Temperature Extremes, Conflict, and Migration in West Asia and North Africa

Jasmin Abdel Ghany , University of Oxford

There is growing interest amongst policymakers, humanitarian actors and academics to understand how climate change impacts migration patterns. This study investigates whether climate change may influence migration through its potential to increase conflict. The pathway from temperature extremes to conflict to outmigration is examined here for countries in West Asia and North Africa (WANA) over the period 2000-2019 by estimating the effect of temperature extremes on the occurrence of conflict in a first equation and on the size of bilateral migration flows from conflict-affected countries in a second equation. Migration flows are estimated using asylum application data in a gravity-model approach with a number of covariates and Heckman-type models are employed to correct for bias that can stem from the correlation of the error terms of the two equations. Through this study design that separates conflict and migration outcomes in a two-step procedure, the effect of temperature extremes can be disentangled for each of the two estimation stages. The results indicate that temperature anomalies increase the likelihood of conflict but do not influence the size of migration flows from countries where conflict has occurred. The study supports the notion of an indirect effect of climatic irregularities on migration flows through conflict. While the findings shed light on factors that constitute vulnerability to conflict in relation to climatic irregularities, they also point to the importance of intra-regional migration as a response to environmental security threats.

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 Presented in Session 66. Drivers of international migration