To help guide future policy work in the areas of food security, agriculture, rural livelihoods and integrated water resources planning, FAO Land and Water Division (CBL) and GWP Technical Committee (TEC) initiated a multi-phase effort. The first phase of this effort was about understanding the migration phenomena from this particular perspective and researchers who specialize in migration, water resources and geography at Oregon State University were asked to look into this question by examining the peer-reviewed and empirical literature on how water stress affects and is affected by migration. The result is this analytical literature review, “Water stress and human migration: a global, georeferenced review of empirical research.” The review, which was conducted over four months, reveals important lessons learned, suggestions on needed research, and sometimes surprising gaps in research on this area of focus. The study geocoded the results of 116 peer-reviewed papers and plotted them against watershed sub-basin-level maps of indicators of water stress and compared them to the projected changes in surface temperature and annual cumulative precipitation. These maps were examined to identify geographic disparities between existing water stressmigration research and likely future regions of water stress. vi The findings from the reviewed literature provide important material for policy development for improving migration as a strategy for adapting to water stress. A key finding of the review is that migrants rarely, if ever, cause resource conflicts. Another is about the fact that agricultural adaptation strategies affects people’s need to migrate and should be explicitly incorporated in the respective policies, including in climate change adaptation. Another finding that can complement this is that a delayed migration reaction to water stress allows time for intervention. All these make a case for proactive adaptation as a more effective and sustainable strategy than a reactive humanitarian response.