1.0 Introduction

Fluctuations in temperature, rainfall and wider weather patterns caused by the climate crisis have profound impacts on exploitation and global inequality. Across the Global South, droughts, floods, irregular rainfall, land degradation and livelihood collapse are displacing families before protection systems are ready to receive and support them. Climate-displaced persons who lose land, income, documents, community protection and bargaining power are more vulnerable to unsafe migration, coercive labour, trafficking, debt bondage, child labour and other forms of exploitation. The anti-slavery sector must therefore understand and address climate-induced displacement as a frontline protection issue, not only as an environmental or humanitarian concern (IPCC, 2022; IOM, 2024; IDMC, 2025; Anti-Slavery International and IIED, 2021).

This article argues that the International Coalition Against Modern Slavery can help shape a new prevention agenda by connecting climate mobility, refugee protection and anti-slavery practice. The evidence is urgent. UNHCR emphasises that climate change and disasters create protection risks for people who are displaced and for host communities, requiring stronger legal, policy and institutional responses (UNHCR, 2024). The Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre reported that 75.9 million people were living in internal displacement at the end of 2023, and its 2025 report recorded a further rise to 83.4 million people living in internal displacement at the end of 2024 (IDMC, 2024; IDMC, 2025). Meanwhile, the ILO, Walk Free and IOM estimate that 50 million people were living in modern slavery in 2021, including 28 million in forced labour and 22 million in forced marriage (ILO, Walk Free and IOM, 2022). These figures should not be read separately. Together, they show the convergence of displacement, poverty, exploitation and environmental breakdown.

Climate shocks interact with unequal labour markets, gendered vulnerability, weak social protection, insecure migration routes, recruitment abuse and political neglect. Bales’ analysis of modern slavery remains useful because it shows how people become exploitable when they are treated as disposable labour within unequal economic systems (Bales, 2012). This article argues that climate shocks can intensify the conditions in which exploitation becomes easier to organise, harder to detect and more difficult for victims to escape.

1.1 The proposed model: The Climate-Displacement-Modern Slavery Risk Chain

This paper proposes the Climate-Displacement-Modern Slavery Risk Chain as a practical framework for anti-slavery coalitions. The model has five connected stages: climate shock, livelihood collapse, unsafe mobility, institutional invisibility and exploitation. It demonstrates that while climate change does not automatically produce modern slavery, it can create the conditions in which exploitation becomes easier, cheaper and less visible.

The first stage is climate shock. Droughts, floods and erratic rainfall undermine agriculture, housing, water access and food security. In rural economies, these shocks damage the assets that households depend on for survival, including land, livestock, crops, savings and community support systems (Black et al., 2011; McLeman and Gemenne, 2018). This is why climate mobility should be understood as a social and economic process rather than a purely environmental event. Communities become displaced when environmental disruptions destroy the practical conditions that make staying possible.

Damaged assets lead into the second stage: livelihood collapse. When farms fail, livestock die, debts rise and food becomes scarce, migration becomes a survival strategy. The Foresight report on migration and global environmental change showed that environmental change interacts with economic, social, political and demographic drivers, while the World Bank projects that internal climate migration will intensify without inclusive development and climate action (Foresight, 2011; World Bank, 2021). This matters for anti-slavery work because coercion often begins before the formal act of exploitation. When people lose income, food, shelter and bargaining power, they are more likely to accept risky offers, informal work, debt-based travel arrangements or exploitative recruitment.

The third stage is unsafe mobility. People displaced by climate shocks often rely on informal transporters, labour brokers, relatives, employers or recruiters who promise work, accommodation, safety or passage. Where safe migration routes, decent work and accessible protection services are absent, exploiters can convert vulnerability into control through debt, withheld wages, document retention, threats, deception or isolation. Zimmerman and Kiss identify human trafficking and exploitation as global health and protection concerns, while IOM links climate mobility with heightened risks of trafficking, forced labour and exploitation (Zimmerman and Kiss, 2017; IOM, 2024). In this sense, unsafe mobility is not only about movement. It is about movement under conditions where people have few choices and few institutions able to protect them.

The fourth stage is institutional invisibility. Many climate-displaced people do not enter formal refugee camps or official displacement registries. They may self-settle in host communities, informal urban settlements, temporary shelters, relatives’ homes or precarious labour markets. Refugee and forced migration scholarship shows that self-settlement and urban displacement are common, but they often remain less visible than camp-based displacement (Jacobsen, 2006; Bakewell, 2014). This invisibility matters because when people are invisible to the state, they are also more likely to be invisible to protection, labour inspection, safeguarding, social welfare and anti-trafficking systems.

