Climate extremes, political participation and migration intentions of - PDF document

Climate extremes, political participation and migration intentions of farmers: Case study in western China Yan Tan, Xuchun Liu Department of Geography, Environment and Population The University of Adelaide Adelaide, SA 5005, Australia Phone: (+61) 08 83133976 E-mail: yan.tan@adelaide.edu.au; xuchun.liu@adelaide.edu.au Paper prepared for the XXVIII IUSSP International Population Conference . 29 October–4 November. Cape Town, South Africa. 1

Abstract: Understanding migration intentions helps predict actual migration behaviour and provides evidence for developing effective strategies for adapting to climate extremes. Households’ migration intentions are usually not motivated directly by climate extremes but shaped by their experience of climate impacts and adaptive capacity. One important determinant of households’ adaptive capacity is their political participation: position in the local political structure and participation in decision-making process. Incorporating the ‘goal pursuit theory’ and the conceptualised multi-staged decision making about adaptation, this study quantifies how rural households’ experience of climate extremes and their political participation influenced their migration intentions in terms of strength of migration intention and target destinations. Regression analysis is used to analyse survey data collected from 436 households in Minqin county of Gansu province, western China in 2012. The results show that some drought induced stresses—land loss and deteriorated water quality, as experienced by rural households in the study area—significantly increase their intentions to migrate and stimulated their tendency to undertake long-distance and rural-to-urban migration. Reduced agricultural production and declined water quantity due to climate impact can reduce farmers’ intention to migrate. A high level of household political participation in the local community is also positively correlated with strong intention to migrate and undertake long-distance and rural-to-urban migration. This is compared to a negative association with migration intention of those households with a high level of socio-economic status. The findings have implications for making effective migration and planned relocation policy and programs for affected groups and their communities. 2

1. Introduction Goal pursuit theories used in psychology research suggest that intention is a significant predictor of ‘intention realisation’ (Gollwitzer and Sheeran 2006:71). Intention has two forms: ‘goal intentions’ refer to what one ‘intends to achieve’ and ‘implementation intentions’ that specify ‘when, where, and how one intends to achieve it’ (Gollwitzer and Sheeran 2006:82). Broad migration research has substantiated that people having intentions to move in an earlier time are more likely to migrate later on than those showing no intentions (Gordon and Molho 1995, Böheim and Taylor 2002). Li et al. (2014) points out that understanding migration intentions induced by environmental change is useful to predict people’s actual migration behaviour in the future and thus helps policymakers and practitioners to develop effective strategies for climate adaptation. However, how climate extremes influence migration intentions remains understudied. While a growing number of studies make an important contribution to our knowledge about people’s intention to migrate or not migrate in the context of climate variation or change (e.g., Mortreux and Barnett 2009, Kuruppu and Liverman 2011, Abu et al. 2014), they are limited by having small non-random samples and not assessing the mechanisms for how experience of climate impacts and their political participation impact on migration intentions. Further, very little is known about the factors conducive to ‘implementation intentions’ that relate to migration, such as where to migrate, and a major impediment to our understanding is the lack of suitable data that enables such analysis. Conceptual frameworks aiming to unravel the complex relationship between climate change and adaptation have suggested that the adaptation decision-making process is multi-staged in most circumstances (Black et al. 2011). Climate change does not directly lead to adaptation (including migration), but is linked indirectly through its impacts on the economic, social and 3

political factors of adaptation (Foresight 2011). Adaptation is rooted in people’s actual experience of climate impacts (Tan et al. 2015). Grothmann and Patt (2005) suggests that the severity of threat experienced by people plays an essential role in motivating adaptation intentions through shaping risk experience. Yet there is scant empirical research addressing the relationship between experience of climate impacts and adaptation intentions in terms of whether to migrate or not and where to migrate. Studying the relationship between climate extremes and migration intention needs to be placed in a broad context that involves multiple factors that influence people’s adaptive capacity. Even under the same environmental, social, economic and political situations, people’s experience of climate extremes and adaptive capacity can vary significantly between households and consequently differentiate people’s migration intentions. Among various household factors, political participation is proven essential for promoting adaptation to climate change (Bouriaud et al. 2015; Dutra et al. 2015). Political participation comprises various types ranging from holding party membership, voting, protest and political action to civic engagement and community participation (van Deth 2014:361). However, how different dimensions of political participation influence adaptation to climate extremes is scarcely studied. Even less is known about the role of political participation, such as holding party membership, involvement in political institutions and participation in decision-making , in affecting households’ adaptation intention to climate impact. Such political participation factors are particularly important in influencing human mobility in areas where climate change and associated environmental degradation have induced self-motivated migration and government-led relocation. Minqin county of Gansu province, northwest China (hereafter Minqin), the case study area of this paper, provides an example in point. 4

Minqin is an ecologically fragile area that has significant implications for ecological sustainability of northwest China due to its geographical location—the downstream area of the Shiyang River (the third largest inland river in China) (Zhang et al. 2004). In 2007, the Chinese central government issued a comprehensive Governing Plan for Focal Issues in the Shiyang River Basin (NDRC and MWR 2007) that includes a set of ecological regeneration, climate adaptation, and human resettlement programs in Minqin. Adaptation and resettlement schemes in Minqin, guided by the Governing Plan, are therefore deeply associated with the political process in the region. At the household level, people’s position in the power structure of local communities, access to public resources, and participation in decision-making processes become important explanatory factors of this paper. A research gap exists in the climate change–mobility evidence base, especially when this relates to China. There is a clear need for robust investigations of migration intentions of rural residents affected by climate extremes and the mechanisms that lead to their migration intentions to improve adaptation policy and practices of adaption (including migration) for the benefit of affected people and their communities. Grounded within the goal pursuit theory, this study aims to fill in part of this knowledge gap by quantifying how rural households’ migration intention is influenced by their experience of climate extremes and by household political participation in the study area. We address two categories of migration intentions: ‘goal intentions’ (representing the strength of migration intention) and ‘implementation intentions’, especially target destinations to which people intended to move. The paper begins with an overview of the scant literature on migration intention in the context of climate change. This is followed by a discussion of methodology that involves three parts: an overview of goal pursuit theories, a multi-staged decision-making process of climate 5