Emerging migration flows in a changing climate in dryland Africa

Abstract

Despite 20 years of concern about human migration in response to environmental pressure, estimates of the numbers likely to move as a result of climate change remain, at best, guesswork. Now computer simulations reveal complex interactions in the way that climate and demographic changes combine to influence migration, suggesting that we should expect some surprises. Fears of the movement of large numbers of people as a result of changes in the environment were first voiced in the 1980s (ref. 1). Nearly thirty years later the numbers likely to migrate as a result of the impacts of climate change are still, at best, guesswork2. Owing to the high prevalence of rainfed agriculture, many livelihoods in sub-Saharan African drylands are particularly vulnerable to changes in climate. One commonly adopted response strategy used by populations to deal with the resulting livelihood stress is migration. Here, we use an agent-based model developed around the theory of planned behaviour to explore how climate and demographic change, defined by the ENSEMBLES project3 and the United Nations Statistics Division of the Department of Economic and Social Affairs4, combine to influence migration within and from Burkina Faso. The emergent migration patterns modelled support framing the nexus of climate change and migration as a complex adaptive system5. Using this conceptual framework, we show that the extent of climate-change-related migration is likely to be highly nonlinear and the extent of this nonlinearity is dependent on population growth; therefore supporting migration policy interventions based on both demographic and climate change adaptation.

Cite this article

Kniveton, D., Smith, C. & Black, R. Emerging migration flows in a changing climate in dryland Africa. Nature Clim Change 2, 444–447 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1038/nclimate1447

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