Abstract
Climate change and its potentially harmful effects on agricultural production, income, and subsistence might change the incentive and capability of the population to remain in rural areas or to migrate to urban locations. Using census micro-data in combination with high-resolution climate information, we explore the impacts of climate change on rural–urban migration in the Brazilian Northeast region. Results from a gravity model estimation reveal that the climate–migration relationship depends on the agricultural income levels of rural origin areas and the educational attainment of the rural population. Specifically, our results indicate that the intensification of climate adversities may have contributed to boosting migration from rural areas with lower socioeconomic vulnerability. In contrast, in the most deprived rural areas, harmful climate effects may have resulted in the reduction of this type of migration flow. Nevertheless, our findings suggest that education might attenuate the suppressing effects of adverse climate conditions on migration in highly vulnerable rural areas, suggesting a viable pathway to overcome mobility constraints. Our findings emphasize the complexity of climate–migration linkages and conclude that the debate on climate change and migration should no longer consider that climate change invariably results in migration, but also should investigate who is able to implement and take advantage of migration as an adaptation strategy. Policies to address issues related to climate-induced migration must focus on both facilitating migration and assisting vulnerable segments of the population who remain in place, as the less-educated rural population whose livelihoods depend on the agricultural activity.
Similar content being viewed by others
Availability of data and material
Not applicable.
Code availability
Not applicable.
References
Alexander, L., Zhang, X., Peterson, T., Caesar, J., Gleason, B., Klein Tank, A., et al. (2006). Global observed changes in daily climate extremes of temperature and precipitation. Journal of Geophysical Research, 111(22), 1–22.
Alvalá, R., Cunha, A. P., Brito, S., Seluchi, M., Marengo, J., Moraes, O., et al. (2019). Drought monitoring in the Brazilian semiarid region. Anais da Academia Brasileira de Ciências, 91(1), 1–15.
Assunção, J., & Chein, F. (2016). Climate change and agricultural productivity in Brazil: Future perspectives. Environment and Development Economics, 21(5), 581–602.
Barbieri, A., Domingues, E., Queiroz, L., Ruiz, R., Rigotti, J., Carvalho, J., & Resende, M. (2010). Climate change and population migration in Brazil’s Northeast: Scenarios for 2025–2050. Population and Environment, 31(5), 344–370.
Barbier, E., & Hochard, J. (2018). Poverty, rural population distribution and climate change. Environment and Development Economics, 23(3), 234–325.
Bedran-Martins, A. M., & Lemos, M. (2017). Politics of drought under Bolsa Família program in Northeast Brazil. World Development Perspectives, 7–8, 15–21.
Beine, M., & Parsons, C. (2015). Climatic factors as determinants of international migration. The Scandinavian Journal of Economics, 117(2), 723–767.
Beine, M., & Parsons, C. (2017). Climatic factors as determinants of international migration: Redux. CESifo Economic Studies, 63(4), 386–402.
Bernzen, A., Jenkins, J., & Braun, B. (2019). Climate change-induced migration in coastal Bangladesh? A critical assessment of migration drivers in rural households under economic and environmental stress. Geosciences, 9(51), 1–21.
Bohra-Mishra, P., Oppenheimer, M., Cai, R., Feng, S., & Licker, R. (2017). Climate variability and migration in the Philippines. Population and Environment, 38(3), 286–308.
Cai, R., Feng, S., Oppenheimer, M., & Pytlikova, M. (2016). Climate variability and international migration: The importance of the agricultural linkage. Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, 79, 135–151.
Campos, J. (2015). Paradigms and public policies on drought in Northeast Brazil: A historical perspective. Environmental Management, 55, 1052–1063.
Cattaneo, C., & Peri, G. (2016). The migration response to increasing temperatures. Journal of Development Economics, 122, 127–146.
Cattaneo, C., Beine, M., Fröhlich, C., Kniveton, D., Martinez-Zarzoso, I., Mastrorillo, M. et al. (2019). Human Migration in the Era of Climate Change. Review of Environmental Economics and Policy, 13(2) 1–19.
Coniglio, N., & Pesce, G. (2015). Climate variability and international migration: An empirical analysis. Environment and Development Economics, 20(4), 434–468.
Cunha, A. P., Alvalá, R., Nobre, C., & Carvalho, M. (2015). Monitoring vegetative drought dynamics in the Brazilian semiarid region. Agricultural and Forest Meteorology, 214, 494–505.
Cunha, A. P., Tomasella, J., Ribeiro Neto, G., Brown, M., Garcia, S., Brito, S., et al. (2018). Changes in the spatial–temporal patterns of droughts in the Brazilian Northeast. Atmospheric Science Letters, 19(10), 1–8.
Cutter, S., & Finch, C. (2008). Temporal and spatial changes in social vulnerability to natural hazards. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 7(105), 2301–2306.
