Climate change impacts internal migration worldwide. The influence of climate change on migration, both current and future, has garnered significant attention from the public and policymakers over the past decade. A new IIASA-led study has provided the first comprehensive analysis of how climate factors – specifically drought and aridity – affect internal migration.

While public discourses often focus on international migration, existing scientific evidence indicates that when climatic factors drive migration, it often results in short distance moves within national borders. However, there is a lack of scientific studies examining climate-induced internal migration across different countries. The new study, published in Nature Climate Change, used census microdata from 72 countries spanning the period from 1960 to 2016 to provide the first worldwide assessment of how environmental stress affects migration within national borders.

“Our analysis shows that internal migration – which we defined as movement between subnational regions within a country – increases in regions affected by drought and aridification, especially in hyper-arid and arid regions. The effects are most pronounced in agriculturally dependent and rural areas, where livelihoods are highly vulnerable to changing climate conditions. Many climate-induced migrants move to urban areas, contributing to the accelerated urbanization trends observed in numerous countries,” explains lead author Roman Hoffmann, who leads the Migration and Sustainable Development Research Group at IIASA.

The analysis revealed regional differences in impacts… You can read everything about this interesting study at iiasa.ac.at