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The Changing Hindu Kush Himalayas: Environmental Change and Migration

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People on the Move in a Changing Climate

Part of the book series: Global Migration Issues ((IOMS,volume 2))

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Abstract

Livelihoods in the Himalayas have traditionally depended on a multitude of strategies, using available ecosystem services, but also typically encompassing external activities like trade and labour migration. Changes in ecosystem services due to environmental or socio-economic change affect mountain livelihoods, and so are likely to impact migration. Yet the impacts of environmental stressors are super-imposed on the local socio-economic setting and, generally, exacerbate existing household vulnerabilities. Differential vulnerability within and between communities is the consequence of unequal exposure to shocks and stress, sensitivity of livelihoods and inequalities in terms of adaptive capacity. Depending on the scale of damage, adaptive capacity of affected households and communities, issue of safety and security, availability of material assistance, and extent of livelihood disruption, mountain households can adopt one or more livelihood strategies from a portfolio of responses, which may include migration. Moreover, favourable environmental conditions along with the development of transport and communication infrastructure in some parts of mountainous regions have also created employment opportunities not just for local populations, but also migrant workers from within mountain regions and from the neighbouring lowlands.

Migration in these circumstances can therefore have several forms: displacement, labour migration, household migration, or community resettlement. This chapter explores these different forms of migration, drawing on existing literature on the Himalayan region. It seeks to understand the extent to which environmental stressors and drivers are important to migration in the context of a range of other drivers.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The destination was unknown for 32 % of the migrants (Ghobadi et~al. 2005).

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Acknowledgement

The authors would like to thank Etienne Piguet (University of Neuchatel), Frank Laczko (IOM), Nand Kishor Agrawal (ICIMOD) and Neera Shrestha Pradhan (ICIMOD) for their insightful feedback at various stages during this research. The authors would also like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments. This research was funded by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) of the Government of Norway as a part of ICIMOD's Himalayan Climate Change Adaptation Programme (HICAP). This chapter draws upon the DR9 Drivers of Migration in Mountain Regions of the Developing World: A Review, which was submitted to the Foresight: Migration and Global Environment Change project.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD), Kathmandu, Nepal

    Soumyadeep Banerjee

  2. University of Sussex, Brighton, UK

    Soumyadeep Banerjee, Richard Black & Dominic Kniveton

  3. Independent consultant, Munich, Germany

    Michael Kollmair

Authors
  1. Soumyadeep Banerjee
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  2. Richard Black
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  3. Dominic Kniveton
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  4. Michael Kollmair
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Correspondence to Soumyadeep Banerjee .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Geography, University of Neuchâtel, Neuchâtel, Switzerland

    Etienne Piguet

  2. Migration Research Division, International Organization for Migration, Geneva 19, Switzerland

    Frank Laczko

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Banerjee, S., Black, R., Kniveton, D., Kollmair, M. (2014). The Changing Hindu Kush Himalayas: Environmental Change and Migration. In: Piguet, E., Laczko, F. (eds) People on the Move in a Changing Climate. Global Migration Issues, vol 2. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-6985-4_9

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