Institutional invisibility is also legal and political. Climate-displaced persons do not automatically qualify as refugees under the 1951 Refugee Convention, even though some may experience refugee-like vulnerability. McAdam’s work on climate change and forced migration shows the limits of existing international protection categories and the difficulty of fitting climate-related movement into conventional refugee law (McAdam, 2012). UNHCR’s 2025 Global Trends report recorded 123.2 million forcibly displaced people at the end of 2024, while the ILO estimates that 167.7 million migrants were in the global labour force in 2022 (UNHCR, 2025; ILO, 2024). These figures show that labour protection, migration governance and displacement protection must be treated together. A denial of lawful work, documentation, education or livelihoods can push displaced people into forced labour, domestic servitude, child labour, forced marriage, sexual exploitation or other abusive arrangements.

The fifth stage is exploitation. Exploitation may appear as forced labour, domestic servitude, trafficking, child labour, debt bondage, forced marriage, sexual exploitation or forced criminality. The UNODC 2024 Global Report on Trafficking in Persons shows that poverty, conflict and climate pressures can increase vulnerability to trafficking, while detected forced labour cases have risen significantly (UNODC, 2024). The Climate-Displacement-Modern Slavery Risk Chain therefore helps coalitions identify the warning signs before exploitation becomes entrenched. It shifts attention from rescue after abuse to prevention at the points where vulnerability is produced.

1.2 Why refugee protection matters for anti-slavery work

The refugee protection field offers important lessons for anti-slavery work, even where climate-displaced persons do not legally qualify as refugees. Refugee protection has developed tools that anti-slavery coalitions can adapt: vulnerability screening, registration, safeguarding, documentation support, psychosocial care, livelihood assistance, child protection, community-based protection and durable solutions planning. UNHCR emphasises the need for law, policy and institutional capacity to protect people displaced in the context of climate change and disasters (UNHCR, 2024). The United Nations Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement also provide an important rights-based foundation by affirming that internally displaced persons should be protected without discrimination and should have access to safety, dignity, assistance and durable solutions (United Nations, 1998).

For Africa, the Kampala Convention is especially relevant because it recognises state responsibility to prevent displacement, protect internally displaced persons and respond to displacement linked to natural or human-made disasters (African Union, 2009). Although implementation remains uneven across the continent, the Convention provides a useful normative bridge between disaster displacement, state responsibility and human protection. Anti-slavery coalitions can draw from this framework by treating climate-displaced people as rights-holders, not merely as vulnerable labourers or emergency victims.

This is the missing bridge. Anti-trafficking responses often focus on criminal networks, rescue, prosecution and survivor support. These remain essential, but they are insufficient when exploitation is generated through climate stress, hunger, displacement and lack of labour protection. Modern slavery is also an issue of structural violence because exploitative systems often rely on poverty, invisibility, weak regulation and unequal bargaining power. A prevention-centred coalition should ask five operational questions: Who has been displaced by climate shocks? Who has lost livelihoods? Who is moving through unsafe channels? Who is invisible to formal support? Who is already being targeted by exploitative recruiters or employers?

Refugee protection matters because it teaches anti-slavery actors to intervene earlier. Instead of waiting for exploitation to occur, coalitions can build protective systems around people at the point of displacement. Registration can make people visible. Documentation can reduce dependency on brokers. Livelihood support can reduce desperation. Education and child protection can reduce child labour and forced marriage risks. Community-based protection can help detect harmful recruitment, domestic servitude, gender-based abuse and exploitative work arrangements. Durable solutions planning can prevent displacement from becoming a long-term pathway into exploitation.

1.3 Northern Ghana as a warning case

Northern Ghana is a useful warning case because climate vulnerability, livelihood insecurity and migration already overlap there. The area is highly dependent on rain-fed agriculture and repeatedly affected by droughts, floods and rainfall variability. Studies of climate adaptation in northern Ghana show that farmers face barriers linked to finance, institutions, knowledge, land, infrastructure and limited livelihood diversification (Antwi-Agyei, Dougill and Stringer, 2018; Yaro, 2013). These barriers mean that climate shocks can quickly become livelihood shocks.

Flooding linked to river systems, heavy rainfall and dam spillages can destroy farms, homes, roads, schools, markets and local infrastructure. Dry spells can reduce yields, deepen food insecurity and increase household debt. Research on climate variability in Ghana and the Sahel shows that floods and rainfall anomalies are not only environmental events; they affect memory, anticipation, livelihood planning and household decision-making (Codjoe, Owusu and Burkett, 2014; Tschakert et al., 2010). When people cannot recover quickly, movement may become part of household survival.

