Trapped by Climate Change: The Economics of Staying or Leaving

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CHAPTERS

[00:02:11]: Dimensions of vulnerability: exposure, sensitivity, and adaptive capacity 

[00:04:54]: Why climate impacts do not always lead to migration 

[00:07:40]: Constraints on mobility and populations unable to move 

[00:14:13]: Evidence from Bangladesh on climate impacts and mobility decisions 

[00:19:20]: Climate gentrification and changing patterns of urban development 

[00:24:23]: Disaster assistance and variation in recovery across communities 

[00:26:56]: Potential destination areas and planning for future population movements 

TRANSCRIPT
[00:00:03.11] 

Climate change is happening all over the world, but the numbers of people migrating in response to extreme weather, drought and other impacts of climate change are not evenly distributed. People in certain climate vulnerable regions, such as Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia are much more likely to leave their homes than residents of North America or Europe. And even within the same city, some people are more likely to move than others. The reasons why are probably more complicated than you think. Welcome to Changing Climate, Changing Migration from the Migration Policy Institute. This is a podcast that explores how climate change is forcing, altering, and in some cases, preventing human movement. My name is Julian Hattem. I'm the editor of MPI's online magazine, the Migration Information Source, and the host of this podcast. Today we're looking at some of the economic factors that help determine who has to move in the face of climate change and what happens afterwards. Just as importantly, we're looking at who cannot move for economic reasons. My guest today is Kelsea Best. Kelsea is an assistant professor at the Ohio State University where she focuses on climate change's impacts on society and equitable adaptation.

[00:01:17.22] 

Kelsea, thank you so much for coming on today. I'm really excited to have you.

[00:01:21.16] 

Hi Julian, thanks so much for having me.

[00:01:23.18] 

We're talking today about the economic determinants of climate vulnerability and climate mobility. Often when disasters strike, some of the worst hit communities are also the poorest ones. To take one example, when Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans 20 years ago, some of the most devastated neighborhoods were lower income and minority ones, such as the Lower ninth Ward. While wealthier areas emerged are relatively unscathed or at least much less scathed, the people most affected by disasters are not necessarily the most likely to move in response to those disasters. And we'll talk about that distinction in a minute. But starting with the idea of vulnerability, is it simply the case that poorer communities are more vulnerable to the impacts of climate change than wealthier ones? I mean, when we talk about vulnerability, are we really just talking about who has money?

[00:02:10.00] 

It's a great question. So when we talk about vulnerability at a high level, we're really talking about who is most susceptible to harm when there's a impact related to climate change. Hurricane Katrina is a great example. The different dimensions that impact the degree of harm, there's exposure. How exposed is an individual or community to that specific effect of climate change? There's sensitivity. So how likely is that exposure to cause harm? And that can include things like infrastructure, specific characteristics of individuals and communities like age or access to transportation. And then where I think the economic determinants come into play most clearly is thinking about ability to adapt or respond. So we call this adaptive capacity. And really that ability to adapt is access to resources to be able to recover, respond, as I mentioned. And that can be economic resources. So dollars, and certainly having more access to economic resources does elevate one's adaptive capacity, but it can also include other kinds of resources. So things like social networks, we might think about political capital or ability to engage in and influence decision making. All of these different factors influence that adaptive capacity. And then down the line, vulnerability to climate change.

[00:03:47.15] 

So it really is this kind of complex web of different factors. And in a lot of my work, I think about these three spheres of vulnerability that can interact. So I mentioned specific sociodemographic or socioeconomic characteristics. And as you correctly said, it is in many contexts and cases really the most marginalized or disadvantaged members of communities who have fewer resources also have that elevated exposure that I mentioned and generally lower quality infrastructure. So when there is some kind of climate impact, the damage can be much more severe as well. So these three factors can really compound one another. And so from the perspective of my work, this is a really important justice issue that we should be thinking about.

[00:04:39.12] 

How does that map on then to the likelihood to migrate or be displaced? Does climate vulnerability, does adaptive capacity? Is there a one to one correlation between those things and one's likelihood to either be displaced or to migrate permanently?

