How Climate Change Affects Migration

Will climate change, as often claimed, indeed result in large-scale human migration, notably from poor to rich countries? Vally Koubi and Thomas Bernauer answer.

by Nicolas Solenthaler
refugees boat

Global warming is bound to have increasingly adverse consequences for humanity and ecosystems. While there is strong agreement in the scientific community about most of these consequences, there is significant controversy about how climatic changes could affect human migration. Some political leaders, international organizations, and scientists claim that climate change will lead to massive population shifts in the international system, notably mass migration from poor to rich countries.

Thomas Bernauer and Vally Koubi strongly disagree with some recent studies claiming that climate change is going to lead to strong refugee movements. Their own research suggests that such sweeping predictions, much like earlier predictions about climate change causing wars, are highly speculative and not sufficiently supported by robust scientific evidence. The main reason to be very skeptical of such predictions is that they usually focus on people exposed to increased climatic risks, rather than on people actually expected to migrate. Moreover, they typically do not account for adaptation potential and different levels of vulnerability to climatic changes, both of which are essential factors in people’s migration choices.

This research is based on systematic interviews (surveys) with around 4,000 men and women in Cambodia, Nicaragua, Peru, Uganda, and Vietnam. The researchers collected information on peoples’ perceptions of climatic changes and the impact these changes had on their living conditions, including their decision to migrate or stay where they were. They argue that when it comes to the former type of climate change manifestation, individuals often have little choice but to move, usually within the respective country, rather than to countries far away. In contrast, slowly and more gradually evolving climatic changes are more likely to allow for adaptation to such changing conditions.

Migration, and especially migration to another country, is a very costly choice for most individuals, since it requires economic resources and social networks necessary to undertake the move. Furthermore, most individuals are strongly attached to their home location because of economic, social and cultural ties. Consequently, given the possibility to adapt to climatic changes, most individuals are likely to stay and adapt, rather than migrate.

And indeed, their analysis shows that climatic changes very often do not induce migration. While extreme climatic changes often leave individuals no other option than to migrate, gradual climate change events usually do not lead to migration. That said, it is still possible that some individuals stay not because they choose to, but rather because they are unable to move due to failed adaptation efforts and depletion of economic resources necessary to undertake the move.

Poorly substantiated studies claiming that climate change will cause millions of people to migrate are not only questionable from a scientific viewpoint. They are also questionable from a policy viewpoint. In particular, they divert attention from the fact that people severely affected by climatic changes will overwhelmingly prefer to stay rather than migrate.

This means that massively increased international climate change adaptation support will be essential. It is essential not primarily to prevent mass migration from developing to industrialized countries, as some studies on the climate change-migration link suggest. It is needed to mitigate human suffering of those trapped in parts of the world exposed most severely to changing climatic conditions.

This is a shortened and adapted version of a blog entry which appeared in the ETH's Zukunftsblog series. For the full original version see here.

JavaScript has been disabled in your browser