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Environmental Change, Livelihood Issues and Migration pp 1–19Cite as

Environmental Change and Migration: A Growing Concern

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Abstract

Environmental migration is being a growing concern all over the world. A gross estimation of 200 million people will be the climate migrants globally by 2050. Low-lying coastal areas and islands in the developing countries are the most vulnerable condition due to low adaptive capacity along with high exposure. The present study area, Indian Sundarban, is a part of the Ganga-Brahmaputra megadelta. Due to the coastal location, an island set up and situated in the tropical cyclonic belt, it is highly exposed to the hydro-climatic hazards. Migration from the Sundarban is a prominent livelihood strategy in almost every household. Inhabitants depend on natural resource-based activities, such as farming and fishing, which are highly susceptible to the climatic stimuli. Moreover, these activities are suffered by seasonality, irrigational and other infrastructural deficiency and conservational rigour. The present study, therefore, is an endeavour to provide insight into the nexus between livelihood issues and migration from the Sundarban where the environment is given special consideration. It is a comparative study based on field investigation of 400 samples which is equally distributed between an exposed (migrants) and controlled (nonmigrants) group.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Geography, Nistarini College, Purulia, West Bengal, India

    Avijit Mistri

  2. Centre for the Study of Regional Development, School of Social Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, Delhi, India

    Bhaswati Das

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Mistri, A., Das, B. (2020). Environmental Change and Migration: A Growing Concern. In: Environmental Change, Livelihood Issues and Migration. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-8735-7_1

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