François GEMENNE

Professor (Education Track)

Economics and Decision Sciences

Biography

François Gemenne is a professor at HEC Paris, where he is the academic director of the Master in Sustainability and Social Innovation. A specialist of environmental geopolitics and migration governance, he is also a FNRS senior research associate at the University of Liège (Belgium), where he heads the Hugo Observatory, a research lab on environmental changes and migration. He is also the co-director of the Observatory on Defence and Climate of the French Ministry of Defence, jointly with Julia Tasse at IRIS. He is a lead author for the 6th Assessment Report of the IPCC and lectures on climate change and migration policies in different universities, including Sciences Po and Sorbonne University in Paris.

His research deals mostly with environmental and migration governance. He has worked in particular on populations displaced by environmental changes and the policies of adaptation to climate change, as well as on asylum and migration policies.

He is currently coordinating two important European research projects: MAGYC, on migration governance and asylum crises, as well as HABITABLE, on migration induced by climate change. He also coordinated the DEVAST project, one of the first international projects to examine the social and political consequences of the Fukushima disaster. Furthermore, he has been involved in a large number of international research projects on migration and environmental changes, including EACH-FOR, HELIX, EDGE, MISTY and MECLEP, for which he was the global research coordinator.

In 2015, he was the recipient of a Fulbright scholarship to pursue research at Princeton University. He has also been a guest professor at the University of Buenos Aires and the University of Economics in Bratislava, and has spent research stays at Tulane University in New Orleans, Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, the University of the South Pacific in Suva (Fiji) and the Australian National University in Canberra.

He holds a joint doctorate in political science from Sciences Po Paris and the University of Liege (Belgium). He also holds a Master’s degree in Development, Environment and Societies from the University of Louvain, as well as a Master of Research in Political Science from the London School of Economics, where he also taught. In 2008, he was awarded a post-doctoral scholarship from the AXA Research Fund. He has published in leading journals, including Science and Global Environmental Change, and has authored several books, amongst which ‘The Anthropocene and the Global Environmental Crisis’ (edited with C. Hamilton and C. Bonneuil, Routledge 2015) the Atlas of Environmental Migration (with D. Ionesco et D. Mokhnacheva, Routledge 2016) or Handbook of Environmental Displacement and Migration (edited with R. McLeman, Routledge 2018).

He is also the director of the Politics of the Earth series at Presses de Sciences Po, a leading French academic publisher, and the President of the Board of the NGO Climate Voices, which seeks to connect youth from the global North and the global South around climate issues. Recently, he was appointed as President of the scientific council of Fondation pour la Nature et l’Homme, a major environmental NGO in France.

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Scientific articles

COVID-19 responses restricted abilities and aspirations for mobility and migration: insights from diverse cities in four continents

Humanities and Social Sciences Communications, May 2023, vol. 10, n° 250, (in coll. with D. Jolivet, S. Fransen, W. N. Adger, A. Fábos, M. Abu, ET AL.)

Editorial: Climate migration research and policy connections: progress since the Foresight Report

Frontiers in Climate, 2023, vol. 5, n° 123679, (in coll. with K. van der Geest, A. de Sherbinin, K. Warner)

L’accueil des réfugiés ukrainiens et l’universalité du droit d’asile

Hommes & Migrations, 2022, vol. 2, n° 1337, pp 180-184, (in coll. with H. THIOLLET)

Conceptual framing to link climate risk assessments and climate-migration scholarship

Climatic Change, Mars 2021, vol. 165, n° 24, (in coll. with R. McLeman, D. Wrathall, E. Gilmore, P. Thornton, H. Adams)

The « race » correction in estimating glomerular filtration rate: an European point of view

Current Opinion in Nephrology & Hypertension, November 2021, vol. 30, n° 6, pp 525-530, (in coll. with P. Delanaye, C. Mariat, E. Cavalier, R. J. Glassock, H. Pottel)

What our response to the COVID-19 pandemic tells us of our capacity to respond to climate change

Environmental Research Letters, September 2020, vol. 15, n° 10, pp 101002, (in coll. with A. Depoux)

Les réfugiés de l’Anthropocène: La question du territoire à l’heure du changement climatique / The refugees of the Anthropocene: The question of territory in an era of climate change

Revue internationale de géologie, de géographie et d'écologie tropicales, 2020, vol. 44, n° 4, pp 623-629,

Climat, la naissance d’un consensus

Sciences Humaines, December 2020, vol. 332, n° 1, pp 12,

Transformative climate action in cities

Forced Migration Review, 2020, vol. 63, pp 32-35, (in coll. with C. ZICKGRAF, A. DEPOUX, L. PETTINOTTI, A. CAVICCHIOLI, S. ROSENGAERTNER)

Comparing climate change perceptions and meteorological data in rural West Africa to improve the understanding of household decisions to migrate

Climatic Change, May 2020, vol. 160, pp 123-141, (in coll. with F. De Longueville, P. Ozer, S. Henry, O. Mertz, J. Ø. Nielsen)

Books

L’écologie n’est pas un consensus. Dépasser l’indignation.

Fayard, Paris 2022

La guerre chaude

Presses de Sciences Po 2022 (in coll. with N. REGAUD, B. ALEX )

On a tous un ami noir

Fayard, Paris 2022

Atlas de l’Anthropocène - 2nde édition

Presses de Sciences Po 2021 (in coll. with A. RANKOVIC, T. ANSART, B. MARTIN, P. MITRANO, A. RIO )

Géopolitique du climat - 3ème édition, Les relations internationales dans un monde en surchauffe

Armand Colin 2021

Au-delà des frontières - Pour une justice migratoire

Centre d'Action Laïque 2018 (in coll. with P. VERBEEREN )

Routledge Handbook of Environmental Displacement and Migration

Routledge, London 2018 (in coll. with R. MCLEMAN )

Chapters in edited books

At the crossroads of climate and migration governance: institutional arrangements to address climate-induced migration

Research Handbook On The Institutions Of Global Migration Governance, A. Pécoud, H. Thiollet, Edward Elgar Publishing, 2 , 186-195

Poverty, Livelihoods and Sustainable Development

Climate Change 2022 – Impacts, Adaptation And Vulnerability, H.-O. Pörtner, D.C. Roberts, M. Tignor, E.S. Poloczanska, K. Mintenbeck, A. Alegría, M. Craig, S. Langsdorf, S. Löschke, V. Möller, A. Okem, B. Rama, Cambridge University Press, 1171-1274

A few points that communication on climate change could learn from the COVID-19 crisis

Research Handbook On Communicating Climate Change, D. C. Holmes, L. M. Richardson, Edward Elgar Publishing, 272-278

Why are we so much more afraid of COVID-19 than of climate change? Early lessons from a health crisis for the communication of climate change

Standing Up For A Sustainable World, C. Henry, J. Rockström, N. Stern, Edward Elgar Publishing, 396-400

Les droits environnementaux

Atlas Des Droits De L'Homme, Catherine Wihtol de Wenden, Alexandre Nicolas, Autrement, 56-57