Temperatures, conflict and forced migration in West Asia and North Africa

Q3 Social Sciences

Vienna Yearbook of Population Research Pub Date : 2024-06-12 DOI:10.1553/p-4mep-8zge

Jasmin Abdel Ghany

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Abstract

The region of West Asia and North Africa has not only been termed a “hotspot” region for the adverse impact of climate change in light of extreme temperature increases. Several countries have also experienced protracted humanitarian crises and civil wars in the last two decades, such as those in Syria, Yemen and Libya. The vulnerability of these populations makes advancing our understanding of how climate change may impact migration patterns in the region a matter of urgency. This study examines whether extreme temperatures influence bilateral forced migration between countries within West Asia and North Africa through their potential to increase armed conflict. The findings suggest that extreme temperatures in two consecutive years, defined as the upper 10% of the country-specific annual mean temperature distribution, cumulatively increase the probability of armed conflict by 42.5% in the following year ( p = 0.07). Armed conflict is strongly associated with an increase in asylum flows, by 45.8 percentage points ( p = 0.00), and there is a weak indication that conflict mediates the relationship between extreme heat and asylum flows. This explorative study is the first to apply a regional displacement perspective to the climate-conflict-migration nexus in West Asia and North Africa. The results underline the importance of taking contextual factors into account in the analysis of environmental migration.

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西亚和北非的气温、冲突和被迫迁徙

西亚和北非地区不仅因极端气温上升而被称为气候变化不利影响的 "热点 "地区。在过去二十年里，一些国家还经历了旷日持久的人道主义危机和内战，如叙利亚、也门和利比亚。这些人口的脆弱性使我们迫切需要进一步了解气候变化可能如何影响该地区的移民模式。本研究探讨了极端气温是否会加剧武装冲突，从而影响西亚和北非国家之间的双边被迫移民。研究结果表明，连续两年的极端气温（定义为特定国家年平均气温分布的上限 10%）会使下一年发生武装冲突的概率累计增加 42.5% ( p = 0.07)。武装冲突与避难流的增加密切相关，增加了 45.8 个百分点（p = 0.00），而且有微弱迹象表明，冲突在极端高温与避难流之间起到了中介作用。这项探索性研究首次将区域流离失所视角应用于西亚和北非的气候-冲突-移民关系。研究结果强调了在分析环境移徙时考虑背景因素的重要性。

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来源期刊

Vienna Yearbook of Population Research Social Sciences-Demography

CiteScore

1.90

自引率

0.00%

发文量

期刊介绍： In Europe there is currently an increasing public awareness of the importance that demographic trends have in reshaping our societies. Concerns about possible negative consequences of population aging seem to be the major force behind this new interest in demographic research. Demographers have been pointing out the fundamental change in the age composition of European populations and its potentially serious implications for social security schemes for more than two decades but it is only now that the expected retirement of the baby boom generation has come close enough in time to appear on the radar screen of social security planners and political decision makers to be considered a real challenge and not just an academic exercise.