2023-09-07 17:11:00
MADRID, 7 Sep. (EUROPA PRESS) –
Net migration patterns around the world remain more closely linked to socioeconomic factors than to climate change.
A study published in ‘Nature Human Behaviour’ It also provides a new high-resolution data set on net emigration over the past two decades that will inform policy-making and research.
According to Venla Niva, a postdoctoral researcher at Aalto University in Finland and lead author of the study, “these results do not fit the public narrative about climate-induced migration. When considering the different factors in your set, analysis shows that human development factors are more important than climate“, Add.
The research group, made up of researchers from Aalto University, the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis and the University of Bologna (Italy), published a similar study last year covering the period 1990-2000.
“The new analysis covers the last two decades, 2000-2019. The high-resolution data set they prepared allows us to answer questions that cannot be addressed with coarser data, such as national averages. There was a real need for a data set like this one, but it didn’t exist. So we decided to create it ourselves,” explains Niva. The new data set is freely accessible and can be easily explored through an interactive online map.
The team combined birth and death rates with global population growth to calculate net migration. The role of socioeconomics and climate was incorporated through the Human Development Index (HDI) and the aridity index.
Taking subnational birth and death rates and downscaling them to 10 km resolution, researchers produced a net migration dataset of unprecedented resolution.
“This allows us to address questions that cannot be answered using national aggregates. Climate factors do not follow administrative borders, so you need data like this if you want to study these patterns,” explains Niva.
The researchers found high levels of emigration in regions that were in the middle of the scale in both HDI and aridity, such as parts of Central America, northeastern Brazil, Central Africa, and Southeast Asia. “It is not the poorest of the poor who flee disasters or environmental changes. Migration is a method of adaptation used by people who have the capacity to move,” says Niva.
Similarly, areas with a high HDI experienced positive net migration regardless of their climatic situation. For example, the regions of the Arabian Peninsula, North America, Australia and the northern Mediterranean are net recipients despite their aridity.
“Decision-makers should pay attention to this. Instead of focusing solely on closing borders and fighting migration, we should work to support and empower people in economically disadvantaged countries. This would help reduce the factors that push people to emigrate in search of better opportunities.“, underlines Matti Kummu, associate professor of global water and food issues at Aalto and lead author of the study.
The granularity of the new data set reveals complexities in migration patterns that are hidden when national data are used. In France and Italy, for example, there are very interesting differences between north and south, and in Spain there is a difference between east and west. There are many guidelines that national experts could study and of course the reasons may be different in each country,” says Kummu.
Unexpected patterns were also observed in migration from the countryside to the city. There is a widespread belief that urban areas drag down people from rural areas, but this was not the case everywhere. In many places in Europe, for example, the opposite is true,” signs Kummu.
Migration from cities to rural areas was also evident in parts of Indonesia, Congo, Venezuela and Pakistan, and when looked at at the community level, The picture becomes even more complex.
In general, migration is more complex than people tend to think, says Niva. Our findings contribute to the debate about where and how migration occurs; In reality, it is not a Eurocentric phenomenon, because most of the migration occurs in other parts of the world.
Researchers can use the new data set to understand migration more accurately than through national averages, which don’t capture the whole story. “We have already shared the data with other researchers and, for example, with the UN International Organization for Migration,” says Kummu. We’ve created an interactive map so people can explore these patterns for themselves.“.
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