How climate affects migration

There is widespread recognition among scholars that environmental conditions, including climatic variability and change, can and do influence migration (Hugo, 1996; Hunter, 2005; Shah, 1994). Academic and popular discussions of climate-related migration tend to take place within the broader debate about “environmental refugees”, a type of migration described by El-Hinnawi (1986) as occurring when people are involuntarily displaced in response to environmental conditions or events that may occur naturally (e.g. earthquakes) or are anthropogenic in origin (e.g. flooding of river valleys behind large dams). A range of climatic events and conditions, such as extreme storm events, droughts and so forth, have the potential to stimulate large pulses of environmental refugees, and the frequency and severity of many such events is expected to increase in many regions as a result of climate change (Solomon et al., 2007). Yet, environmental refugees represent only one end of a continuum of possible environment-migration outcomes (McLeman and Hunter, 2010). At the other end of the continuum is the environmental amenity migrant who voluntarily seeks better-quality environmental conditions. Examples might include a family with an asthma-prone child that leaves a congested megacity for another city’s better air quality, or the retired “snowbird” who leaves the hard winters of northern North America for Florida’s sunnier climes. Movements of amenity migrants can be sizeable; for example, one study suggests that each winter a full 1 per cent of the Canadian population spends more than three weeks (i.e. longer than the typical holiday vacation) in the southern United States (Coates et al., 2002). A great many other possibilities exist between the two extremes of environmental refugee and amenity-seeker, and, in many instances, it may be difficult to distinguish environmental influences from political, economic, social, and cultural factors that may also concurrently influence migration behaviour (Suhrke, 1994; Hunter, 2005).

Sustainable Development Goals:

Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions