The economic interaction between climate change mitigation, climate migration and poverty

Abstract

Mitigation of anthropogenic climate change takes place against the backdrop of poor countries being most affected by climate change impacts; climate-induced migration is expected to increase in the future. However, the interaction between mitigation, climate migration and poverty has not been investigated explicitly. Here, we represent simultaneous poverty- and climate-induced migration in a laboratory setting, within the collective-risk social dilemma that arises from attempts to avert dangerous climate change. The relatively rich participants try to prevent migration by the relatively poor but in the long run these attempts are unsuccessful because of free-riding among the rich. The rich are willing to increase their effort at averting dangerous climate change when the poor are hit by a climate extreme event exacerbating their poverty. Conversely, the poor are willing to compensate some weaker effort by the rich, as long as the effort by the rich lies above a threshold emerging within the experiment. Poverty increases vulnerability to climate-related shocks and both drive migration decisions. In a laboratory-based economic game, Marotzke et al. find that the rich are unable to prevent migration by the poor, and increase their effort to avert climate change when the poor are hit by a climate event.