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Climate change and migration: the case of Africa

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  • Bruno Conte
Abstract
How will future climate change affect rural economies like sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) in terms of migration and welfare losses? How can policy enhance SSA's capacity to adapt to this process? I answer these questions with a quantitative framework that, coupled with rich spatial data and forecasts for the future, estimates millions of climate migrants and sizeable and unequal welfare losses in SSA. Investigating migration and trade policies as mitigating tools, I find a tradeoff associated with the former: reducing SSA migration barriers to the European Union (EU) standards eliminates aggregate welfare losses at the cost of more climate migration and high regional inequality. Reducing tariffs to the EU levels attenuates this cost.

Suggested Citation

  • Bruno Conte, 2023. "Climate change and migration: the case of Africa," Economics Working Papers 1880, Department of Economics and Business, Universitat Pompeu Fabra.
    • Handle: RePEc:upf:upfgen:1880
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    Cited by:

    1. Conte, Bruno & Desmet, Klaus & Rossi-Hansberg, Esteban, 2022. "On the Geographic Implications of Carbon Taxes," CEPR Discussion Papers 17714, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    2. Alan Feng & Haishi Li & Yulin Wang, 2023. "We Are All in the Same Boat: Cross-Border Spillovers of Climate Shocks through International Trade and Supply Chain," CESifo Working Paper Series 10402, CESifo.
    3. Feriga,Moustafa Amgad Moustafa Ahmed Moustafa & Lozano Gracia,Nancy & Serneels,Pieter Maria, 2024. "The Impact of Climate Change on Work : Lessons for Developing Countries," Policy Research Working Paper Series 10682, The World Bank.
    4. Moustafa Feriga & Mancy Lozano Gracia & Pieter Serneels, 2024. "The impact of climate change on work lessons for developing countries," CSAE Working Paper Series 2024-02, Centre for the Study of African Economies, University of Oxford.
    5. Delbridge, Victoria & Harman, Oliver & Oliveira Cunha, Juliana & Venables, Anthony J., 2022. "Sustainable urbanisation in developing countries: cities as places to innovate, trade, and work," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 118027, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    climate change; migration; economic geography;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • O15 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Economic Development: Human Resources; Human Development; Income Distribution; Migration
    • Q54 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Environmental Economics - - - Climate; Natural Disasters and their Management; Global Warming
    • R12 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - General Regional Economics - - - Size and Spatial Distributions of Regional Economic Activity; Interregional Trade (economic geography)

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