SPECIAL FEATURE
Wars drive famines and migrations. But hunger also leads to conflicts over dwindling resources. Either way, those least able to flee rarely go far By Howard Hudson, OPEC Fund
THE ASYMMETRY OF MIGRATION
R estless humans have been on the move for millennia. Since our early ancestors left the savannahs of Africa, there have always been push and pull factors at play – from conflict to curiosity, opportunity to oppression. Take our interviewee, Melissa Siegel, whose forebears migrated from Europe to the USA in the 19th and 20th centuries, partly for economic opportunities but also in part to escape persecution. Coming from countries in the north and east of Europe, what they all had in common were incentives, networks, resources and determination. Climate and environmental changes figure high up on the drivers of migration because food and water are fundamental to human survival. The difference now, however, is that for the first time in human history our problems are truly global. Climate change is already affecting every continent and even advanced societies are struggling to deal with extreme weather. Once-in-a-century floods and droughts are now occurring
far more frequently, in a strange “new normal”. What people in the West have in common are resources, safety nets and, if pushed, the ability to migrate with relative ease. That is far from the case for the rest of humanity. According to the World Bank, 685 million people worldwide – equivalent to the combined populations of Brazil, Nigeria and Pakistan – were living in extreme poverty in 2022. Of those, around 80 percent live in subsistence farming households in rural areas. And because the agriculture sector is so sensitive to climate change, when crops fail the poorest can lose their lives as well as their livelihoods. The question then becomes: How many will want to migrate? And how many will be able to migrate safely and sustainably? To better understand the dynamics at play, we
PROFILE: MELISSA SIEGEL
Melissa Siegel is Professor of Migration Studies at the United Nations University (UNU-MERIT), Maastricht, the Netherlands, where she has led the Migration and Development research unit since 2010. She holds a PhD in Social Protection Policy from the University of Maastricht, the Netherlands.
spoke with Melissa Siegel, a migration and development expert at the United Nations University (UNU-MERIT), Maastricht, the Netherlands.
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