science
Climate change, drought, land degradation and migration
Population responses to the 1976 South Dakota drought
Droughts on the North American Great Plains once led to elevated levels of out‐migration from rural areas. Large‐scale drought migration has not been observed since the 1950s due to changes in land management and agricultural systems that lessened farm‐level vulnerability to drought. Have droughts had less observable population impacts in subsequent decades? Here, we present findings from an investigation of an unusually severe, localised drought…
Perception of climate migrants
Reconstruction of past backyard skating seasons in the Original Six NHL cities from citizen science data
This study conducted linear and change‐point analyses of historical trends since 1942 in the length and number of days suitable for skating on backyard rinks in the “Original Six” National Hockey League cities of Boston, Chicago, Detroit, Montreal, New York, and Toronto. Analysis is based on the relationship between ambient air temperatures and the probability of skating, using thresholds identified through the RinkWatch citizen science project. …
Sea-level rise and human migration
Routledge Handbook of Environmental Displacement and Migration
Thresholds in climate migration
Environmental influences on skilled worker migration from Bangladesh to Canada
We conducted focus groups in Toronto with 44 recent skilled worker immigrants from Bangladesh to explore whether their decisions to migrate to Canada may have been influenced by environmental problems. Previous research has documented how floods, cyclones, droughts, and seasonal precipitation variations affect rural‐urban migration patterns within Bangladesh, and to its neighbours. Most participants had not experienced such environmental hazards,…
Vulnerability
“Vulnerability” refers to the potential to experience loss or harm. It is a term frequently used when studying the human impacts of climate change, natural hazards, and other environmental events or conditions. It is used in a relational sense, that is, the vulnerability of X to Y. Vulnerability is a function of the nature and degree of exposure to a potential source of harm, sensitivity to that harm, and the capacity to adapt. It is a condition …
Environmental Migration and Social Inequality
"This book presents contributions from leading international scholars on how environmental migration is both a cause and an outcome of social and economic inequality. It describes recent theoretical, methodological, empirical, and legal developments in the dynamic field of environmental migration research, and includes original research on environmental migration in Bangladesh, Burkina Faso, China, Ghana, Haiti, Mexico, and Turkey. The authors co…
Winters too warm to skate? Citizen‐science reported variability in availability of outdoor skating in Canada
Key Messages Citizen scientists have contributed thousands of reports of skating conditions in Canada. Variability in reported “skateability” is evident across 10 Canadian cities and the temperature‐skating relationship varies across Canada. Climate modelling scenarios suggest significant declines in opportunities for outdoor skating across Canada
Asserting Mino Pimàdiziwin on Unceded Algonquin Territory
Canadian non-status First Nations are often in conflict with more powerful private interests over resource development on their traditional lands. In response, some non-status First Nations are using traditional environmental knowledge and self-developed spiritual ecologies to reassert sovereignty over ancestral territories. One such group, the Ardoch Algonquin First Nation (AAFN), carries out traditional activities including canoe building, hunt…
Empirical research on international environmental migration
What we learned from the Dust Bowl
This article provides a review and synthesis of scholarly knowledge of Depression-era droughts on the North American Great Plains, a time and place known colloquially as the Dust Bowl era or the Dirty Thirties. Recent events, including the 2008 financial crisis, severe droughts in the US corn belt, and the release of a popular documentary film, have spawned a resurgence in public interest in the Dust Bowl. Events of the Dust Bowl era have also pr…
Environmental influences on African migration to Canada
There is limited empirical evidence of how environmental conditions in the Global South may influence long-distance international migration to the Global North. This research note reports findings from seven focus groups held in Ottawa-Gatineau, Canada, with recent migrants from the Horn of Africa and francophone sub-Saharan Africa, where the role of environment in migration decision-making was discussed. Participants stated that those most affec…
Climate and Human Migration
Studies warn that global warming and sea level rise will create hundreds of millions of environmental refugees. While climate change will undoubtedly affect future migration patterns and behavior, the potential outcomes are more complex than the environmental refugee scenario suggests. This book provides a comprehensive review of how physical and human processes interact to shape migration, using simple diagrams and models to guide the researcher…
