The Impact of Climate Change on Rural Migration in Iran: Application of Panel VAR Approach

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

1 Natural Resources and Environment Economics, Faculty of Agriculture, Shiraz University

2 Department of Agricultural Economics, Faculty of Agriculture, Shiraz University

Abstract

Migration from the countryside is one of the most common strategies against the climate change and abandoning a large number of villages in Iran during sequential droughts in recent decades is among the available evidences. In this context, we attempt to examine the relationships between climate variables including mean temperature, annual precipitation, agriculture added value and rural migration applying Panel VAR approach to the data of Iranian provinces over the time period of 2002-2013. The results showed significant effects of all variables on rural migration. In accordance with expectations, rural migration increases as result of low precipitation and drought. On the other hand, the mean annual temperature and global warming, due to its negative effect on yields of agricultural products, increases migration. The effects of climate variables on added value of agriculture sector are similar to those on migration. Moreover, the added value of agricultural sector is negatively related to migration. The variance decomposition analysis showed that more than 72 percent of rural migration variation is explained by climate variables, 24 percent by itself and 4 percent by the added value. Therefore, it is well concluded that climate change is a main factor affecting rural migration.

Keywords

References

Adams, R.; McCarl, B.; Segerson, K.; Rosenzweig, C.; Bryant, K.; Dixon, B.; Connor, R.; Evenson, R. & Ojima, D. 1999. The economic effect of climate change on U.S. agriculture.
Adams, R.; Rosenzweig, C.; Pearl, R.; Ritchie, J.; McCarl, B.; Glyer, J.; Curry, R.; Jones, J.; Boote, K. & Allen, L. 1990. Global climate change and U.S. agriculture. Nature 345:219–224.
Arellano, M. & Bover, O. 1995. Another Look at the Instrumental Variable Estimation of Error-Components Models. Journal of Econometrics, 68(1):29-52.
Baltagi, B.H. 2008. Econometrics. Springer-Verlag, Berlin.
Barnwal, P. & Kotani K. 2010. Impact of Variation in Climate Factors on Crop Yield: A Case of Rice Crop in Andhra Pradesh. India.IUJ Research Institute.
Black, R.; Adger, W.N.; Arnell, N.W.; Dercon, S.; Geddes, A. & Thomas, D. 2011. The effect of environmental change on human migration. Global Environmental Change, 21(1): S3–S11
Cabas, J.; Weersink, A. & Olale, E. 2010. Crop yield response to economic, site and climate variables. Climate Change, 101: 599–616.
Cai, R. & Oppenheimer, M. 2013. An Agent-based model of climate-induced agricultural labor migration.
Chen, C. & Chang C. 2005. The impact of weather on crop yield distribution in Taiwan: Some new evidence from panel data models and implications for crop insurance. Agricultural Economics. 33:503–511.
Dinar, A.; Mendelsohn, R.; Evenson, R.; Parokh, J.; Sanghi, A.; Kumar, K.; McKinsey, J. & Lonergan, S. 1998. Measuring the Impact of Climate Change on Indian Agriculture. World Bank Technical Paper No. 402, World Bank, Washington, DC.
Fatemi, M. & Karami, A. 2010. A Case Study of the Causes and Effects of Drought. Iranian Agricultural Extension and Education Sciences, 6(2):77-96. (in Persian)
Feng, S.; Krueger, AB. & Oppenheimer, M. 2010. Linkage among climate change, crop yields and Mexico-US cross border migration. Proceeding of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 107:14257-14262.
Feng, S.; Krueger, AB. & Oppenheimer, M. 2012. Climate change, crop yields and internal migration in the United States. NBER Working Paper No. 17734. National Bureau of Economic Research: https://ideas.repec. org/p/nbr /nberwo/17734.html.
Findley, S. E. 1994. Does drought increase migration? A study of migration from rural Mali during the 1983-1985 drought. International Migration Review, 28: 539-553.
Golbaz, M.; Hayati, B.; Ghahramanzadeh, M. & Dashti, GH. 2013. Effects of Climate Change on Yield and Risk of Wheat and Corn Crops in Qazvin Province, M.Sc. Thesis, Faculty of Agricultural Sciences, University of Tabriz. (in Persian)
Guiteras, R. 2007. The Impact of Climate Change on Indian Agriculture. Job Market Paper. Department of Economics, University of Maryland, College Park. Climatic Change 82:225-231.