[00:04:54.23] 

There is not a one to one correlation. And migration in general is very complex. And ultimately it comes down to an individual or a household decision to move or to stay. And so I think many of us who have ever moved for a variety of reasons can appreciate that that decision is complicated. And there are many different factors that can influence that decision. So we can think about on an individual or a household scale, that decision could be influenced by livelihood. So my own job and employment, the family and household composition, personal characteristics like age, gender, race, and really those very small scale factors. But then there are also these larger scale factors that can influence the decision making. So things like the political environment or social norms, culture, economic opportunities, broadly in my origin and my potential destination. So then when we think about the ways that climate change or environmental change can interact with that already complex decision, it can be a direct effect. So like in the case of Katrina, people were displaced because of the hurricane and the hurricane related damage. But it can also work more indirectly by influencing those other kinds of factors that I mentioned.

[00:06:25.04] 

So a hypothetical example is maybe there's a farmer in a highly agricultural dependent community, there's a drought that occurs and that influences and impacts negatively that farmer's livelihood. So then that kind of indirect effect through economic factors could push that person to migrate and try to seek economic opportunity in another location. So really it's very context specific and certainly not a linear relationship.

[00:07:00.14] 

We're talking about migrating mobility. But I also want to talk about not migrating or immobility. Right. We've talked before on this podcast about the idea of so called trapped populations who for whatever reason cannot move or do not move even if they might like to do so. I guess can you talk about that and how that is a part of this conversation as well.

[00:07:20.20] 

Right.

[00:07:21.01] 

Is it, is that just a function of people who are in many cases to put like either the economic capital or the social or political capital to be able to move and are stuck in place involuntarily?

[00:07:36.12] 

Yeah, this is a great question. And to kind of take a step back, when we think about climate related mobility, we really do need to think about it on the spectrum of immobility to mobility. Then there's another dimension there that's important which is voluntary versus involuntary, some kind of planned migration that is voluntary mobility. We can have involuntary mobility like the displacement scenario that I mentioned and that you mentioned with Katrina. We can have voluntary immobility which is very common because in many contexts people don't want to move. They might have strong place attachment, generations of history in a place or just like where they live and it's hard to move. And then as you're mentioning, the other, the last kind of quadrant that we're talking about here is that involuntary immobility which we do sometimes refer to as trapped populations. So these generally are really the most disadvantaged or the poorest members of a community because it does take resources, again economic resources, but also social and political capital to be able to move again. I think anyone who has moved for any reason can appreciate that it can be really costly. So we can and do sometimes end up with these situations where people might want to move.

[00:09:09.23] 

So they have that aspiration, but but don't have the resources to do so. And this can be really concerning because then you have the poorest members of a community potentially stuck in a high risk place that's experiencing high levels of climate impact. And likely if you have other members of the community who are moving away, then you might also have kind of disinvestment in those places or less of a likelihood of active investment in adaptation. So really it's this potentially vicious cycle of kind of entrenched immobility and poverty.

[00:09:52.01] 

It's a cycle, I guess. Right. Like yeah, poor people in poor neighborhoods get poorer as other people move away, the neighborhoods get poor or the communities become less invested. Right, the financial investment. I you talked about adaptive capacity. We talked about people second place. I. There is, generally speaking, outside of the climate realm, migration researchers have found a sort of general hump, or like a hump trend or like a bell shape when it comes to who migrates. Right. In terms of their socioeconomic status. Right. Which, and I'm going to oversimplify, but in very simple terms, at the lower end of the spectrum, poorer people are less likely to migrate because as we discussed, they might not have the economic or other capital to be able to do so. As you climb the economic ladder, people with more money and more resources tend to be more and more likely to migrate. And then at a certain point, in terms of income or at a national level, in terms of GDP per capita, migration rates flatten out and then kind of decline because the benefits of migrating are not as pronounced. Do we see the same pattern when it comes to communities impacted by climate change?

