Migration as a mode of adaptation to extreme climate events, natural disasters and environmental change

Sustainable livelihoods (SL) provide an appropriate approach to conceptualising the relationship between climate (environmental) change and human adaptation strategies. In China, however, there is little research into the relationship between livelihood assets and adaptation behaviour in response to climate change from a micro (household) perspective. This study develops a two-stage conceptual framework based on an SL approach. The study examines how, and to what extent, the livelihood assets of rural households influence four major agro-ecological domains (agricultural production, land area, water supply, and soil fertility) of livelihoods, and subsequently influence their decisions on adaptation strategies to climate change. A two-stage regression procedure is used to analyse primary data collected from 304 households in Xiji county. Results show that responses to climate change at the household level are significantly influenced by five dimensions of livelihood assets – natural, financial, physical, human and social capital. Both in-situ adaptation and migration policies that aim to address poverty and environmental stresses in the area need to focus on diverse income resources, accessibility of agricultural techniques and facilities, education, ethnic equity and social networks of the households affected by climate change.

The effects of climate change are likely to have adverse impacts on human life and livelihood of the people in Bangladesh. Indeed people at first instance try to adapt with the changed circumstances. However, migration in many cases is used as an adaptation strategy to respond to changes in the environment. The extreme natural disasters such as cyclones, floods and tidal waves, together with others socio-economic factors such as poverty and unemployment motivate people to move from their original place to other rural and urban areas in search of seasonal harvesting and employment. In response to multifarious challenges posed by climate change on human migration, organised and planned both internal and international migration can play a significant role. In this context, this paper argues to view migration itself as part of adaptation strategies not simply a failure of adaptation. It also analyses a range of possible policy responses to be adopted by the government of Bangladesh to facilitate climate related migration as a part of adaptation strategy.

This paper has threefold objective. Firstly, it presents existing conceptual unclarities about "climate refugees". Secondly, it discusses how such unclearities have downplayed the rights of the climate victims. Finally, it proposes a new architecture of a global governance of “climate refugee”. Environmentally induced migration is as old as human civilization, yet the issue of “climate refugees” got global attention only after Professor Myers’ (Oxford University) estimation of 200 million climate migrants by 2050. In this regards developed countries gave very cursory focus due to fundamental flaws in conceptualization of the term “climate refugees” as this term does not have any politico-legal ground in UN Convention on “refugees”. Only New Zealand accepts 75 Tuvaluans each year through Pacific Access Category. Sweden considers environmental migrants as a special category. Switzerland, Canada, and Malaysia temporarily suspended involuntary returns of failed asylum seekers to affected areas of 2004’s Tsunami. However, none of these countries make explicit reference to “climate refugees” for such liberal treatment. Finally, this paper concluded that there is no “home” for “climate refugees”, either literally or figuratively. Therefore, this paper has drawn a new architecture of the global governance of “climate refugees”.

The International Panel on Climate Change’s (IPPC) report in 1990 mentioned that climate change has serious impacts on human mobility. This generated awareness among scholars and policy makers on the negative impacts of this phenomenon on human life, particularly pushing them to move away their origins. However, climate change is not a single factor imposing population mobility. It is coupled with decreasing in economic sources, which in turn cause people to look for alternative economics sources in other areas. In agricultural areas, changing in hydrological cycle as an impact of climate change affects agricultural activities. Extreme drought or excessive rainfalls might damage food crop. This inflicts a financial loss upon those who are depended a living on agricultural production because the crop could not be harvested.

This paper discusses migration related to climate change among tobacco and cocoa peasants in Lombok Island, West Nusa Tenggara, a province in eastern Indonesia. The paper also describes the impact of hydrological cycle changing on the two commodities, which leads the farmers to migrate. Analysis of this paper will be based on data from study on the impact of climate change on population mobility conducted by the authors and team in Lombok Island.

The agricultural poverty alleviation and Development project in Ledu county, Qinghai province is not only the World Bank's Poverty Alleviation Project, but also one of the projects caused intense worldwide controversy. Mainly due to the local ethnic minority , especially the Tibetan population migration. From August 2012 to October 2012, a survey of local ethnic minority immigrants has finished . There are two objectives of this research, one is to analyze complicated relations between climate change and migration in the local area, and another one is explore the adaptive problems of ethnic minority after migrated. This study will through constructing innovative systematic assessment models based on two case study areas in Qinghai province. The research selects Ledu County as the migrant sending area, which is located in Haidong area, while the selected migration receiving area is Dulan County in Haixi area. The study area focuses on rural western China because this region has been identified as a hotspot where climate change will have its greatest effect on migration, and this study area has also been experiencing extreme poverty and ethnicity issues. The research combines existing methods with scenarios that determines the relationship between migration and environmental factors as a whole and climate change in particular.

Islands are examined due to their increased vulnerability to climate change related hazards like flooding, sea-level rise, storms, cyclones etc. Out of the several projected impacts of climate change in India, coastal zones are apprehended to suffer most devastating effects. India has been identified as one amongst 27 countries which are most vulnerable to the impacts of global warming related accelerated sea level rise (UNEP, 1989). Under article 6 of New Delhi Work Programme (2007), a special effort to foster psychological/behavioral change has been stressed through public awareness. In view of this, a psychological assessment of Indian islanders’ perceptions, stressors and resilience to climate change was conducted in Tsunami affected Andaman islands of India (N=100 adult respondents) using Islanders’ Perception to Climate Change Inventory (IPCCI) classified into subsections like Climate Change Perceptions, Islanders’ Distress, Coping/Adaptation and Psychological Resilience. Results were discussed in line with human-climate interface/ psychological variables in order to suggest the tradeoffs between individual, community and institutional responses to natural disasters so that resilience and subjective well being can be further promoted in islanders to overcome the anticipated distress from Tsunami like environmental events.

This is a study of the relationship between weather patterns, or rainfall, and migration in rural agricultural areas. The already significant body of research on this topic shows that empirical patterns differ from the conventional assumptions and there is less than expected migration following large and detrimental weather changes. However, more theoretical and empirical detail is needed to understand this process and why the results differ from basic theoretical assumptions. In this study, we use detailed data from rural Nepal to test the effects of weather on short- and long-term migration and we investigate differences between weather in the previous one through six years. Results show that low rainfall increases short-term migration, but decreases long-term migration. Further, we find no evidence that rainfall in the past year influences migration, but that rainfall in the more distant past has strong and significant effects. This suggests that migration might be a strategy to decrease risk in the case when agricultural livelihoods become unsustainable in the long-term.

Environmental degradation has severe consequences on the availability of natural resources and may create a huge pressure on human communities security and vulnerability (IPCC; 2007): since globalization has been characterised by an unequal economic development, so, environmental degradation, augmented by climate change, that directly links with the economic growth and the industrialisation jeopardises the lives of the the most vulnerable peoples, namely the indigenous (Kronik and Verner; 2010) and, generally speaking, the women (Enarson; 2000) provoking forced mobility. Recent researches on the link between natural environment depletion and vulnerability focused on developing countries areas (among the others UNDP; 1997 and UNEP; 2009): this choice, far to be neutral, reveals a politic choice, that will be investigated later. For this reason one can recognise that the degradation of the environment is socially and spatially constructed (Lonergan; 1998). I have decided to provide an analysis of human displacements in Italy, in the case of Sarno 1998 landslide to demonstrate how also in Northern countries provoking threats to human health and mobility, and damage to economic sectors such as energy, transport, forestry, agriculture, and tourism (Stern; 2006 and 2008).