TY - JOUR
T1 - Compound impacts from droughts and structural vulnerability on human mobility
AU - Thalheimer, Lisa
AU - Choquette-Levy, Nicolas
AU - Garip, Filiz
N1 - Funding Information:
We would like to thank Michael Oppenheimer for his feedback and suggestions that have guided and advanced this paper. Thank you to the three anonymous reviewers for their time and effort to improve this paper. F.G. acknowledges funding from the Academic Venture Fund from the Atkinson Center for Sustainability and the Cornell Grand Challenges Grant at Cornell University . N.C.-L. acknowledges funding from the Social Sciences Research Council of Canada (no. 752-2020-077) . L.T. and N.C.-L. acknowledge funding from the Center for Policy Research on Energy and the Environment.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2022 The Author(s)
PY - 2022/12/22
Y1 - 2022/12/22
N2 - Extreme dry events already disrupt populations’ ability to migrate. In a warming climate, compound drought events could amplify vulnerability and drive forced migration. Here, we contribute the first multi-method research design on societal impacts from compound drought events. We show how mobility patterns are shaped by the intersection of drought and social vulnerability factors in three drought-prone countries – Madagascar, Nepal, and Mexico. We find that internal migration in agricultural communities in Mexico increased by 14 to 24 basis points from 1991 to 2018 and will prospectively increase by 2 to 15 basis points in Nepal in case of a compound drought event in 2025. We show that consecutive drought events exacerbate structural vulnerabilities, limiting migrants’ adaptation options, including long-range migration. We conclude that the additional social pre-conditions, e.g., social isolation and lack of accurate information, ultimately limit migration as an adaptation option for households vulnerable to compound drought events.
AB - Extreme dry events already disrupt populations’ ability to migrate. In a warming climate, compound drought events could amplify vulnerability and drive forced migration. Here, we contribute the first multi-method research design on societal impacts from compound drought events. We show how mobility patterns are shaped by the intersection of drought and social vulnerability factors in three drought-prone countries – Madagascar, Nepal, and Mexico. We find that internal migration in agricultural communities in Mexico increased by 14 to 24 basis points from 1991 to 2018 and will prospectively increase by 2 to 15 basis points in Nepal in case of a compound drought event in 2025. We show that consecutive drought events exacerbate structural vulnerabilities, limiting migrants’ adaptation options, including long-range migration. We conclude that the additional social pre-conditions, e.g., social isolation and lack of accurate information, ultimately limit migration as an adaptation option for households vulnerable to compound drought events.
KW - Climatology
KW - Human Geography
KW - Social sciences
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U2 - 10.1016/j.isci.2022.105491
DO - 10.1016/j.isci.2022.105491
M3 - Article
C2 - 36590461
AN - SCOPUS:85144502455
SN - 2589-0042
VL - 25
JO - iScience
JF - iScience
IS - 12
M1 - 105491
ER -