S ocial capital and drought‐migrant integration in 1930s Saskatchewan
This study examines the role played by social capital in the migration of rural households from drought‐stricken areas of southern Saskatchewan to the Aspen Parkland during the 1930s. During a period of extremely difficult economic and environmental conditions rural households relied heavily on social networks, and the capital generated within them, to identify and select potential migration destinations, and to integrate into a destination regio…
Soil and its influence on rural drought migration
Wet prairie
Settlement abandonment in the context of global environmental change
Migration in the context of vulnerability and adaptation to climate change
Migration is one of the variety of ways by which human populations adapt to environmental changes. The study of migration in the context of anthropogenic climate change is often approached using the concept of vulnerability and its key functional elements: exposure, system sensitivity, and adaptive capacity. This article explores the interaction of climate change and vulnerability through review of case studies of dry-season migration in the West…
Thresholds in climate migration
Climate change as the 'new' security threat
Once it was an environmental issue, then an energy problem, now climate change is being recast as a security threat. So far, the debate has focused on creating a security ‘hook’, illustrated by anecdote, to invest climate negotiations with a greater sense of urgency. Political momentum behind the idea of climate change as a security threat has progressed quickly, even reaching the United Nations Security Council. This article reviews the linkages…
GIS-based modeling of drought and historical population change on the Canadian Prairies
Vulnerability to climate change hazards and risks
This paper reviews the widely used concepts of risk and vulnerability as they relate to climate and weather hazards, re‐conceptualizes these terms in the context of climate change and illustrates this development using crop and flood insurance as examples. Government subsidization of insurance against risks associated with adverse climatic conditions and weather events, such as flood damage and crop loss, may lead to individual decisions that act…
Climate change, drought, land degradation and migration
What we learned from the Dust Bowl
This article provides a review and synthesis of scholarly knowledge of Depression-era droughts on the North American Great Plains, a time and place known colloquially as the Dust Bowl era or the Dirty Thirties. Recent events, including the 2008 financial crisis, severe droughts in the US corn belt, and the release of a popular documentary film, have spawned a resurgence in public interest in the Dust Bowl. Events of the Dust Bowl era have also pr…
Impacts of population change on vulnerability and the capacity to adapt to climate change and variability
Household access to capital and its effects on drought adaptation and migration
Soil and its influence on rural drought migration
A recurring anarchy? The emergence of climate change as a threat to international peace and security
Robert Kaplan's 1994 article, ‘The Coming Anarchy’ was a milestone in the literature on the links between environmental change and security. The article predicted that disease, corruption, overpopulation, scarce resources and climate change would plunge West Africa into pervasive conflict. Nearly a decade and a half—and several civil wars—later this article returns to West Africa to see to what extent Kaplan's predictions have come to pass. While…
The Migration Intersections Grid
For this special issue of the International Migration Review, we develop and provide a comprehensive organizing framework, the Migration Intersections Grid (MIG), to inform and guide migration research in and through the remainder of the twenty-first century. We motivate our work by conducting a high-level scoping review of summaries and syntheses of different directions of travel in migration research over time. Informed by these results, we the…
S ocial capital and drought‐migrant integration in 1930s Saskatchewan
This study examines the role played by social capital in the migration of rural households from drought‐stricken areas of southern Saskatchewan to the Aspen Parkland during the 1930s. During a period of extremely difficult economic and environmental conditions rural households relied heavily on social networks, and the capital generated within them, to identify and select potential migration destinations, and to integrate into a destination regio…
Population responses to the 1976 South Dakota drought
Droughts on the North American Great Plains once led to elevated levels of out‐migration from rural areas. Large‐scale drought migration has not been observed since the 1950s due to changes in land management and agricultural systems that lessened farm‐level vulnerability to drought. Have droughts had less observable population impacts in subsequent decades? Here, we present findings from an investigation of an unusually severe, localised drought…
