On Thursday we (8A) got the opportunity to listen eagerly to
a lecture by sociologist Dr. Raya Muttarak who works as the program director at
the “International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis” (IIASA) in Vienna.
The lecture which was conducted as part of the Styrian “Klimawissen Online”
presentation series discussed one of Ms. Muttarak’s most recent research
questions that addresses the link between human migration and global climate
change. However, before connecting these two issues, one must take the main
reasons for migration into account. In addition to economic motivations – such
as the search for better professional perspectives – people also migrate for
educational and family-related purposes.
More severe causes for migration include local conflicts,
the violation of human rights and natural disasters. The latter are an example
for rapid onset events which pressure people to leave their home urgently
because staying would involve certain dangers or the absence of safe shelter.
Such sudden natural events (landslides, earthquakes, wildfires etc.) cannot be
exactly predicted and thus cause so-called forced migration. On the contrary, slow onset events (sea level
rise, inconvenient weather conditions etc.) follow a gradual evolvement and
cannot be associated with one single point of time. They induce voluntary migration,
but only after the population has already tried to adapt their lives to the
changed circumstances. For instance, a farmer that lives in a region where
climate change has caused less precipitation would always try to adjust his
work at first by planting drought-resistant crops or by implementing an
adequate irrigation system, before eventually deciding to migrate. The same
applies to ski areas which often have to cope with a lack of natural snow as a
result of climate change. Instead, they use artificial snow in order to prevent
economic losses. To sum up, people tend to not leave their home until an
adaption to the prevalent circumstances becomes impossible.
Anyway,
the decision to migrate is in every case the product of several factors that
influence one another. Therefore, measuring how many people migrate due to
environmental reasons is a very complex process. Namely – when considering slow
onset events – climate change is only an indirect motive. Nevertheless, one
promising method is to compare climate and demographic data. That is basically
what Dr. Muttarak’s work consists of and it already led her to the conclusion
that certain migration movements are indeed linked to the effects of climate
change.
Finally,
we want to cordially thank our Geography and Economics teacher Ms. Wilding for
organizing our participation at the lecture so spontaneously! Thanks to her
efforts we were able to look beyond the obvious reasons of migration and once
again realized the severity of climate change.
Jonas Mösslacher, 8A
