What is it about?
The concept of environmental migrants occurs frequently in the policy debate, in particular with regard to climate change and the incidence of such migration in low-income countries. This article reviews the economic studies of environmentally induced migration. It includes empirical analyses that try to link environmental change to migration flows and the spatial distribution of population. A consensus seems to emerge that there is little likelihood of large increases in international migration flows due to climate variability. The evidence to date shows that regional migration will be affected, however, either on the African continent or internally, within country borders.
Featured Image
Why is it important?
Climate induced migration has the potential to bring about profound social consequences. The recent Groundswell Report (Rigaud et al., 2018) by the World Bank shows that there could be between 31 and 143 million internal migrants in Sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, and Latin America by 2050 only due to sealevel rise, coastal storm surges and reduced agricultural productivity following changes in water availability. The largest part of such migration flows are rural-urban, which will have important consequences for cities' infrastructure and labour markets, as shown in current research.
Perspectives
The article provides an inroads to the topic based on economic analyses, but it shows the state of the literature up to 2015. A good review focusing on empirical work only and that includes the last macro-economic studies is Berlemann and Steinhardt (2017), "Climate change, natural disasters and migration - a survey of the empirical evidence." CESifo Economic Studies 63(4), 353-385. And together with colleagues from different social sciences, we have a recent interdisciplinary review 'Human Migration in the Era of Climate Change", Cattaneo et al. (2019) in the Review of Environmental Economics and Policy 13(2), 189-206. After reading these, I recommend the following meta analyses that are under way: Beine, M. and L. Jeusette. A meta analysis of the literature on climate change and migration. Sedova, B. and M. Kalkuhl. Does climate change induce migration? Evidence from a meta regression analysis. Hoffmann, R. et al. Quantifying the evidence on environmental migration: a meta-analysis on country-level studies.
Dr Katrin Millock
Paris School of Economics
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Migration and Environment, Annual Review of Resource Economics, October 2015, Annual Reviews,
DOI: 10.1146/annurev-resource-100814-125031.
You can read the full text:
Contributors
The following have contributed to this page