Winters too warm to skate? Citizen‐science reported variability in availability of outdoor skating in Canada
Key Messages Citizen scientists have contributed thousands of reports of skating conditions in Canada. Variability in reported “skateability” is evident across 10 Canadian cities and the temperature‐skating relationship varies across Canada. Climate modelling scenarios suggest significant declines in opportunities for outdoor skating across Canada
Environmental influences on African migration to Canada
There is limited empirical evidence of how environmental conditions in the Global South may influence long-distance international migration to the Global North. This research note reports findings from seven focus groups held in Ottawa-Gatineau, Canada, with recent migrants from the Horn of Africa and francophone sub-Saharan Africa, where the role of environment in migration decision-making was discussed. Participants stated that those most affec…
Reconstruction of past backyard skating seasons in the Original Six NHL cities from citizen science data
This study conducted linear and change‐point analyses of historical trends since 1942 in the length and number of days suitable for skating on backyard rinks in the “Original Six” National Hockey League cities of Boston, Chicago, Detroit, Montreal, New York, and Toronto. Analysis is based on the relationship between ambient air temperatures and the probability of skating, using thresholds identified through the RinkWatch citizen science project. …
Environmental influences on skilled worker migration from Bangladesh to Canada
We conducted focus groups in Toronto with 44 recent skilled worker immigrants from Bangladesh to explore whether their decisions to migrate to Canada may have been influenced by environmental problems. Previous research has documented how floods, cyclones, droughts, and seasonal precipitation variations affect rural‐urban migration patterns within Bangladesh, and to its neighbours. Most participants had not experienced such environmental hazards,…
Adapting to Climate Change
Adapting to climate change is a critical problem facing humanity. This involves reconsidering our lifestyles, and is linked to our actions as individuals, societies and governments. This book presents top science and social science research on whether the world can adapt to climate change. Written by experts, both academics and practitioners, it examines the risks to ecosystems, demonstrating how values, culture and the constraining forces of gov…
Vulnerability to climate change hazards and risks
This paper reviews the widely used concepts of risk and vulnerability as they relate to climate and weather hazards, re‐conceptualizes these terms in the context of climate change and illustrates this development using crop and flood insurance as examples. Government subsidization of insurance against risks associated with adverse climatic conditions and weather events, such as flood damage and crop loss, may lead to individual decisions that act…
Climate change as the 'new' security threat
Once it was an environmental issue, then an energy problem, now climate change is being recast as a security threat. So far, the debate has focused on creating a security ‘hook’, illustrated by anecdote, to invest climate negotiations with a greater sense of urgency. Political momentum behind the idea of climate change as a security threat has progressed quickly, even reaching the United Nations Security Council. This article reviews the linkages…
GIS-based modeling of drought and historical population change on the Canadian Prairies
A recurring anarchy? The emergence of climate change as a threat to international peace and security
Robert Kaplan's 1994 article, ‘The Coming Anarchy’ was a milestone in the literature on the links between environmental change and security. The article predicted that disease, corruption, overpopulation, scarce resources and climate change would plunge West Africa into pervasive conflict. Nearly a decade and a half—and several civil wars—later this article returns to West Africa to see to what extent Kaplan's predictions have come to pass. While…
Migration in the context of vulnerability and adaptation to climate change
Migration is one of the variety of ways by which human populations adapt to environmental changes. The study of migration in the context of anthropogenic climate change is often approached using the concept of vulnerability and its key functional elements: exposure, system sensitivity, and adaptive capacity. This article explores the interaction of climate change and vulnerability through review of case studies of dry-season migration in the West…
Impacts of population change on vulnerability and the capacity to adapt to climate change and variability
Household access to capital and its effects on drought adaptation and migration
Climate Change, Migration and Critical International Security Considerations
This report reviews the available scholarly reporting on climate change, migration and security and describes the legal and policy challenges facing the international community. While there is indeed considerable evidence that climate does influence migration, future estimates are hampered by a lack of reliable data. Climate-related migration is closely connected to the social, economic, cultural and institutional processes that shape the vulnera…
