Climate Change and Migration: the Case of Africa

Abstract

How will future climate change affect rural economies like sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) in terms of migration and welfare? How can policymakers 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 climate, estimates millions of climate migrants and unequal welfare losses across SSA. Investigating migration and trade policies as mitigating tools, I find a trade-off associated with the former: reducing SSA migration barriers reduces aggregate welfare losses at the cost of more climate migration and high regional inequality. Reducing tariffs attenuates this cost.