Climate Change and Migration: The Case of Africa

How will future climate change affect rural economies like sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) in terms of migration and welfare losses? How can policy enhance SSA’s capacity to adapt to this process? I answer  these  questions  with  a  quantitative  framework  that,  coupled  with  rich  spatial  data  and  forecasts for the future, estimates millions of climate migrants and sizeable and unequal welfare losses  in  SSA.  Investigating  migration  and  trade  policies  as  mitigating  tools,  I  find  a  trade-off associated  with  the  former:  reducing  SSA  migration  barriers  to  the  European Union  (EU)  standards  eliminates  aggregate  welfare  losses  at  the  cost  of  more  climate  migration  and  high  regional inequality. Reducing tariffs to the EU levels attenuates this cost.