Is Climate Change Likely to Leadto Higher Net Internal Migration?
The Republic of Yemen’s Case
Introduction
Climate change is likely to lead to substantial migration flows (for a recent review of the evidence to-date, see Foresight 2011). Jakobeit and Methmann(2007) suggested some years back that there may be up to 150–200 million environmental refuges in 30 years, but this estimate was considered as conservatively the Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change (2006) and the Foresight report notes that 42 million people were displaced by natural hazards just in 2010. It is also clear that the impact of climate change may be very different on different types of households depending on their coping mechanisms(see Meze-Hausken 2004, on Ethiopia) and that the magnitude of migration flows will depend on country conditions. For example, fast onset disasters such as hurricanes and floods, as well as droughts or decreasing agricultural yields may lead to only temporary displacement (for country case studies, see Findley 1994;Haug 2002; Henry, Schoumaker, and Beauchemin 2004; Paul 2005; Shuaizhanget al. forthcoming; see also Barrios, Bertinelli, and Strobl 2006), while slow on sets events such as desertification or rising sea levels may take longer to occur but may also have longer lasting effects on net migration flows.The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) is likely to be one of the most vulnerable regions to climate change, both due to a number of cities threatened by rising sea levels and the vulnerability of agricultural production given water scarcity which is expected to increase further. Average temperatures in many MENA countries may increase by two degrees Celsius by the end of the century,including in the Republic of Yemen, a country where the depletion of groundwater resources is likely to reduce agricultural output by 40 percent (World Bank2010; for a review of the literature which informs this chapter, see the introduction of chapter 1 by Wodon et al. [2014] and chapter 2 on the focus countries for this work by Burger et al. [2014] in this study).In a country like the Republic of Yemen, climate change is likely lead to higher migration principally due to the need for households to improve their livelihoods.But many households also tend to be fairly attached to their area of origin,and when they move, this is typically driven more by socioeconomic factors than climate variables, as shown by Joseph and Wodon (2013) using a gravity-type model with census data on internal migration rates combined with data on weather patterns at the district level. Building on Joseph and Wodon (2013), reconsider in this chapter net migration rates (as opposed to bi-directional flows)and predict to what extent changes in climate are likely to affect such net internal migration flows. We focus on net migration rates because from a policy point of view, these are likely to be more important than overall bi-directional flows.The results suggest that controlling for other factors that may affect net internal migration rates, these rates tend to be lower toward areas with higher temperatures the impact of temperature on net migration rates, while statistically significant, is small. Using predicted values for future temperature sunder alternatives climate change scenarios, out-of-sample predictions of expected net international migration rates suggest limited changes in patterns of migration due to rising temperatures. It should be emphasized however that because we rely on past patterns of migration and climate, our results can only be considered as suggesting (in an imperfect and indicative way) that slowly changing climate patterns may affect migration in the not too distant future in a limited way only, but they should not be relied upon to assess how structural breaks such as dramatic changes in climate patterns may affect long-term migration.The chapter is organized as follows. Section two presents our data and methodology.Section three describes our results. A brief conclusion foll
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