Da Cunha, D., Coelho, A., & Féres, J. (2015). Irrigation as an adaptive strategy to climate change: an economic perspective on Brazilian agriculture. Environment and Development Economics, 20(1), 57–79.
Dallmann, I., & Millock, K. (2017). Climate variability and inter-state migration in India. CESifo Economic Studies, 63(4), 560–594.
Delazeri, L., Cunha, D., & Couto-Santos, F. (2018). Climate change and urbanization: Evidence from the semi-arid region of Brazil. Revista Brasileira de Estudos Regionais e Urbanos, 12(2), 29–154.
Dell, M., Jones, B., & Olken, B. (2014). What do we learn from the weather? The new climate-economy literature. Journal of Economic Literature, 52(3), 740–798.
Drabo, A., & Mbaye, L. (2014). Natural disasters, migration and education: An empirical analysis in developing countries. Environment and Development Economics, 20, 767–796.
Falco, C., Galeotti, M., & Olper, A. (2019). Climate change and migration: Is agriculture the main channel? Global Environmental Change, 59, 1–26.
Grace, K., Hertrich, V., Singare, D., & Husak, G. (2018). Examining rural Sahelian out-migration in the context of climate change: An analysis of the linkages between rainfall and out-migration in two Malian villages from 1981 to 2009. World Development, 109, 187–196.
Gutierrez, A. P., Engle, N., De Nys, E., Molejon, C., & Martins, E. (2014). Drought preparedness in Brazil. Weather and Climate Extremes, 95(3), 95–106.
Hagel, H., Hoffmann, C., Irmão, J., & Doluschitz, R. (2019). Socio-economic aspects of irrigation agriculture as livelihood for rural families in Brazil’s semi-arid northeast. Journal of Agriculture and Rural Development in the Tropics and Subtropics, 120(2), 157–169.
Hampshire, K. (2002). Fulani on the move: Seasonal economic migration in the Sahel as a social process. Journal of Development Studies, 38(5), 15–36.
Harris, J., & Todaro, M. (1970). Migration, unemployment and developmnent: A two-sector analysis. The American Economic Review, 60(1), 126–142.
Herwehe, L. & Scott, C. (2017): Drought adaptation and development: Small-scale irrigated agriculture in northeast Brazil. Climate and Development, 10(4), 1–9.
IBGE. (1991). 1991 Demographic census: Microdata. Rio de Janeiro: IBGE.
IBGE. (2000). 2000 Demographic census: Microdata. Rio de Janeiro: IBGE.
IBGE. (2010). 2010 Demographic census: Microdata. Rio de Janeiro: IBGE.
IBGE. (2013). 2013 Suplementary food security survey. Rio de Janeiro: Pesquisa Nacional por Amostra de Domicílios, IBGE.
IBGE. (2018). Produto Interno Bruto dos Municípios 2002–2016. Rio de Janeiro: IBGE.
IPCC. (2014). Climate change 2014: Impacts, adaptation, and vulnerability. Part B: Regional aspects. Contribution of Working Group II to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, United Kingdom and New York, NY, USA.
Kelly, P., & Adger, W. (2000). Theory and practice in assessing vulnerability to climate change and facilitating adaptation. Climatic Change, 47, 325–352.
Koubi, V., Spilker, G., Schaffer, L., & Bernauer, T. (2016). Environmental stressors and migration: Evidence from Vietnam. World Development, 79, 197–210.
Lewis, W. (1954). Economic development with unlimited supplies of labour. The Manchester School, 22(2), 139–191.
Lemos, M., Lo, Y., Nelson, D., Eakin, H., & Bedran-Martins, A. (2016). Linking development to climate adaptation: Leveraging generic and specific capacities to reduce vulnerability to drought in NE Brazil. Global Environmental Change, 39, 170–179.
Lindoso, D., Rocha, J., Debortoli, N., Parente, I., Eiró, F., Bursztyn, M., et al. (2014). Integrated assessment of smallholder farming’s vulnerability to drought in the Brazilian Semiarid: A case study in Ceará. Climatic Change, 127(1), 93–99.
Lobell, D., et al. (2013). The critical role of extreme heat for maize production in the United States. Nature Climate Change, 3, 497–501.
Machado Filho, H., Moraes, C. Benatti, P., Rodrigues, R., Guilles, M., Rocha, P. et al. (2016). Climate change and impacts on family farming in the North and Northeast of Brazil, Working Paper 141, International Policy Centre for Inclusive Growth (IPC-IG), Brasília.
Marengo, J., Torres, R., & Alves, L. (2017). Drought in Northeast Brazil: Past, present, and future. Theoretical and Applied Climatology, 129, 1189–1200.
