In many regions of the world, climate change is contributing to a deterioration in people’s living conditions. According to current forecasts, this could lead to growing migration flows. But now a study reveals that the reverse can also apply: Especially in the poorest countries, the climate crisis is reducing incomes so much that people there lack the means to emigrate. They therefore usually remain in their country despite the need.
Whether due to increasing droughts and heat waves, creeping soil erosion or rising sea levels: more and more people around the world are being affected by climate change and its side effects. Especially in agricultural regions, flooding, heavy rain or a lack of rain deprive many of their livelihoods. Recently, this has resulted in crop failures and famines becoming more frequent. As a result, many people have no choice but to leave their homes.
How is climate change affecting migration?
More than ten years ago, the UN predicted that climate change would increase the number of refugees worldwide: “Climate change could become the main reason for displacement. It increases the competition for resources – water, food, pasture – and this can lead to conflicts,” said António Guterres, Secretary General of the United Nations, at the 2009 World Climate Summit. According to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR ) around 23.7 million people left their homes due to constant rain, prolonged drought, heat waves and storms.
While the majority of climate refugees are relocating within their own country, others are taking the opportunity to seek new livelihood opportunities elsewhere. But what does that mean specifically? Albano Rikani from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) and his colleagues have examined in more detail how climate change affects migration in the long term. They wanted to know how much climate change is affecting income levels in rich, middle and poor countries and what this means for the number of climate refugees from these countries. To do this, they used a model simulation based on data on the gross domestic product and migration of the countries in the period from 1990 to 2021.
The poorest have to stay
The evaluations revealed: “Climate change is reducing economic growth in almost every country in the world,” reports Rikani’s colleague Jacob Schewe. “But this has very different effects in poorer and richer countries.” The number of climate refugees in most countries around the world has increased slightly or has remained about the same. This also applies to Europe or the migration of people from Latin America to North America. However, especially in poorer regions such as southern Africa or parts of Southeast Asia, increasing climate change is apparently leading to less migration. “Remarkably, there is little enhanced migration between Africa and Europe or between South and Southeast Asia and Europe, North America and Oceania,” the researchers report.
Accordingly, climate change appears to be promoting the flight from the Global South to the Global North less than is commonly assumed. But why? Earlier studies on migration flows provide a possible reason for this: They had found that most refugees come from countries with more middle incomes. “Relatively few people migrate from both high-income and very low-income countries. In poor countries, one of the reasons for this is that many people simply cannot afford to leave the country,” explains co-author Christian Otto from PIK. When heavy rains, droughts or floods rob people of their livelihoods in these areas, they do not have the means to start over in another country. As a result, poor people often stay in their home country, even if they are in need there. “In poor countries, many people in need lack the means to emigrate. They have no choice but to stay where they are,” says Rikani.
Source: Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research; Specialist article: Environmental Research Letters, doi: 10.1088/1748-9326/aca6fe