Research
The relationship between climate change and human mobility is complex. Advancing knowledge in this area requires harnessing insights from a wide range of disciplines spanning natural science, social science, humanities, law, decision science, medicine, risk science, and other fields. PCRM brings together scholars whose cutting-edge research provides new ways to understand, predict, and respond to the impact of climate change on human movement.
FEATURED RESEARCH
Understanding Multidimensional Fragility in South Sudan
This study provides a comprehensive assessment of the multiple dimensions of fragility in South Sudan at the subnational level: political and legal, social, economic, security, and environmental. By providing evidence-based contextualized insights, the study seeks to guide the development of programming and policies to support peacebuilding efforts in South Sudan, in in alignment with the Humanitarian Development Peace Nexus (HDPN) approach. South Sudan is an important case for the study of fragility because the country is in the process of transitioning from a humanitarian-only response plan to a more recovery-focused approach in which fragility, rather than armed conflict, is the primary barrier to sustainable peace and development.
HOW WELL CAN WE PREDICT CLIMATE MIGRATION?
Planning for the various ways climate may affect mobility is a major challenge for development planners and policymakers. This article reviews different models used to forecast climate-related migration, examining their strengths and weaknesses. The findings highlight the importance of improving migration data collection, fostering interdisciplinary collaboration, and incorporating scenario-based planning in addressing climate-related migration.
HANDBOOK OF AID AND DEVELOPMENT – CHAPTER 4: TRENDS AND CHALLENGES IN AID ALLOCATION
This chapter provides an overview of the evidence on donor motivations for giving aid, the evolution of these trends, and some insights for current and future aid scholars and practitioners on the motivations behind aid giving.
GLOBAL TRENDS IN SOUTH-SOUTH MIGRATION
This chapter highlights how most migrants from the Global South move to countries within their home region, particularly in areas like Sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East, and South America. However, extra-regional migration is on the rise as more international migrants travel further distances. Migration from South Asia to the Middle East is now the largest South–South migration corridor in the world.
ARTICULATING AND CLAIMING THE RIGHT TO STAY IN THE CONTEXT OF CLIMATE CHANGE
As many seek to develop legal regimes that will allow those living in the most climate- affected areas to move with dignity, individuals and communities living in these countries, regions, and localities are often resistant to the idea of migration as their best adaptation option, and instead call for policy choices that will allow them to stay in place. In this article we seek to legally situate these calls for a right to stay and examine the specific forms that they are taking on the ground.
CLIMATE GAME CHANGERS & MIGRATION MODELS
Working through USAID’s Research Technical Assistance Center (RTAC), the PCRM team led a review of current literature on the following areas: 1) Identifying potential climate “game changers” that could radically impact development and assessing potential solutions; 2) Evaluating the strengths, limitations and real-world application of climate-related migration forecasting models.
PROGRAM DIRECTORS
Sarah Bermeo is a political economist and associate professor of public policy and political science in the Sanford School at Duke University and Co-Director of the Duke Program on Climate, Resilience and Mobility. Her research lies at the intersection of international relations and development, with a particular focus on relations between industrialized and developing countries. She has published multiple articles on foreign aid, with additional work examining trade agreements and migration. Her book, Targeted Development: Industrialized Country Strategy in a Globalizing World (Oxford, 2018) demonstrates that the desire to limit negative spillovers associated with underdevelopment leads industrialized states to allocate foreign aid, trade agreements, and climate finance across developing countries in a development-oriented, but also self-interested, manner. Her work has appeared in International Organization, Journal of Politics, and World Development. Her article, “Aid is Not Oil,” received the 2016 Robert O. Keohane Award from International Organization.
Kerilyn Schewel is the Co-Director of the Duke Program on Climate, Resilience and Mobility, a Lecturing Fellow at the Duke Center for International Development, and a Senior Researcher at the International Migration Institute. Her research focuses on how the social changes associated with human and economic development impact migration aspirations and behavior, with a regional focus on Sub-Saharan Africa. She has published on themes related to migration theory, immobility, aspirations, education, climate change and gender.
RESEARCH AFFILIATES
Kyle Beardsley is a Professor of Political Science at Duke University. He is Co-Director of the International Crisis Behavior data project, and the Director of the Triangle Institute of Security Studies (TISS). His research focuses on the quantitative study of international conflict and peace processes. He is particularly interested in questions related to the role of third parties in shaping conflict dynamics, the interdependence of networks of conflict and cooperation, the links between armed conflict and gender power imbalances, and the impact of nuclear weapons on international crisis behavior.
