To Fund or Not to Fund?: Human Rights Guardrails for Financing Planned Relocations of Communities Facing the Climate Crisis

From Walande, Solomon Islands, an Indigenous village forced 1 by rising seas and coastal erosion to move to the mainland, to Saint Louis, Senegal, where the government is relocating entire neighborhoods of fisherfolk inland away from coastal flooding, climate-related planned relocations are already happening around the world. 2 Yet the landscape of financing for this unique form of climate mobility is understudied, 3 complex, and lacks sufficient guardrails to prevent funding from being channeled to relocations that violate human rights principles.As the climate crisis accelerates and more communities face these challenging processes, a human rights-based approach 4 to determine whether and how to fund planned relocations is increasingly urgent.In this essay, we conceptualize planned relocation, describe trends in the current funding landscape, and articulate why the level of consent among relocating people should be a key consideration for funders.We argue that governments and external funders should expand support for communities leading relocation efforts and refrain from supporting relocations imposed by external actors without communities' consent.Funders should update their policies and safeguards to reflect both imperatives. Conceptualizing Planned RelocationPlanned relocations are processes in which groups of people move to a new location that is more insulated from climate change impacts, where they can rebuild their lives.Since most communities would prefer to stay in