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Exploring the Climate Change, Migration and Conflict Nexus

Kate Burrows et al. Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2016.

Abstract

The potential link between climate change, migration, and conflict has been widely discussed and is increasingly viewed by policy makers as a security issue. However, considerable uncertainty remains regarding the role that climate variability and change play among the many drivers of migration and conflict. The overall objective of this paper is to explore the potential pathways linking climate change, migration and increased risk of conflict. We review the existing literature surrounding this issue and break the problem into two components: the links between climate change and migration, and those between migration and conflict. We found a large range of views regarding the importance of climate change as a driver for increasing rates of migration and subsequently of conflict. We argue that future research should focus not only on the climate-migration-conflict pathway but also work to understand the other pathways by which climate variability and change might exacerbate conflict. We conclude by proposing five questions to help guide future research on the link between climate change, migration, and conflict.

Keywords: climate change; conflict; migration.

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Figure 1

Figure 1

The relationship between risks from climate change, temperature increase and carbon dioxide emissions, and changes in annual greenhouse gas emissions. Reproduced from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Fifth Assessment Report [18]. (a) shows the level of additional risk due to climate change for five different threats. The risk per threat is scaled from “Very high” to “Undetectable” (see color legend below (a)) for each increase in global mean temperature; (b) shows the relationship between cumulative greenhouse gas emissions (in GtCO2) and changes in global mean temperature. The ellipses represent CO2 emissions under the different IPCC scenario categories; (c) links cumulative CO2 emissions to changes in annual greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.

Figure 2

Figure 2

Conceptual model for understanding the role of the environment as one of many drivers of migration [30]. This model is reproduced from the UK Foresight Report (2011) and is intended to demonstrate the complexity of the contextual factors that can lead to migration [30]. (Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0.) This paper focuses on the role of climate change as an environmental driver, but we also discuss the relative roles of political and economic factors as stabilizing and/or destabilizing forces.

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