Migration from northern to southern Ghana has long been a livelihood strategy. However, climate stress can transform adaptive mobility into distress migration when people move with fewer choices, weaker protection and greater dependence on informal intermediaries. Van der Geest shows that environmental factors have shaped north-south migration in Ghana, while Awumbila, Teye and Yaro highlight gendered dynamics and vulnerabilities among migrant domestic workers in Accra (Van der Geest, 2011; Awumbila, Teye and Yaro, 2017). These studies are important because they show that migration can be both adaptive and risky. It can help households survive, but it can also expose young people and women to precarious work, low pay, domestic servitude, harassment, debt and isolation.

A young person leaving a climate-stressed rural community after losing family income may enter domestic work, street vending, informal mining, construction, agriculture or unpaid apprenticeship with limited bargaining power. A household displaced by flooding may accept work from an informal recruiter because immediate survival feels more urgent than future risk. A girl withdrawn from school after crop failure may become vulnerable to domestic servitude or early marriage. A young man migrating after livelihood collapse may accept unsafe construction, farm or mining work without proper contracts. These examples do not suggest that all climate mobility leads to exploitation. Rather, they show how displacement and poverty can narrow people’s choices until exploitative offers become difficult to refuse.

Northern Ghana therefore illustrates the wider Global South challenge: climate shocks can push people into mobility before protective institutions are prepared to respond. If disaster management, climate adaptation, labour inspection, migration support and anti-slavery work remain disconnected, exploiters can operate in the gaps between them. This makes Northern Ghana a warning case for coalition-building: climate vulnerability must be connected to freedom protection.

1.4 Recommendations

The International Coalition Against Modern Slavery and its partners should treat climate-displacement protection as a core anti-slavery priority. The following recommendations are ;

1. Embed anti-trafficking safeguards into disaster response and climate adaptation plans. After floods, droughts or crop failure, protection actors should monitor recruitment offers, child labour risks, forced marriage pressures, debt-based travel, domestic work arrangements and labour abuses in destination areas. Disaster response should not end when emergency relief is delivered. It should include follow-up on who has moved, who lacks income, who is being recruited and who lacks safe accommodation.

2. Create joint referral pathways between climate, migration, refugee and anti-slavery actors. Modern slavery prevention should connect disaster management agencies, refugee organisations, labour inspectors, local authorities, climate adaptation actors, social protection institutions, faith groups, community leaders and survivor-led networks. A displaced person should not be passed between institutions without help simply because the case is partly environmental, partly economic and partly migration-related.

3. Strengthen livelihood protection and emergency social protection. Cash support, food assistance, temporary shelter, school retention support, livelihood grants, safe housing and access to decent work can reduce dependence on exploitative recruiters. Prevention should focus on restoring bargaining power. Where people have food, shelter, documentation and safe work options, they are less likely to accept dangerous arrangements out of desperation.

4. Protect children and young people during and after climate shocks. Schools, social welfare officers, local authorities and civil society organisations should monitor school dropout, child labour, forced marriage risks and unsafe movement after floods, droughts and livelihood collapse. Child protection should be built into climate response because families under economic pressure may adopt harmful coping strategies.

5. Improve safe migration information and recruiter monitoring. Communities affected by climate shocks should receive clear information on safe travel, labour rights, warning signs of trafficking, contract terms, wages, accommodation risks and where to seek help. Informal recruiters, brokers and employers operating in affected communities should be monitored by labour, local government and community protection systems.

1.5 Conclusion

The future of anti-slavery work must include climate-displacement protection. Climate shocks are already reshaping vulnerability across the Global South, and the people most exposed are often those least visible to law, policy and humanitarian systems. The Climate-Displacement-Modern Slavery Risk Chain offers a practical way to see the sequence before exploitation becomes entrenched: shock, livelihood collapse, unsafe mobility, institutional invisibility and exploitation.

For the International Coalition Against Modern Slavery, the opportunity is both strategic and moral. Strategically, the coalition can build stronger prevention by connecting climate adaptation, displacement protection, refugee practice, labour rights and survivor-centred anti-slavery work. Morally, the coalition can insist that climate-displaced persons are not only victims of the environmental crisis but rights-holders entitled to safety, dignity, decent work, education, documentation and participation.

Modern slavery grows where people are made desperate, disposable and invisible. Climate-aware protection must therefore make displaced people seen, supported and free. This requires moving beyond rescue alone towards prevention, livelihoods, safe migration, documentation, labour protection and community-based safeguards. If anti-slavery work is to remain relevant in a climate-disrupted world, it must respond to the ways climate shocks create pathways into exploitation and build systems that interrupt those pathways before abuse begins.

Framework Summary

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About the Author

Stephen Mensah-Apenteng is a Commonwealth Scholar and governance researcher at the University of Derby. With expertise in African politics, disaster governance, refugee and climate policy, human security, and international political economy. His work examines how institutions, state structures, and civil society actors shape crisis response, accountability, resilience, and equitable development in Africa and comparable developing contexts.