Dirk Arts on climate change as a driver of migration in Africa

Migration and climate change are two of the largest global challenges humanity is currently facing (United Nations, 2023). In the short- and long-term, climate change could result in certain regions on Earth becoming less inhabited due to changing regional climates, in particular changing temperatures and precipitation. In turn, this could lead to major migration. Already in 2011, about 500 million people thought that they would need to move within the next five years because of environmental problems (Esipova et al, 2011). With climate change only intensifying since then, this number is projected to have only increased (Lee et al., 2023; IEP, 2022

This research contributes to the literature by being the first multi-country research that explores the relationship of temperature and precipitation change with migration at the sub-national level. This is a key contribution because people migrate more within borders than across them, and temperature and precipitation levels can differ significantly across regions in a country (UNDP, 2009; IOM, 2020). Therefore, significantly more migratory movements are detected by measuring migration at the subnational level. This is made possible by the novel sub-national dataset on temperature, precipitation, and population distribution in Africa used in this research.

Figure 1 and 2 graphically show the effects of temperature and precipitation changes on migration. Temperature increases are found to lead to increased migration. Next to that, while smaller in effect, any change in precipitation – so both increases as well as decreases - is also found to lead to increased migration. While the effects of temperature and precipitation changes seem small, compounded by the projected size of the African population, climate induced migration in Africa can roughly go up to one hundred million in the 21st Century.

The effects of temperature increases on migration are slightly stronger in relatively unwealthy regions compared to relatively wealthy regions, whereas precipitation changes are related to increased migration only in relatively unwealthy regions. Next to that, temperature increases and precipitation changes only lead to additional migration in relatively agriculture-dependent regions. Agriculture, therefore, seems to be a channel through which temperature and precipitation changes affect migration.