[00:10:54.17] 

Is it the case that as you say, poor residents can't get out no matter how hard things are? The ones with some money can too, even if things get bad. But then as you climb up the socioeconomic ladder, the wealthier don't need to go anywhere because they have the adaptive capacity to build a sea wall or reinforce their windows or protect themselves from wildfires, whatever the risk may be. And so they can essentially afford quite literally to adapt in place. Do we see that same pattern or is it slightly different?

[00:11:23.19] 

So I don't want to sound like a broken record, but it is context specific and complicated.

[00:11:30.02] 

Sure, sure.

[00:11:31.03] 

I do think the hump shape that you mentioned is a reasonable simplification of the high level patterns that we might see. So again, thinking about that spectrum of involuntary mobility to voluntary mobility, again, having resources really just allows an individual or a household to be able to act on that aspiration more effectively. So to in, in either direction, if it's staying or moving, having those resources will facilitate that choice. I have done a lot of work looking at climate related migration in coastal communities in Bangladesh. And even in that context, the migration response looks different depending on the hazard we're looking at as well. So that's kind of an added level of complexity. So we can think about the rapid onset climate impacts like the hurricanes, potentially a drought, something that's really a shock to the system. And we might have one kind of migration response there, but it might look different when we're talking about slower onset climate impacts. So creeping salinity in groundwater due to sea level rise or more frequent flooding over longer periods of time, changes in monsoon seasons, these might look a little bit different in terms of how people respond.

[00:13:00.09] 

And the other interesting thing that I think is important is I think often when we talk about climate related migration, we have this image of largely immobile communities being hit by a climate shock and being pushed to move. But in many of these contexts, again, people move for all kinds of reasons. So we can also look at changes to existing migration patterns. That might not be as clear as stop start, but you might see initial increases in out migration from a place that already has pretty high levels of economic migration, as we see in the communities in Bangladesh that I work in, then you might see decreases. And those patterns are also going to look different across households within the community itself. But broadly, I think it is important to recognize that having access to wealth is going to open up more options for these affected households.

[00:14:05.02] 

Say more about that. Say more about the differing trends and impacts that you've seen in Bangladesh. I guess I want to put some meat on the bones here. Right?

[00:14:11.02] 

Yeah, yeah. So I was specifically doing some work looking at droughts in agricultural communities and we saw two interesting patterns emerging, one at the community level and one more at the household level. At the community level, these are places that already do have high rates of mobility. Like I mentioned, seasonal migration from these rural areas to urban centers is very common, especially for livelihood diversification. So when it's not the rice season, households might elect to send a member of the household to the capital city to earn some money and send it back home, and then they'll come back home as well. So we have this pattern of migration and what we see from the data is that when there's a drought that affects these agricultural, these systems of agriculture within the community, we actually see initial decreases in that rate of out migration. And then as the drought becomes more severe, then we see more households migrating. So it's this initial effect of potentially kind of hunkering down. And then as the drought is more severe, affects more of the community, more people might be moving to seek that livelihood opportunity elsewhere. So that's kind of the community like really interesting nonlinear pattern within the community.

[00:15:43.01] 

If we look at individual households, kind of a non intuitive relationship that we see is it's actually the households that they themselves are not directly impacted by the hazard, but maybe their neighbors impacted, those households are more likely to migrate. And I think we're still kind of testing some of the theories around why this might be. But essentially we think it's because again, those directly impacted households are taking a hit to their resources that then they could use to move away or to send that migrant, so they're choosing not to. Whereas if I myself am not impacted by a hazard, but I'm seeing my community is, then I might still have my own resources to be able to go elsewhere and try to supplement my livelihood. Again, this example is specific to Bangladesh and I think if you look at other contexts and other hazard types, you would see different kinds of patterns. But I just think it's very interesting that you can have these non linear relationships. So maybe declines in migration followed by increases and differences within the communities themselves.

