Risk Assessment of Climate-Induced Rural-Urban Migration:Case Study of Ningxia Based on Expert Judgment

Climate change has become an important driving factor for regional migration. This paper projects the crop yields in the typical sub-regions of Ningxia with SRES-A1B climate modeling method, and makes an expert evaluation on future risk of climate-induced migration based on IPCC risk framework. The paper argues that there would be an increasing rural-urban migration flow from the central and southern areas to the northern area of Ningxia in the near future, mainly because of the trend of a decreasing climate carrying capacity and an expanding poverty population in those vulnerable areas to climate change. This paper concludes that well-designed relocation plans would help to facilitate the migration as well as to promote the urbanization in Ningxia, taking into consideration of future climate change scenarios and risk assessment on climate-induced migration.