IPCC. 2014. Climate Change 2014: Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability. Contribution of Working Group II to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge P. 1820.
IPCC: Climate change 2001: The Scientific Basis. available at: http://www.grida.no/publications/other /ipcc_tar/?src=/climate/ipcc_tar/
Iqbal, K.; Paritosh, K.R. 2014. Examining the Impact of Climate Change on Migration through the Agricultural Channel: Evidence from District Level Panel Data from Bangladesh. SANDEE Working Papers.
Jahangirpour, D. & Zibaei, M. 2020. The Role of Agriculture and Renewable Energy in Meeting the Goals of the Paris Agreement; Case Study: Selected Countries of MENA Region. Quarterly Energy Economics Review, 16 (65): 81-101. (in Persian)
Keshavarz, M.; Karami, A. & Zamani, Gh. 2010. Vulnerability of Farming Households to Drought: A Case Study, Iranian Agricultural Extension and Education Sciences, 6(2):15-32. (in Persian)
Kim, M. & Pang, A. 2009. Climate change impact on rice yield and production risk. Rural Development. 32:17–29.
McCarl, B.A.; Villavicencio, X. & Wu, X. 2008. Climate change and future analysis: Is stationary dying?. American Journal of Agricultural Economics. 90:1241–1247.
Mearns, L.O.; Rosenzweig, C. & Goldberg, R. 1997. Mean and variance change in climate scenarios: Methods, agricultural applications and measures of uncertainty. Climate Change, 35:367–396.
Mendelsohn, R. & Dinar, A. 2003. Climate, water, and agriculture. Land Economics, 79:328–341.
Mendelsohn, R.; Nordhaus, W. & Shaw, D. 1994. The impact of global warming on agriculture: A Ricardian analysis. American Economics, 84:753–771.
Meze-Hausken, E. 2000. Migration caused by climate change: How vulnerable are people in dry land areas? A case study in Northern Ethiopia. Mitigation and Adaptation Strategies for Global Change, 5:379-406.
Mosaedi, A.; Mohammadi Moghadam, S. & GHabai Souq, M. 2015. Modeling the yield of dry wheat and barley based on drought indices and meteorological variables, Journal of Water and Soil (Agricultural Sciences), 29(3): 730-749. (in Persian)
Nasrnia, F. & Zibaei, M. 2015. Assessing the dimensions of vulnerability of provinces to drought, a solution to risk management in the country, Journal of Agricultural Economics and Development, 9(4): 359-373. (in Persian)
Nelson, G.C.; Rosegrant, M.W.; Koo, J.; Robertson, R.; Sulser, T.; Zhu, T.; Ringler, C.; Msangi, S.; Palazzo, A.; Batka, M.; Magalhaes, M.; Valmonte-Santos, R.; Ewing, M. & Lee, D. 2009. Climate Change Impact on Agriculture and Costs of Adaptation. IFPRI, Washington DC.
Ochieng, J.; Kirimi, L.; Mathenge, M. 2016. Effects of climate variability and change on agricultural production: The case of small scale farmers in Kenya. Wageningen Journal of Life Sciences, 77: 71-78.
Rashid, H.; Islam, M.S. 2007. Adaptation to climate change for sustainable development of Bangladesh agriculture. Bangladesh Agricultural Research Institute, Bangladesh. Paper for presentation in the 3rd session of Technical Committee of Asian and Pacific Center for Agricultural Engineering and Machinery (APCAEM) on November 20-21, 2007, Beijing, China.
Rasouli, S. J.; Nasiri Mahallati, M.; Naseri Pour Yazdi, M. & Ghorbani, R. 2016. Determining the canola yield forecasting model based on agricultural meteorological indicators and climatic parameters in Mashhad city, Journal of Water and Soil, available at: https://jsw.um.ac.ir/index.php/jsw/article/view/ 45336. (in Persian)
Rezaei, R.; Hosseini, M. & Sharifi, A. 2010. Analyzing and Explaining the Effects of Drought in Rural Regions of Zanjan County (Case Study: HajArash Village). Rural Researches, 3:103-109. (in Persian)
Roodman, D. 2009. How to do xtabond2: An Introduction to “Difference” and “System” GMM in Stata. Stata Journal, 9(1):86-136.
Saleh, A. & Mokhtari, D. 2007. Economic and social effects and consequences of drought on rural households in Sistan region, Iranian Agricultural Extension and Education Sciences, 3(1):99-114. (in Persian)
Salvo, D.M.; Begalli, D.; Capitello, R. & Signorello, G. 2015. A spatial micro-econometric approach to estimating climate change impacts on wine firm performance: A case study from Moldavia region. Agricultural Systems, 141: 48-57.
Sarker, R.M.; Alam, K. & Gow, J. 2014. Assessing the effects of climate change on rice yields: An econometric investigation using Bangladeshi panel data. Economic Analysis and Policy, 44: 405-416.
Environmental Researches
Volume 11, Issue 21
Recerches
September 2010
Pages 133-142

Files

Share

How to cite

Statistics