[00:17:07.03] 

I'm really struck by this issue that the people more likely to move are not the ones on the front lines, as it were. Right. Which is to get back to some of the kind of economic determinants the angle the same money that would help you move is also the same money that would help you rebuild. And you kind of tell me if I'm wrong. It seems like the people have a choice, right? You can rebuild or you can move. And like you can, in some cases you can kind of only do one. But if you rebuild and then the storm comes again, then you rebuild again, then the storm comes again, or whatever the situation may be, the investment in adaptation is, has declining dividends. Does that make sense that the. It's hard. I mean, in many cases it's harder to adapt and stay in place because the cost of adaptation continue to climb, whereas the cost of migrating is in some cases only finite.

[00:18:01.10] 

Right.

[00:18:01.24] 

Does that make sense? Am I going off on too much of a tangent here?

[00:18:04.11] 

No, I think that's right. And I think it goes back to your previous question, which we could imagine in different communities, including communities in the US where we have a dynamic where it really is only the wealthiest households that are able to afford to stay in a high risk place because they're able to rebuild repeatedly, maybe they can afford increasing and exorbitant insurance costs, you know, so they're able to maintain that position in the long run. Whereas everyone who doesn't have that level of wealth to constantly, repeatedly be rebuilding might be displaced eventually. And I think we could see this in coastal communities in the US for example.

[00:18:57.14] 

That is a great segue to what I wanted to talk about, which is the notion of climate gentrification. Are you describing the idea of climate gentrification? I mean, I guess that's a Phrase I've heard a lot. What is that? Explain it to me and try and kind of in concrete terms, if you can. Yeah.

[00:19:13.10] 

Yes. So what I just described is an example of climate gentrification. And so climate gentrification, if we maybe take a step back, I think a lot of your listeners have probably heard the general term gentrification, which is this idea of generally wealthier in the US, often whiter households moving into a lower income neighborhood, driving up prices and investment in that neighborhood to the point that the original residents might be displaced. So then climate gentrification takes that one step further and is thinking about the ways that climate change could interact with property values. And you could have these kinds of dynamics again with wealthier people moving into certain areas, thinking about climate risk in that decision and potentially displacing the existing residents. And I will give you a specific example of that. But before I do, I want to credit. There's a community activist in Miami, Florida who coined this term originally. Her name's Paulette Richards, and she coined this because she was experiencing it and she was seeing it around her in Miami. So Miami, Florida is kind of the most commonly cited example of climate gentrification. And there's a study by Jesse Keenan et. al. In 2018 that simply looked at changes in property values across the city and the relationship with elevation.

[00:20:56.00] 

So elevation was a proxy for flood risk. And essentially they found that the higher elevation properties were appreciating significantly faster than lower elevation. So that suggests that there is some level of that flood risk being captured in those changes to property values. Maybe a more personal example within the city of Miami is there's a neighborhood called Little Haiti, which as the name suggests, is ethnically Haitian, historically low income, very high proportions of people of color. I've visited. It's an amazing place with this really rich culture. And there's a Haitian cultural center, I was told there's the bookstore that we visited is the only Haitian Creole bookstore in the country. It's a really amazing place. And Little Haiti was one historically redlined. So historically disinvested in and also happens to fall on this higher elevation ridge that kind of goes down the city of Miami. So what started to happen and what people in Little Haiti experienced is that basically when there was massive flooding in the city, Little Haiti would be relatively unscathed because it was at that higher elevation. What seems to have happened is that developers started to notice that when the city would flood again, Little Haiti was relatively fine.

[00:22:37.06] 

So now there's huge investments and development complexes going into Little Haiti. And if you look at accounts from residents, they describe developers knocking on their doors, trying to purchase their property to do this kind of very upscale development that they're planning. It's to the point that there have been community protests and it's very much at the forefront of what people are experiencing in Little Haiti. And I think it's a very just acute example of this kind of potential climate gentrification where developers are seeing the signals this area doesn't flood and it's relatively cheap because it's historically disinvested, low income, so we can go in and try to develop this area. So what has not played out yet in Little Haiti, but is the concern is that those existing residents would be displaced as that development comes in.

