Migration and self-protection against climate change: a case study of Samburu district, Kenya

Ng’ang’a, Stanley Karanja, Erwin Bulte, Ken E. Giller, John M. McIntire and Mariana C. Rufino

No 246271, 2016 Fifth International Conference, September 23-26, 2016, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia from African Association of Agricultural Economists (AAAE)

Abstract: Climate change will affect the livelihoods of pastoralists in arid and semi-arid lands. We use new data from Samburu District, northern Kenya, to explore whether migration of household members affects adoption of adaptive measures. Specifically, we seek to test whether migra-tion and adaptation are complementary mechanisms to protect the household against adverse shocks, or whether they are substitutes. Do remittances relax capital market constraints and facilitate the uptake of adaptive measures, or do they render adaptation superfluous? Our data suggests migration –via remittances – facilitates the adoption of self-protective measures in the areas of origin of the migrants. Supporting our interpretation that credit constraints constitute the main mechanism linking migration to adoption, we document that the effects of migration on self-protection are only significant in locations where villagers lack access to credit.

Keywords: Environmental Economics and Policy; Land Economics/Use (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 41
Date: 2016-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-env and nep-mig
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (12)

Downloads: (external link)
https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/246271/files/3 ... climate%20change.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ags:aaae16:246271

DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.246271

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in 2016 Fifth International Conference, September 23-26, 2016, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia from African Association of Agricultural Economists (AAAE) Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by AgEcon Search ().