Climate Change and Ecological Migration: A Study of Villages in the Province of Khuzestan, Iran

Abstract

Immigration is in fact the response and decision of an individual or a family to change the situation and is often one of the biggest experiences and decisions in everyone’s life. However, the key point is the reasons for immigration. Although the most extensive immigration flows among urban and rural settlements have so far been economic migrations, climate change has recently become a decisive factor for migration in many parts of the world with ecological migration becoming the dominant model in these demographic movements. Khuzestan province - with a strategic position in southwest of Iran and 30% share of rural population- is one of the provinces that has been affected by widespread climate change over the past two decades, experiencing massive population movements, especially in the rural areas. This massive population flow in the rural parts of the province has become a regional challenge.  The purpose of this study is to investigate and analyze the effects of climate change on demographic movements in the rural settlements of Khuzestan province. The study is descriptive-analytic and the information is extracted from the database of the Statistics Center of Iran. Statistical analysis has shown that the decline in the rates of rural population growth from -02 in 1986 to -4.6 in 2017 and the evacuation of more than 2398 villages over 1986-2017 have been directly and indirectly related to the diverse effects of climate change.