Resettlement and climate impact: Addressing migration intention of resettled people in west China

The relationship between climate change and human displacement is an important topic of global concern. China is a special case due to a high level of government control enforcing the ecological migration of millions of people since the mid-1980s. Little research has addressed how resettled people adapt to climate impacts in ecologically vulnerable resettlement areas and what factors influence their intentions to relocate again or adapt locally. Employing a social-ecological system approach, this study builds a conceptual econometric framework which differentiates two steps that drive migration intention at the household level. The study uses this approach to examine the role of both contextual and household factors in motivating the migration intentions of resettled people in the largest environmental resettlement area of Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region, China, where household survey data were collected in 2012. This framework enabled an analysis, first, of how local contextual factors and household factors shape the severity of climate impacts on households and, second, how these factors interact with the experience of climate impacts to further influence a household’s migration intention as a response to climate impacts. The results show that some contextual factors (such as limited use of water-saving techniques, little practice of cultivating aridity-resistant crops, and lack of government support), strong local social networks and being in receipt of low rates of financial remittances have significant associations with adverse climate impacts experienced by resettled households, and also with their anticipated further relocation to respond to these impacts.Yan Ta