Climate Change-Induced Natural Disaster Effect on Migration (2022)

Climate change affects international migration, or, more precisely, climate change-induced natural disasters shape and channel international migration. I was able to work with Professors Jess Rogers and Michael Popovich on a new project connecting these two ideas through Geographic Information Systems (GIS) by preparing data from the United Nation’s Population Division on international migrant stocks. We received the data in an Excel document. To facilitate our investigation of the geospatial dimensions of migration, I converted the Excel data to ArcGIS Pro. It became clear from the data that Fiji, the Philippines, and the Caribbean were places that had experienced frequent disaster events. Migration in these places was not correlated strongly with damage done or cost of damage from disasters, but it was correlated to the number of events regardless of their size. Put simply: more disaster events led to more migration, an idea that I displayed in individual maps.