Climigration? Climate and migration from Arctic Alaska

[L Hamilton]

The term "climigration," meaning migration caused by climate change, originally was coined referring to Arctic Alaska communities such as Kivalina and Shishmaref. These places and others face immediate threats from erosion and flooding associated with thawing permafrost, increasing river flows, and reduced sea ice protection of shorelines. Photos of houses falling into the sea in Shishmaref, or media headlines about "America's first climate refugees," have made their predicament unhappily famous. Some places may be uninhabitable within a decade, and risky before that, so relocation seems inevitable. But it will be expensive and complicated, and so far is not happening.

Absent government action, might some residents be voting with their feet? Our new paper, open access at Population and Environment, tests that hypothesis using migration estimates for 43 Alaska Arctic towns and villages over 1990 to 2014.
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11111-016-0259-6

I'd be happy to talk about this work, and ongoing studies of Arctic Alaska communities, if there is interest on this forum.

[sidd]

Nice. Can you apply these methods, to say, Bangladesh ?

sidd
 

[oren]

Welcome, L Hamilton.

[L Hamilton]

Sidd -- in principle you could apply these methods to any region where there is (1) reasonable data on recent migration, for (2) a set of roughly similar places, some but not all of which face pressure from climate change. In our study, the places are 43 Alaska towns and villages, some of which face serious troubles with climate-related erosion. I could imagine similar analyses if you had collections of communities or islands, some subject to flooding but others (social/economically similar) fortunate to be on drier ground. On the other hand it would be hard to set up if a whole region faces similar pressures, as with widespread drought or crop failure. You could not conclude much from comparing places that differ in many ways besides climate, such as different countries or regions.

Most of my work has been Arctic, so I don't have any knowledge of Bangladesh or other warm places. Be happy to exchange notes with anyone who does have such data, though.

[L Hamilton]

Fig 5 from http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11111-016-0259-6

[TerryM]

Larry?


Are stats available from other Arctic regions? Labrador and the Hudson Bay area are still experiencing rebound from the last ice age which may put them on more solid foundations.
IIRC substantial parts of Herschel Island off the coast of the Yukon have been lost, but the population relocated some time ago.
While the far north is sparsely inhabited in Canada, I'm not sure the same could be said of Russia.


Terry

[L Hamilton]

Terry -- I'm in touch with some Canadian researchers about whether it's possible to do something like this for Inuit regions of Canada. That would certainly be interesting, but I don't know enough to judge the practicality myself. It's difficult for outsiders to access sub-regional demographic data on Canada, like the kind many other countries post online.

[Neven]

I'd be happy to talk about this work, and ongoing studies of Arctic Alaska communities, if there is interest on this forum.

It may be interesting for the blog too, Larry. If you're too busy for a guest blog, I could write something in 10 days or so.

[TerryM]

Statistics Canada? It was a good source until Harper. Not sure if it's back up to speed yet.
Among other things Harper made reporting optional, so data from ~2007 through 2015 is skewed.
Harper also attempted to keep any and all information re. CC from the public.

Fortunately we came to our senses & booted him last November, his paranoia was part of the anti-campaign.

Terry

[sidd]

I am so sorry to hear that Harper marred Statcan. That was a great example for all national statistics.

[L Hamilton]

Neven, I'm swamped now (traveling to Vienna in a week) but would be glad to help if you want to blog on this.

[L Hamilton]

Terry, Sidd -- my past experience with StatCan had been that they have good data but restrictions on publishing or sharing it, much more prohibitive than US or Nordic statistical agencies. If someone knows of community-level demographic data on northern Canada that is publicly available, like that used for the Kivalina (Alaska) graph above, please post a link.