Impact of global warming on rural-urban migration and net emigration in forefront Sub-Saharan countries

Abstract

Global warming has recently raised a lot of concerns about the future of our planet in terms of inhabitability. These concerns focus particularly on the possible increase in the migration toward more hospitable urban areas within a country or toward more hospitable countries. However, to our knowledge, there is no quantitative study to assess the impact of global warming on migration in Sub-Saharan Africa. Therefore, this paper attempts to determine whether global warming increases rural-urban migration and net emigration (i.e. emigration of nationals out of a country minus immigration of foreigners into the country) over the period 2000-2005 in six forefront Sub-Saharan countries, namely Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania, Niger and Senegal. We found that global warming alone is insignificantly related to rural-urban migration and net emigration. However, when associated with other independent variables or cofactors such as population growth rate and gross domestic product growth rate, global warming increases both rural-urban migration and net emigration.