Compounding and Cascading Climate Hazards’ Effect on Migration

Sarah Kilpatrick , International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA)
Jonas Peisker, International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis
Roman Hoffmann, International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA)

We investigate the idea that accumulated climate hazards, in response to rising greenhouse gases, significantly contribute to sub-national and international migration. Such migration, an agentic expression of mobility, is not universally or uniformly accessible. For example, the absence of mobility access gives rise to involuntary immobility, where constrained populations become “trapped.” Recent literature has made gains in examining the effects of singular categories of climate hazards on short and long-term migration. However, there is the opportunity to analyze the cumulative and interactive effect of an overlapping mosaic of climate hazards on migration. Climate hazards in this study include sudden-onset hazards, such as floods, tropical storms, and wildfires, and slow-onset hazards, such as drought, and anomalous heat waves and cold waves. We sourced these data from four sources of global climate and weather data. Faced with these hazards, people react with a diverse array of adaptative strategies, depending on their circumstances and aspirations. To capture these strategies, this work uses data from the Demographic and Health Survey (DHS) regarding household absenteeism as a proxy for migration. Furthermore, these hazards have a prismatic effect on communities’ migration adaptation choices: oftentimes mobility outcomes follow seemingly unintuitive trends. This paper examines whether these mobility responses amplify social and economic inequalities for individuals and households. Assessing the compounding and cascading effects of overlapping climate hazards on mobility clarifies the nonlinear influence these phenomena have on migration dynamics.

See extended abstract

 Presented in Session P13. Climate Shocks, Migration and Mobility