A/67/299 planning to manage climate-change-induced migration may thus play a key role in the vulnerability of a particular community to the effects of climate change and their subsequent migration. The degree of a State’s development also plays an important role regarding the ability of governments to cope with, mitigate and adapt to environmental change. However, even where appropriate strategies are put in place, the adequacy of highly visible adaptive responses cannot always be assumed. For example, investment in specific infrastructures may contribute to increasing numbers of people choosing to remain in vulnerable areas, where they may be at increased risk owing to unforeseeable consequences of future environmental change. 39. Overall, the Special Rapporteur recognizes that in the case of many specific migration movements, it will not always be possible to clearly delineate between the vulnerability of an individual, group or community to climate change and the social, economic and political contexts in which such movements occur. Therefore, the Special Rapporteur reminds States that determining who will be affected by climate change and compelled to migrate cannot be ascertained in isolation. Attention must be paid to the full circumstances of individuals, groups and communities affected, including the political dimension. This must include an examination, based on a human rights approach, of why and how certain persons may be more vulnerable to climate change, as well as an examination of their effective access to different coping mechanisms through mitigation and adaptation strategies. 2. Identifying places vulnerable to climate-change-induced migration 40. Environmentally induced migration may occur almost anywhere. No country is safe from natural disaster and slow-onset environmental changes. Nonetheless, some circumstances are evidently more conducive to environmentally induced migration. In any place where human settlement already faces precarious environmental circumstances, exposure to the slightest environmental change may reach a tipping point whereby people are compelled to move. 41. First, low-lying coastal areas and megadeltas are major sources of environmentally induced migration. This is particularly true in countries such as Bangladesh and Viet Nam, and regions such as the Egyptian Nile Delta and the Niger Delta in Nigeria. Those regions are vulnerable to slow-onset environmental phenomena related to sea level rise and change in precipitation patterns and are also increasingly affected by natural disasters, such as hurricanes, floods, storm surges, soil erosion and soil salinization. 42. Second, arid areas, such as the African Sahel and other dry regions in Central America, Africa and Asia, are vulnerable to increases in temperature and changes in precipitation patterns. In many places deserts are expanding, and regions that were barely habitable will become uninhabitable. Studies have shown that local populations have long coped with difficult environmental conditions through migratory strategies: seasonal migration to towns (African Sahel) 12 or pastoralism (Somalia). 13 In such circumstances, desertification triggers adaptive changes in those migratory strategies. __________________ 12 13 10 Oli Brown, “Eating the dry season: labour mobility as a coping strategy for climate change” (Geneva, International Institute for Sustainable Development, 2007). Available from http://www.iisd.org/pdf/2007/com_dry_season.pdf. Vikram Kolmannskob, “Climate change, disaster, displacement and migration: initial evidence from Africa”, Research Paper No. 180 (Oslo, Norwegian Refugee Council, 2009). 12-46071