Climate Change, Agriculture and Migration: A Survey

This paper proposes a selective review of the classical economics-based literature on climate change and migration, focusing on the extent to which agriculture might be considered a key mediating channel linking climate change to migration. Overall, climate change is expected to have large and negat...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Sustainability 2018-05, Vol.10 (5), p.1405
Main Authors: Falco, Chiara, Donzelli, Franco, Olper, Alessandro
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Agricultural development
Agricultural economics
Agricultural policy
Agriculture
Agronomy
Climate change
Data processing
Developing countries
Economic sectors
Economics
Food security
Global economy
Households
LDCs
Migration
Rural development
Sustainability
Sustainable agriculture
Sustainable development
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Summary:This paper proposes a selective review of the classical economics-based literature on climate change and migration, focusing on the extent to which agriculture might be considered a key mediating channel linking climate change to migration. Overall, climate change is expected to have large and negative effects on the global economy. These effects are even more evident whenever the economic sector considered is the agricultural one, particularly in developing countries. Hence, migration can be viewed as a specific form of adaptation implemented by individuals and households, enabling them to cope, among other things, with weather-induced risk. We show that the importance of agriculture emerges from both plenty of micro-level country studies and relatively few macro-level analyses using cross-sectional data over longer time periods. Thus, policy actions targeted to sustainable agriculture and rural development can both help tackle the challenges posed by climate change and create opportunities in the face of growing migration issues. However, we also stress that much of the current evidence is based on statistical associations that have nothing to do with causal inferences. This calls for the use of a more structural approach and more sophisticated research designs, enabling the researchers to better discriminate among different mechanisms concurrently at work. In addition, further research should be addressed to the role played by food security, a complex dimension largely missing in the current debates on climate change and migration.
ISSN:2071-1050
2071-1050
DOI:10.3390/su10051405