Settlement abandonment in the context of global environmental change
Soil and its influence on rural drought migration
Wet prairie
Climate and Human Migration
Studies warn that global warming and sea level rise will create hundreds of millions of environmental refugees. While climate change will undoubtedly affect future migration patterns and behavior, the potential outcomes are more complex than the environmental refugee scenario suggests. This book provides a comprehensive review of how physical and human processes interact to shape migration, using simple diagrams and models to guide the researcher…
S ocial capital and drought‐migrant integration in 1930s Saskatchewan
This study examines the role played by social capital in the migration of rural households from drought‐stricken areas of southern Saskatchewan to the Aspen Parkland during the 1930s. During a period of extremely difficult economic and environmental conditions rural households relied heavily on social networks, and the capital generated within them, to identify and select potential migration destinations, and to integrate into a destination regio…
Asserting Mino Pimàdiziwin on Unceded Algonquin Territory
Canadian non-status First Nations are often in conflict with more powerful private interests over resource development on their traditional lands. In response, some non-status First Nations are using traditional environmental knowledge and self-developed spiritual ecologies to reassert sovereignty over ancestral territories. One such group, the Ardoch Algonquin First Nation (AAFN), carries out traditional activities including canoe building, hunt…
Empirical research on international environmental migration
What we learned from the Dust Bowl
This article provides a review and synthesis of scholarly knowledge of Depression-era droughts on the North American Great Plains, a time and place known colloquially as the Dust Bowl era or the Dirty Thirties. Recent events, including the 2008 financial crisis, severe droughts in the US corn belt, and the release of a popular documentary film, have spawned a resurgence in public interest in the Dust Bowl. Events of the Dust Bowl era have also pr…
Environmental influences on African migration to Canada
There is limited empirical evidence of how environmental conditions in the Global South may influence long-distance international migration to the Global North. This research note reports findings from seven focus groups held in Ottawa-Gatineau, Canada, with recent migrants from the Horn of Africa and francophone sub-Saharan Africa, where the role of environment in migration decision-making was discussed. Participants stated that those most affec…
Winters too warm to skate? Citizen‐science reported variability in availability of outdoor skating in Canada
Key Messages Citizen scientists have contributed thousands of reports of skating conditions in Canada. Variability in reported “skateability” is evident across 10 Canadian cities and the temperature‐skating relationship varies across Canada. Climate modelling scenarios suggest significant declines in opportunities for outdoor skating across Canada
Environmental Migration and Social Inequality
"This book presents contributions from leading international scholars on how environmental migration is both a cause and an outcome of social and economic inequality. It describes recent theoretical, methodological, empirical, and legal developments in the dynamic field of environmental migration research, and includes original research on environmental migration in Bangladesh, Burkina Faso, China, Ghana, Haiti, Mexico, and Turkey. The authors co…
Vulnerability
“Vulnerability” refers to the potential to experience loss or harm. It is a term frequently used when studying the human impacts of climate change, natural hazards, and other environmental events or conditions. It is used in a relational sense, that is, the vulnerability of X to Y. Vulnerability is a function of the nature and degree of exposure to a potential source of harm, sensitivity to that harm, and the capacity to adapt. It is a condition …
Routledge Handbook of Environmental Displacement and Migration
Thresholds in climate migration
Environmental influences on skilled worker migration from Bangladesh to Canada
We conducted focus groups in Toronto with 44 recent skilled worker immigrants from Bangladesh to explore whether their decisions to migrate to Canada may have been influenced by environmental problems. Previous research has documented how floods, cyclones, droughts, and seasonal precipitation variations affect rural‐urban migration patterns within Bangladesh, and to its neighbours. Most participants had not experienced such environmental hazards,…
Sea-level rise and human migration
Geography (30 works) · Climate Change, Adaptation, Migration (24 works) · Climate change (21 works) · Ecology (16 works) · Sociology (16 works) · Economics (15 works) · Political science (14 works) · Population (14 works) · Environmental planning (12 works) · Environmental resource management (11 works)