Projecting Climate-Induced Migration

Global climate projections become increasingly pessimistic as the world suffers from a lack in consensus about rapid reductions in greenhouse gases emissions. This fact puts a huge pressure not only on the natural environment in which we live, but also on our societies and economies. Climate change will cause significant damages to many aspects of economic activity in multiple areas of the world through diminishing productivity, destroying local amenities and reducing life quality. Millions of people will experience income losses and poverty, some of whom will decide to move over short or long distances to flee the hazardous areas. In this paper, we develop a theoretical model of the world economy that projects economic and demographic variables until 2090 and quantifies the impact that future climate change has on the global economy, the spatial allocation of people and human migration movements at various spatial scales. The main findings of this exercise lead to a pessimistic conclusion that within current strict barriers to migrate, migration of people is not a plausible solution to upcoming climate challenges. In contrast, climate immobility of people generates huge economic losses and pushes millions into extreme poverty.