[00:23:38.09] 

That's a great example. Thank you very much for walking me through that. I, I, we're coming up on time, but I want to ask you about another piece of work that I know you've done, which is about kind of responses to natural disasters and especially about how the US federal government provides disaster aid and the kind of communities that are more or less likely to receive that money. Can you tell us briefly about that? Are there patterns in which communities are more or less likely to receive disaster aid money and are there implications for that distribution on mobility, displacement, migration patterns, movement?

[00:24:14.24] 

Sure. So I should say that the federal disaster aid landscape looks very different this year. But there are studies that have looked in the past and those studies do find that there are potential inequities in that disaster aid allocation. Generally. Again, we're seeing that wealthier communities are more likely to receive more aid from programs like FEMA and the range of FEMA programs that exist from programs from HUD. Really we see this across the board of federal disaster aid programs and this could be for a couple of reasons. One is that wealthier communities have more high value infrastructure like homes cost more,

[00:25:10.08] 

people's homes are wealthier.

[00:25:13.09] 

So when there's damage, the dollar amount is going to be higher. And most of these aid programs are based primarily on damage dollars. So that's one way it's kind of embedded. And another possible reason for wealthier communities receiving more aid is they likely also have more just capacity, institutional capacity to be able to navigate these complex bureaucratic processes to access that aid. In many cases, they can hire consultants to go through the applications for them. So it can again kind of create this or contribute to this uneven landscape of disaster impacts and then inequities in the recovery process. And recovery is a process, it can take years, and that inequity can manifest across those years. So in terms of the relationship to mobility in the U.S. it's really interesting because in the U.S. we are still largely seeing that people are continuing to move to higher risk areas. So people are still moving to coasts, to Florida, but I think it's understood that that pattern could shift as the effects of climate change become worse, as our different climate related hazards become more frequent and intense. We could see people moving to places that have relatively lower climate risk.

[00:26:56.06] 

There's conversation about these receiving communities or potential climate havens. You might have heard these are places like cities around the Great Lakes, Detroit, Buffalo, places with relatively mild climates, plenty of water. And so where that conversation is going is these potential receiving communities ideally should be planning now for those possible incoming climate migrants, and that would be planning around infrastructure, housing, essential services and education, employment, and also things like social integration and bringing people effectively into a community. So for me it's a really fascinating, I think an important area of future work. Like a lot of the research on climate migration and a lot of what we've talked about here is really looking at why people leave a certain place. So I think the other side of that that we need to think about much more is where people go and what their experiences are when they get there.

[00:28:11.22] 

We will probably have to leave it there, but Kelsea, thanks so much for coming on. This has been really great. It's been lovely to have you. Thanks for coming on.

[00:28:19.20] 

Thank you. I appreciate the conversation.

[00:28:22.21] 

Kelsea Best is Assistant professor of Urban Climate Resilience and Adaptation Disparities at the Ohio State University. She's also the co author of a new book called Migration and Displacement in a Changing Climate, which which provides a great sweeping overview of the issue and is on sale now. Thank you for listening to this episode of Changing Climate, Changing Migration. If you liked what you heard, please subscribe to the podcast through your service of choice. You can also leave us a review which helps people find us and allows us to produce more of these conversations. Check out all of the past episodes of Changing Climate, Changing Migration and in our archives at migrationpolicy.org/podcasts. If you enjoyed my discussion with Kelsea today, you might be interested in a prior episode with the researcher Caroline Zickgraf where we talked about involuntary immobility. That episode is called Trapped Populations: When Climate Migration Isn't Possible. While you're on our site, please subscribe to the free Migration Information Source newsletter which we issue twice per month. It offers accessible analysis and useful data on migration trends and policies globally. This episode of Changing Climate, Changing Migration was produced by Daniella Espacio. Assistance came from Lisa Dixon, and editorial oversight was provided by Michelle Mittelstadt.

[00:29:48.18] 

Touch by Patrick Patrikios is our theme music. Thank you again from listening. I'm Julian Hattem. See you soon.