Based on current reports on the growing dynamics and impacts of the climate crisis (UNEP 2022, Armstrong McKay et al. 2022, IPCC 2022, Romanello et al. 2022, Steel et al. 2022), it is increasingly clear that there are limits to adaptation to climate change: humanity faces permanent and crisis-related changes. This raises the question of whether declining habitability due to climate change and environmental degradation will lead to widespread forced migration. So far, there is little empirical evidence of sustained mass movements due to climate change now or in the recent past. However, given expected loss and damage over the course of this century, together with increasing inequality, vulnerability and demographic change, it seems likely that in many regions at least parts of the population will not be able to sustain their livelihoods or even survive in the long term.

It is therefore not surprising that the concept of'habitability', hitherto mainly known in astrophysics (eg Langmuir and Broecker 2012), is increasingly finding its way into climate studies and the geosciences (eg Horton et al. 2021; Farbotko and Campbell 2022). The debate on the short-and longterm habitability or uninhabitability of places as a consequence of environmental change and degradation is not entirely new (eg Storlazzi et al. 2015), but so far, the concept is not well elaborated, and its added value to existing concepts is unclear.