Climate Migration primarily in middle income, agri-dependent countries: Study -Akshit Sangomla

-Down to Earth

Study can go long way in pinpointing future hot spots for climate-induced migration

Human migration due to changing climate happens primarily in middle income and agricultural-dependent countries, a new study published in the journal Nature Climate Change on September 14, 2020, has said.

The impacts of climate change that caused migration of people were mainly changes in temperature, rainfall variability and rapid onset events like storms, cyclones and floods, the study added.

The research paper was published by a group of scientists from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) in Germany, International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) in Austria, the Vienna Institute of Demography of the Austrian Academy of Sciences in Austria and the Vienna University of Economics and Business in Austria.

“Environmental factors can drive migration, but the size of the effects depends on the particular economic and sociopolitical conditions in the countries,” Roman Hoffmann, lead author of the study and a scientist at PIK and the Vienna Institute of Demography of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, said.

“In both, low and high income countries, environmental impacts on migration are weaker — presumably because people are either too poor to leave and therefore essentially become trapped, or in wealthy countries, they have enough financial means to absorb the consequences. It is mainly in middle-income regions and those with a dependency on agriculture that we see strong effects,” he added.

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