Climate change and climate migration: issues and questions around an in-transition Tunisian economy

Abstract

This article presents an initial attempt to investigate the issue of climate migration in Tunisia. Precipitation and temperature are used as climate-representative variables. Indeed, using a new analysis on spatial modeling, this work demonstrates the direct and indirect effects of precipitation as well as temperature on the climate migration of a governorate and those of neighboring governorates through the production of irrigated and non-irrigated plants. In addition, spatial modeling shows that the impact of climate change on migration through cereal and olive production differs from that of irrigated plants, thus demonstrating the importance of taking explicit account of the spatial effects between governorates. The decline in a farmer’s income in (a) governorate is a factor in rural exodus and migration to other governorates with water and a more favorable climate. This cause-and-effect phenomenon is known as negative externalities because some regions are forced to suffer from the consequences of the arrival of a new population. The originality of this method is that it allows the impact of spatial externalities to be taken into account in an effective way. The data used describe the 24 Tunisian governorates.