Environmental outcomes of climate migration and local governance: an empirical study of Ontario

• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1108/IJCCSM-07-2022-0081
• Published date: 19 January 2023
• Date: 19 January 2023
• Pages: 371-390
• Subject Matter: Public policy & environmental management,Environmental issues,Climate change
• Author: Haijuan Yang,Gail Krantzberg,Xiaohuan Dong,Xiwu Hu

Environmental outcomes of

climate migration and local

governance: an empirical

study of Ontario

Haijuan Yang

Xinhua College of Ningxia University, Yinchuan, China

Gail Krantzberg

W Booth School of Engineering Practice and Technology, McMaster University,

Hamilton, Canada

Xiaohuan Dong

School of Economics and Management, Ningxia University, Yinchuan, China, and

Xiwu Hu

Institute for Carbon Peaking and Carbon Neutrality,

Tianjing University -Qinghai Minzu University, Xining, China

Abstract

Purpose –This study aims to examine the impact of migration growth on environmentaloutcomes and local

governance and assess how well the existing local municipal governance has responded to the environmental

impact of increased migration influxin Ontario, Canada using the annual data during 2012–2021.

Design/methodology/approach –This study used the grey relational analysis(GRA) to examine the

correlation degree between migrant growth, environmental outcomes and local governance, used coupling

coordination degree model (CCDM) to access to what extent the existing local governance systems have

respondedto the environmental impact of immigrant growth.

Findings –Results show that higher immigrant populations are associated with worse environmental

outcomes and the need for more municipal environmental investment and service. The present local

municipalenvironmental service in Ontario lags behind in responseto the environmental impacts of increased

migration. Good local governance practices and environmental services are required to improve the

environmentaladaptation capacity of host countriesto migrant influx.

Originality/value –Climate changehas been regarded as an important driver ofinternal and international

human migration. The mass influxes of migrants will threaten cities’environmental quality and put

considerable pressureon municipal services. This study provides empirical evidence for Ontario’smunicipal

environmental governance and relevant authorities on how to deal with the environmental impact of

© Haijuan Yang, Gail Krantzberg, Xiaohuan Dong and Xiwu Hu. Published by Emerald Publishing

Limited. This article is published under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) licence.

Anyone may reproduce, distribute, translate and create derivative works of this article (for both

commercial and non-commercial purposes), subject to full attribution to the original publication and

authors. The full terms of this licence may be seen at http://creativecommons.org/licences/by/4.0/

legalcode

This study was funded by Ningxia Philosophy and Social Science Planning Project (21NXBGL06);

Top Discipline construction of Ethnology in Ningxia University (NXYLXK2017A02); National

Natural Science Foundation of China (41961028 and 42061033).

Environmental

outcomes of

climate

migration

371

Received5 July 2022

Revised2 September 2022

16October 2022

12November 2022

Accepted15 November 2022

InternationalJournal of Climate

ChangeStrategies and

Management

Vol.15 No. 3, 2023

pp. 371-390

EmeraldPublishing Limited

1756-8692

DOI 10.1108/IJCCSM-07-2022-0081

The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:

https://www.emerald.com/insight/1756-8692.htm

increased migration and contributes to call the attention of other countries to the urban environmental

pressurecaused by migration influx due to the changing climate world wide.

Keywords Climate change, Migration, Environmental outcomes, Local governance, Municipal services,

Coupling coordination degree model (CCDM)

Paper type Research paper

1. Introduction

Migration, as documented throughout human history, involves the mobility of people,

usually toward a new location due to pull (e.g. work and livelihood) or push factors (e.g.

drought, flood, political instability, poverty and violent conflicts) or a combination of both

(Hansen, 2019). Climate migrationrefers to climate-induced migration. It implies that people

are forced to migrate due to environmental degradation or people choose to move for a

considerably better qualityof life in response to environmental or climate pressures (Brown,

2008;Wilkinson et al., 2016).It reflects how climate and the environment affect qualityof life

and emphasize the impact of climate change on population migration, so as to attract the

attention of the public and policymakersand prevent potential risks (Piguet et al.,2011).

A rapid growing field of study has focused on the impact of climatic factors on human

migration, exploring the mechanisms underlying the climate migration relationship (Barrios et al.,

2006;Marchiori et al., 2012;Millock, 2015;McLeman, 2017). The results demonstrate that climate

change has been an important driver to provoke migrations and displacements o f human

populations. With climate change, sea level rise and increasing disasters and extreme drought,

migration has become an adaptation strategy to cope with the risks of climate change (Siddiqui,

2010). According to the World Migration Report by International Organization for Migration (IOM)

in 2020, most of the new displacements in Oceania are caused by natural disasters; human

migrationinthePacific Island countries is directly related to climate change [1]. The United Nations

High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) also confirmed that the environmental impact of

climate change is a key driver of an anticipated surge in human movement in the coming decades,

and there will be at least 50 million people displaced by natural hazard related disasters by 2050

(UNHCR, 2016). In fact, Myers (2005) estimated that some 50–200 million people would be displaced

by 2050 using a rudimentary methodology, and then he revised this figure as being closer to 250

million, which has been adopted in much of the literature (Ahmed, 2018; Berchin et al., 2017). Stern

(2007) later suggested that Myers’estimate of 250 million was “conservative”in his authoritative

review (Stern, 2007). Kulp and Strauss (2019) showed that under a high emissions scenario up to

340 million people could be displaced by 2050 and 630 million by 2100. These are significantly

higher estimates than predicted in a recent World Bankreport (Kumari et al., 2018). Climate-induced

migration is an emerging global phenomenon (Siddiqui, 2010;Weber, 2015;McLeman, 2017;Ni,

2021). For most of the global population concerned about climate-induced migration, the fight no

longer surrounds convincing nonbelievers of human-induced climate change, but forming policies

to mitigate and adapt to its effects (Cutlip, 2019).

Rapid population growth results in additional use of natural resources and public

resources, stressing the environment and challenging the sustainable management of the

region (Berchin et al.,2017). The interactions among human migration, climate change and

environmental degradation are recognized as significant global concerns in the two

important compacts on human movements:the Global Compact on Refugees and the Global

Compact for Migration adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 2018 (Morris,

2021). Similarly, IOM recognizes “the need to better integrate migration into global climate

and environmental mechanisms, and for climatechange mechanisms to incorporate human

mobility aspects”(Oakeset al., 2020).

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