Climate change not expected to lead to mass cross-border migration

People are more likely to move short distances to cities, rather than across borders, says a new report
A Bolivian Aymara woman selling clothes in El Alto, near La Paz, last month. A new reports says people adapt to climate change by moving short distances for short periods, often to cities such as El Alto, one of Bolivia's largest and fastest-growing urban centers. Photograph: Enrique Castro-Mendivil/REUTERS

Alarming predictions by the UN, charities and some environmentalists that between 200 million and 1 billion people could flood across international borders to escape the impacts of climate change in the next 40 years are unrealistic, distract from the real problems and could actually impoverish vulnerable people, new research suggests.


"The studies give no reason to think that environmental degradation linked to climate change will result in large flows of international migrants," says Cecilia Tacoli, a senior researcher with the International Insititute for Environment and Development (IIED) in London.

"People affected by environmental degradation rarely moved across borders. Instead they moved to other rural areas or to local towns, often temporarily," she says. "This kind of migraion," says Tacoli, "is a positive response by people being affected by desertification, soil degradation, disrupted rainfall patterns and the changes in temperature associated with climate change."

Dire predictions of waves of forced climate change "refugees" have been made for more than 20 years. In 1990, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said that its greatest single impact might be on human migration – with millions of people displaced by shoreline erosion, coastal flooding and agricultural disruption.

Since then, Lord Stern, Christian Aid and environmentalists like Norman Myers predict that by 2050 between 200 million and 1 billion people could be displaced primarily because of environmental degradation linked to climate change.

In fact, says Tacoli, non-environmental factors largely determine the duration, destination and composition of migrant flows. "Temporary migration is more likely to be directed towards urban centres, and increasingly towards smaller towns. Young people also move to towns, with boys as young as 14 going to work in construction and services such as watchmen," she says.

Far from being a loss to local economies, Tacoli found that when people do move internationally they often invest back in their home regions, strengthening the economy and actually reducing people's vulnerability to climate change.

"Both the relatively common internal migration and the relatively rare international migration can support poor people who are at risk from climate change," she says. "Migration is part of the solution, not part of the problem as many people think."

"There is a danger," she says, "that alarmist predictions will backfire and result in policies that marginalise the poorest and most vulnerable groups. Governments often view migrants as a problem and either provide little support or actively discourage them from moving."

Unfortunately, most governments and international agencies tend to see migration as a problem that needs to be controlled instead of a key part of the solution.

"In doing so, they are missing opportunities to develop policies that can increase people's resilience to climate change. Policymakers need to redefine migration and see it as a valuable adaptive response to environmental risks and not as problem that needs to be tackled," says Tacoli.

"We need rational, realistic responses to climate-change, not knee-jerk reactions that create new problems and increase vulnerability."