Extreme Weather Events and Internal Migrations in Mongolia

Kaoru Kakinuma , Shanghai University

Assessments of extreme weather events on society are urgent issues in the world. Especially, population migration that associate with extreme weather events are largely affect livelihoods. However, multiple drivers affect population migrations and it makes difficult to detect a causality between extreme weather events and migrations. Mongolia has a long history of nomadic pastoralism, and there is the unique close interconnectedness between societies and their ecosystem. Severe winter disasters hit Mongolia in 1999-2002 and 2009-2010. These disasters affected many livelihoods due to loss of 20-30 % of livestock. Here we examine the causality between climatic winter disasters and internal migrations in Mongolia. Firstly, we checked herders' migration flow within the country by using a census data in 2000. Then we demonstrated Empirical Dynamic Model (EDM) to detect causality between the climatic factors or livestock number and population migration. We used net migration data, climate data and change of livestock number for all of prefectures during 1995-2015. People moved from rural areas to the central region and the capital during 1996-2000. As a result of EDM, we detected a causality between livestock change and net migration in the northern and southern regions. We showed empirical evidences that extreme weather disasters may accelerate population internal migration in Mongolia.

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 Presented in Session P11. Migration in a Changing Climate