Climate change, environmental
degradation and migration: how
viable are current predictions?
Dr Dominic Kniveton
“Pressure to migrate
will intensify”“1bn likely to be
displaced by 2050”
“150-200 million
environmental
refugees by the
middle of the
century”
Future floods of refugees?
Estimates of numbers are ‘at best, guesswork’ (IPCC,
2007)
The nexus between climate change, environmental
degradation and migration has not been explored
empirically in a way that generates conclusive
results.
Migration patterns
• Intra-regional movement > overseas movement
• Internal migration > intra-regional movement
• Drivers include ‘push’ and ‘pull’ factors
– Push: political instability, conflict, lack of economic opportunities, lack of access to resources, climate variability and stocks
– Pull: employment and demand for workers, higher wages in destination regions, kin and social networks
• Intervening factors: – Include immigration/registration policies, transport
infrastructure, cultural networks and aid policies
Top down approach
• Past estimates identify areas affected by
environmental and climate change, count the
number of people living there, and use this to
estimate the number likely to be forced to leave
• Neglects to account for the specific local contexts
and multiple factors that underpin migratory
decisions
Burkina Faso
• Drought associated with decreases in international, long-distance migration
• Food scarcity during drought leads to increased prices, forcing people to spend more money on their basic needs rather than on long-distance migration
• Short-distance migration to larger agglomerations increased during drought years, as women and children left in search of work to contribute to household incomes.
Henry, S., Schoumaker, B. and Beauchemin, C., 2004, Population and
Environment, Vol. 25, No. 5, pp. 423-60
El Salvador
• Loss of harvest and livestock increased the household’s probability of sending members to the United States
• But earthquakes were associated with a substantial decrease in net migration to the US
Halliday, T. 2006, Economic Development and Cultural Change, Vol. 54, No. 4, pp. 893-925.
‘Bottom-up’ vulnerability and adaptation
assessments
• Start at the local scale by addressing socio-economic responses to climate, which tend to be location-specific.
• However these often fail to account for both individual and collective definitions of what constitutes a dangerous climatic
or environmental risk that may initiate migration
Lack of data
• Lack of time-sensitive migration flow data
such that change in climate and other factors
at time t can be used to explain migration at
time t+1.
• This shortage of data is particularly acute for
internal movements of people
Climate change and uncertainty
Rainfall trendsRainfall trendsRainfall trendsRainfall trends
Multi-model averages; A1B scenario
Stippled areas: >90% models agree on
sign change
December – February June – August
• A number of projected
future climate changes
are predicted to be of a
magnitude and
variability unlikely to be
experienced by
communities in the past.
• This restricts the use of
statistical models and
historical analogues to
extrapolate future
climate-migration
impacts.
Negative impact or adaptative strategy?
• In the past migration has largely been seen as a response to climate change, and thus as a negative impact of climate change.
• Ignores the idea of migration as an adaptativestrategy that increases household resilience to negative climate change impacts and may exclude important future migration flows of people attempting to benefit from some of the positive impacts of climate change .
• Existing overviews of environmental and climate change and migration flawed
• Problem of multiple causation, push and pull
• Relative lack of empirical material
• Some studies show declining migration in response to drought
• Likely continued migration to zones at risk of flooding
• Alternative approaches: explore sensitivity of existing migration flows to climate change and agent based simulation of migration decision making process
Summary
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