In a world where climate change is displacing millions, what can we learn from one of the most volatile hotspots on Earth?

As climate change intensifies, extreme climate zones and uninhabitable areas are projected to expand dramatically over the next few decades. Water stress, food insecurity, extreme heat, sea level rise, and weather-related disasters are driving instability and displacement on an unprecedented scale. As of 2024, an estimated 123 million people are displaced (UNHCR), with projections suggesting this number may rise significantly, disproportionally impacting those least responsible for the climate crisis.

This project-based seminar will examine migration trends induced by climate and conflict, which often intersect, in one of the most volatile hotspots in the world, the Sahel.

The Sahel region has long grappled with the root causes and multidimensional consequences of climate change, colonization, extensive resource extraction, conflict, and militarization. In response to new migration trends observed in the region, local, national, and international policies and protocols for humanitarian contingency planning are currently being developed. At the same time, across this challenging landscape, traditional lifestyles such as nomadic pastoralism and transhumance have thrived for millennia in extreme weather conditions, offering valuable lessons in adaptability and perseverance during times of crisis and resource scarcity.

Given this context, the course revolves around the following questions:

• What can we learn about the future of climate migration from these forced displacement trends and rich local cultures, and how can they intersect with international interventions?
• How can we use multi-temporal and multi-scalar spatial analysis and climate vulnerability projections to understand a future planet in a constant state of flux–one in which the constraints of national territories are perhaps transcended–while embracing a deeper cultural preservation of lifestyles, construction techniques, materiality, habitat typologies?
• How can we forge regenerative relationships with broader ecological and environmental conditions defined by commons and collective resource management?
• What can these insights teach us about architecture and urban planning, and how can we use them to challenge our own discipline, pedagogy, and relationship with spatial production?

In the seminar, the class will engage with diverse stakeholders and viewpoints from both theory and practice. We will have discussions with representatives from United Nations agencies, such as UNHCR and UN Habitat, who provide real-time data and field experience. By leveraging their datasets and engaging in dialogue with local non-governmental organizations (NGOs), community representatives, designers, scientists, and various experts, we will develop spatial design strategies and approaches focused on a case study of climate migration in the Sahel. Special attention will be given to the situation in Mauritania, where local and international organizations are collaborating to support the country’s open-door policy and its efforts to host refugees from the region, while also developing new protocols that lead to the emergence of innovative spatial organizations.

Sessions will include meetings with diverse stakeholders and in-class workshops for project development that include spatial analyses of migration trends, scenario and design exercises. To attend the class, students are required to have knowledge of spatial design (architecture, urban and landscape architecture) along with basic mapping skills.