It's not just coastal cities bracing for sea-level rise or farmers battling erratic weather patterns—millions of people are being driven by changing climates to relocate, not across borders, but within their own countries.
It's not just coastal cities bracing for sea-level rise or farmers battling erratic weather patterns—millions of people are being driven by changing climates to relocate, not across borders, but within their own countries. A study by Marco Percoco (Director of the GREEN Research Center at Bocconi), Roman Hoffmann (International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, Austria), Guy Abel (Department of Sociology, The University of Hong Kong), Maurizio Malpede (University of Pavia, Italy), Raya Muttarak (University of Bologna, Italy) and published in Nature Climate Change investigates the dynamics behind this internal migration. Analyzing over 107,000 migration flows within 72 countries between 1960 and 2016, the research reveals that as droughts intensify and regions become more arid, the movement of people accelerates. The results show a clear pattern: “When faced with environmental pressures like prolonged dryness, many people see migration as their least bad option,” says Marco Percoco.
Drought's role in shaping migration
Drought has the power to uproot lives, especially in regions such as Southern Europe, South Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. A 1-standard-deviation increase in aridity was found to raise out-migration rates by as much as 9.3%, highlighting just how significant environmental factors have become in influencing mobility. As the authors put it, “In many areas, people are not just choosing to move—they're being pushed by environmental conditions that make staying increasingly untenable.”
Read more at: Bocconi University