Marengo, J., Cunha, A. P., Nobre, C., Ribeiro Neto, G., Magalhães, A., Torres, R., et al. (2020). Assessing drought in the drylands of northeast Brazil under regional warming exceeding 4 °C. Natural Hazards, 103, 2589–2611.
Massey, D., Arango, J., Hugo, G., Kouaouci, A., Pellegrino, A., & Taylor, J. (1998). Worlds in motion: Understanding international migration at century’s end. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Mastrorillo, M., Licker, B., Bohra-Mishra, P., Fagiolo, G., Estes, L., & Oppenheimer, M. (2016). The influence of climate variability on internal migration flows in South Africa. Global Environmental Change, 39, 155–169.
Mueller, V., Gray, C., & Kosec, K. (2014). Heat stress increases long-term human migration in rural Pakistan. Nature Climate Change, 4(3), 182–185.
Nawrotzki, R., Hunter, L., Runfola, D., & Riosmena, F. (2015). Climate change as a migration driver from rural and urban Mexico. Environmental Research Letters, 10(11), 1–9.
Nawrotzki, R., & Bakhtsiyarava, M. (2017). International climate migration: Evidence for the climate inhibitor mechanism and the agricultural pathway. Population, Space and Place, 23(4), 1–16.
Nawrotzki, R., & DeWaard, J. (2018). Putting trapped populations into place: Climate change and inter-district migration flows in Zambia. Regional Environmental Change, 18, 533–546.
Nelson, D., Lemos, M., Eakin, H., & Lo, Y. (2016). The limits of poverty reduction in support of climate change adaptation. Environmental Research Letters, 11(9), 094011.
Oppenheimer M., Campos M., Warren R., Birkmann J., Luber G., O’Neil B., et al. (2014). Emergent risks and key vulnerabilities. In: Field C., Barros, V., Dokken D. et al. (eds) Climate change 2014: impacts, adaptation, and vulnerability. Part A: global and sectoral aspects. Contribution of Working Group II to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Cambridge UK, and New York.
Otto, I., Reckien, D., Reyer, C., Marcus, R., Le Masson, V., Jones, L., et al. (2017). Social vulnerability to climate change: A review of concepts and evidence. Regional Environmental Change, 17, 1651–1662.
PBMC. (2014). Base científica das mudanças climáticas. Contribuição do Grupo de Trabalho 1 do Painel Brasileiro de Mudanças Climáticas ao Primeiro Relatório da Avaliação Nacional sobre Mudanças Climáticas, COPPE, Rio de Janeiro, RJ, Brasil.
Santana, A., & Santos, G. (2019). Avaliação das políticas de mitigação de riscos da agricultura nordestina. Revista de Política Agrícola, 28(1), 102–114.
Santos Silva, J., & Tenreyro, S. (2006). The log of gravity. Review of Economics and Statistics, 88(4), 641–658.
Sheffield, J., Goteti, G., & Wood, E. (2006). Development of a 50-year high resolution global dataset of meteorological forcings for land surface modeling. Journal of Climate, 19(13), 3088–3111.
Schlenker, W., & Roberts, M. (2009). Nonlinear temperature effects indicate severe damages to US crop yields under climate change. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 106(37), 15594–15598.
Thiede, B., Gray, C., & Mueller, V. (2016). Climate variability and inter-provincial migration in South America, 1970–2011. Global Environmental Change, 41, 228–240.
Tol, R. (2018). The economic impacts of climate change. Review of Environmental Economics and Policy, 12(1), 4–25.
Vieira, R., Sestini, M., Tomasella, J., Marchezini, V., Pereira, G., Barbosa, A., et al. (2020). Characterizing spatio-temporal patterns of social vulnerability to droughts, degradation and desertification in the Brazilian northeast. Environmental and Sustainability Indicators, 5, 100016.
Viswanathan, B., & Kumar, K. (2015). Weather, agriculture and rural migration: Evidence from state and district level migration in India. Environment and Development Economics, 20(4), 469–492.
Funding
This research was funded by the Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior—CAPES (Grant Number: 1490958 and 1832106) and by the Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico—CNPq (Grant Number: 142366/2016-01 and 305807/2018-8, finacial code 001). The funding sources had no such involvement in study design; neither in the collection, analysis, and interpretation of data; nor in the writing of the report; and in the decision to submit the article for publication.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Contributions
All authors have contributed sufficiently to the scientific work, approved the final manuscript, and are aware of this submission. Therefore, they share collective responsibility and accountability for the results.
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Conflict of interest
The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.
Ethical standard
Authors wish to declare that they have complied with all the ethical standards as it is required by journal of GeoJournal.
Additional information
Publisher's Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Appendix
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Delazeri, L.M.M., Da Cunha, D.A. & Oliveira, L.R. Climate change and rural–urban migration in the Brazilian Northeast region. GeoJournal 87, 2159–2179 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10708-020-10349-3
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10708-020-10349-3