Conference Agenda

Whether and to what extent climate change drives out-migration has received widespread public and scientific attention. In this paper, we focus on the impacts of increased aridity and drought on internal migration using novel census-based data for 72 countries covering the period 1960-2016. Analyzing 140,480 interregional migration flows, we find that drought and aridity have a significant impact on human mobility, particularly in hyper-arid and arid areas of Southern Europe, the Middle East and North Africa, and Southern Asia. Migration is shaped by the level of wealth, agricultural dependency, and urbanization in the area of origin. Different age and education groups respond differently to droughts and aridity highlighting the importance of differential mobility patterns across population groups in different geographic contexts.

We explore the hypothesis that people who experience multiple natural disasters for several years in a row become discouraged from continuing economic activity in their origin country and, thus, migrate internationally to secure their income. To assess this, we use data on international migration combined with data on natural disasters from 2000 to 2020. Our findings demonstrate that repeated disasters have a positive effect on international migration. However, if we measure the effect of disasters by the amount of human suffering, we observe either no statistically significant effect or a negligible effect. Furthermore, considering the heterogeneity in terms of disaster category and countries' particularities, we identify several characteristics of this disaster induced migration. More specifically, we find that migration is more likely to increase after a climatological event and, to a lesser extent, a hydrological event. These effects have been shown to be true, especially for migration involving low- and middle-income countries as the origin and/or the destination.

In recent decades, the European Union has experienced an increase in the frequency of climate-related natural disasters. While a large body of literature analyzing the impact of natural disasters on migration patterns in the U.S. and other areas has emerged, little research has been conducted for the European Union. In this paper, we attempt to close this gap in the literature and investigate the impact of climate-related disasters on NUTS-2 region-level migration for the period 2000-2019. Employing spatial econometric methods, we find that experiencing a severe disaster leads to an increase in net out-migration of 0.9 individuals per 1000 inhabitants, followed by an increase in net in-migration of 0.6 individuals per 1000 inhabitants two years later. When using spatial Durbin models, we observe a negative spatial spillover effect of severe disasters on net migration, suggesting that neighboring regions may also be affected by the disasters, which may induce individuals in those regions to out-migrate. For less severe disaster events, we find no conclusive evidence that disasters are driving regional migration.

Increased risk of flooding is one of the many consequences associated with climate change, directly through sea level rise and indirectly through water cycle disruptions. Yet, the path to flood adaptation is fraught with challenges, including social and economic ties, pre-existing built environments, and high costs. Although our understanding of future flood risk has increased over time and technological advancements offer a promising avenue to navigate these challenges, the growth in flood adaptation patents has remained stagnant. In this paper, I analyse the role of flood exposure of the inventor in the development of flood adaptation innovations. Using patent and flood data from the United States from 2007 to 2020, I find that the absolute and the relative share of flood patents seems to increase by around 17% and 18% respectively. Contributing to the limited cross-country evidence, this paper is the first to analyse the role of flood exposure at a sub-national level and to control for flood insurance as a moderating factor. Focusing on the inventor as the decision-maker, I find that local county-level exposure to flooding spurs flood-related innovation among inventors who seem unaffected by flood events in neighbouring counties, socially connected counties or in the rest of the state. This localized response to flood exposure underscores the reactive rather than proactive nature of inventors in climate adaptation, suggesting a potential for mitigating damages if more anticipatory measures are integrated into the innovation process.