Kyle Bradbury is an Assistant Research Professor in Electrical Engineering and directs the Energy Data Analytics Lab at the Nicholas Institute for Energy, Environment & Sustainability. His research focuses on developing and applying machine learning techniques to better understand, plan, and manage energy infrastructure, scarce energy resources, and their climate risks and impacts. In particular, his recent work applies computer vision techniques to remotely sensed data, including satellite and aerial imagery, to solve energy and climate system challenges through the development of open-source, widely applicable computational tools and data.
Brian G. McAdoo is Associate Professor of Earth and Climate Science and a disaster researcher at Duke University where he is head of the PlanetLab (www.planetlab.org). The PlanetLab is interested in how humans are damaging the Earth’s physical systems that support life and how the resulting disasters disproportionately impact marginalized communities. Current projects include Nepal (climate change, earthquakes, landslides and road development and health outcomes), Madagascar (deforestation, ecosystem services, disease exchange and community health) and the SE United States (extreme climate events’ impact on emergency services).
Hannah Postel is Assistant Professor of Public Policy at the Sanford School of Public Policy and faculty affiliate of the Duke Population Research Institute (DuPRI) and Duke Center for International Development (DCID). Prior to her position at Duke, she was a Postdoctoral Research Scholar in the Department of Economics at Stanford University. She uses novel data to explore the relationship between migration and economic development and provide historical perspective on population movements and policies. She received her PhD in Demography and Social Policy from Princeton University in 2022 and her B.A. from Middlebury College in 2013. Prior research has been published in the American Economic Review and Population and Development Review.
Marcos A. Rangel is an applied microeconomist. His research focuses on the patterns of accumulation of human capital with particular attention to the intra-family decision process (parents and children), to the impact of policies to foment education and health, and to racial differentials. His research has contributed to a better understanding of how the negotiations between mother and fathers, and also how families insert themselves into societies, influence the allocation of resources towards investment in human capital of children.
Mara Revkin joined the Duke Law faculty in 2022 from the Georgetown University Law Center, where she was a fellow at the Center on National Security and the Law. Her primary research and teaching interests are in armed conflict, peace-building, transitional justice, migration, policing, and property with a regional focus on the Middle East and Africa. She has a secondary appointment in the Department of Political Science.
Drew Shindell is Nicholas Professor of Earth Science at Duke University following two decades at NASA. His group studies the impacts on human health, agricultural yields, climate and the economy of policies to mitigate climate change or improve air quality. He is an author on >300 peer-reviewed publications, a fellow of AGU and AAAS, and a member of the National Academy of Sciences. He has testified before both houses of Congress (at the request of both parties) and made numerous media appearances. He was a Coordinating Lead Author of the 2013 Fifth Assessment Report of the IPCC and of the 2018 IPCC Special Report on 1.5°C and chaired the 2021 Global Methane Assessment from UNEP & the Climate and Clean Air Coalition (CCAC). He currently chairs the Scientific Advisory Panel to the CCAC and serves on the Science Advisory Board of the US EPA.
Erika Weinthal specializes in global environmental politics and environmental security with a particular emphasis on water and energy. Current areas of research include (1) global environmental politics and governance, (2) environmental conflict and peacebuilding, (3) the political economy of the resource curse, and (4) climate change adaptation. Dr. Weinthal’s research spans multiple geographic regions, including the Soviet successor states, the Middle East, South Asia, East Africa, and North America. Dr. Weinthal is author of State Making and Environmental Cooperation: Linking Domestic Politics and International Politics in Central Asia (MIT Press 2002), which received the 2003 Chadwick Alger Prize and the 2003 Lynton Keith Caldwell Prize. She has co-authored Oil is not a Curse (Cambridge University Press 2010) and co-edited Water and Post-Conflict Peacebuilding (Earthscan Press, 2014) and The Oxford Handbook on Water Politics and Policy (Oxford University Press 2018). She is a member of the UNEP Expert Group on Conflict and Peacebuilding and a co-editor of Global Environmental Politics. In 2017 she was a recipient of the Women Peacebuilders for Water Award under the auspices of “Fondazione Milano per Expo 2015”.
