Report disperses migration myth (most relocation will be regional rather than international)

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http://www.nature.com/climate/2009/0907/full/climate.2009.56.html

News Feature

Nature Reports Climate Change
Published online: 11 June 2009 | doi:10.1038/climate.2009.56

Report disperses migration myth

New research highlights the need for climate refugees to be considered in ongoing policy negotiations. Anna Barnett reports.

The first global survey of human migration driven by climate change suggests that most relocation will be regional rather than international in scale. The research, published 10 June as part of a report titled In Search of Shelter¹, dispels a common myth that the majority of climate refugees will arrive on the doorsteps of developed nations.

"There's been a bit of political rhetoric saying we're going to have waves of migrants at our doorsteps, rushing into Europe and North America," says Koko Warner, the report's lead author and an expert on migration and climate change at United Nations University in Bonn, Germany. "What we found is that the people whose livelihoods are most sensitive to the environment also tend to be the ones who may not have the means to move very far."

From 2007 to 2009, social scientists from six European universities conducted surveys and case studies at 23 sites on five continents where migration is already taking place and questioned 2,000 local people about their reasons for leaving or staying. The research was part of a two-year European Commission-funded programme called Environmental Change and Forced Migration Scenarios (EACH-FOR). The new report combines the results of the EACH-FOR surveys with maps of anticipated climate change impacts created by Columbia University scientists (see Fig. 1), and is published with a number of collaborating organisations including the nonprofit Cooperative for Assistance and Relief Everywhere and the World Bank.

Urge for going

Although people often migrate briefly to escape natural disasters — such as flooding in Bangladesh's Ganges delta — the main environmental drivers of long-term migration are those that ruin local livelihoods, finds the report. In parts of Nigeria, for example, drought and soil degradation can force farmers to move from village to village.
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