Environment, Migration, and Human Health in Latin America and Africa: Evidence, Gaps

and Opportunities (from a geographer’s perspective)

David Lopez CarrHuman-Environment Dynamics LabGeography DepartmentUC Santa Barbara

7th Summer Institute on Migration and Global Health Los Angeles, California, USA

Current Projects in Latin America

Some Current/Recent Projects

Population Dynamics, Urbanization, and Tropical Deforestation/LUCC Guatemala (NIH K01; R03; NSF GSS; with Laurel Suter)Ecuador (with JHU, UNC-CPC; NASA; NIH R01 and R03)Central and South America (with M. Aide, CIESIN, et al; NSF CNH Biocomplexity Award)

Rural, Urban, and International MigrationRemittances, Population Change, and Environmental Impacts in Guatemala (NSF, UC-Pacific Rim, and NASA ESSF with J. Davis) and in Ecuador (with A. Barbieri, R. Bilsborrow et al; NASA & NIH R01 and R03)

Fertility and Maternal and Child HealthEcuador (with W. Pan and colleagues at JHU and UNC-CPC; NIH R03)Guatemala. NIH K01

Human Impacts and Adaptation in Marine Protected Areas Mesoamerican Reef (Mellon Foundation), Moorea, Polynesia and S. California (with NSF LTER social science supplements)

Integrated Population, Health, and Environment (PHE) in Global Ecological Hot Spots (with PRB, WWF and USAID)

Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) e.g., Petén, Guatemala (with USAID)

Population and Health Dimensions of Climate Change•Climate change connections to population and health in Sub-Saharan Africa. (with FEWSNet colleagues, NOAA).

Nutrition Transition: Population, health, and the environment in Ghana. With colleagues from SDSU and Harvard Public Health. NIH R01, PI John Weeks, NASA ROSES award, PI Doug Stowe.

Most publications available online at: www.geog.ucsb.edu/~carr

Two Big Geographical Framing Concepts for Coupled Migration-Health Transitions:

1) Available agricultural land is a diminishing and constraining resource. Human-land relations are critically linked to demography (particularly migration!), health (both nutrition and disease), economic sustainability, and environmental /climate change.

2) Space (scale) and place matter!

Demographic and Nutritional Transitions and Migration

1) (Despite rapid urbanization) Remote rural demographic transitions will have a disproportionate effect on future global population size and distribution. R-R to R-U migration transition will be important and the pace and timing of this transition will have huge health and land change implications.

2) How many people eat what produced where? This will describe the vast majority of future land changes on the face of the earth and much of the future health of humanity. Where people are vis a vis migration will largely influence this.

Global Demographic Transition: Urbanization & Aging

World Population: Average Annual Increase For Each Decade, 1750-2100 (projected) Source: "World

Population in Transition", Population Bulletin, by Thomas W. Merrick and PRB

0

20

40

60

80

100

1750 1800 1850 1900 1950 2000 2050 2100

Iin

cre

as

e (

mil

lio

ns

) Developing Regions

Developed Regions

Demographic TransitionVariation in Latin America

Let’s now discuss an example from Guatemala of early demographic transition, rural food insecurity as a link to migration and exposure to new health problems in destination areas….

• Processes in distant places - skewed land distribution, demographic pressures, poverty, war, and food insecurity - lead to environmental change in another place

Migration to the Maya Biosphere Reserve: Where did migrants come from, why from there, and what are health implications?

Why do people migrate to the Maya Biosphere Reserve? Land for Food

Ecological Factors

Socio-economic Factors

Demographic Factors

Political-economic Factors

Macro-Scale demographic, political-economic, social, and ecological dynamics

Urban or International Destinations

Rural Destination

Agricultural Extensification

Agricultural Intensification

Return to Top of Chart

MigrationFertility regulation

Off-farm Labor

Household Responses

Local Variation

Land Management

Migration to the SLNP

Other response??

Forest, 19.2Fallow, 7.1

Maize, 4.9

Frijol, 0.4

Pasture, 1.3

O ther, 1.0Abandoned, 0.5

1998:Average Land Use in Hectares. Farm Size = 34 ha.

Maize, 6.1

Frijol, 1.0

Pasture, 10.9

Abandoned 1.0

Other crops 1.1

Forest, 12.8

Fallow, 23.6

2009:Average Land Use in HectaresFarm Size = 49 ha.

Health Implications

-Food security increases in the short term but as forest reservesdecline , food insecurity may decrease in a matter of several years.

-High infant mortality – common for a mother to have 1-3 infant deaths in her lifetime

-Very high intestinal infection rates among infants and malaria is endemic

-TFR exceeding 7 has further implications for food security

-MIGRATION is an adaptation used by many – But the destination is not random

Household migration, retention and destinations from 2009 survey: Frontier-frontier migration selection may lead to recurrence of health

and food security issues

Same town

Nearby frontier

Santa Elena

or nearOther Peten

Other Guate-mala

Guate-mala City USA

Unknown location

HH no longer exists

Un-known person Total

Total 155 23 13 16 15 2 3 11 6 3 247

Total % 63% 9% 5% 6% 6% 1% 1% 4% 2% 1%

Current location of Household

Guatemala Case Study Conclusions

-Food insecurity remains a major and recurrent rural-rural migration determinant-the most food insecure are disproportionately selected for frontier migration where food insecurity is a short-term trade-off for other health problems.-Within a generation, food insecurity recurs and migration is an adaptation response – often to another forest frontier where the cycle repeats.

Now to an African Case Study: Mali-Climate as a driver of deleterious health outcomes and implications for migration

Malnutrition, and Migration: What about Climate Change?

• Human adaptation critical for managing health/nutritional effects of climate change

• Decreased yield Decreased income and nutritional well-being (Brown & Funk, 2008)

• Migration, an alternative option for adaptation• Population growth Poverty Environmental

degradation Health deterioration Migration (Bremner, et al., 2010)

Vulnerability to climate change: Migration & Health is a missing link: Migration as adaptation? But to where?

Global climate-demography vulnerability index

(Samson et al., 2011)

Shifting and Stagnating Demographic Transitionsin Africa

…and the Shifting Sands of the Sahel

• The Sahel, comprising portions of 10 African countries, from left to right: [northern] Senegal, [southern] Mauritania, [central] Mali, [northern] Burkina Faso, [southern] Algeria, [southwestern] Niger, [northern] Nigeria, [central] Chad, [central] Sudan and [northern] Eritrea.

http://ponce.sdsu.edu/sahel_081015.html

Climate in the Sahel

• Predictions of climate change vary:– Warming of northern tropical Atlantic Increased

Sahelian rainfall (Cook, 2008; Hoerling, et al., 2006)– Drying in eastern Sahel and increased rain in the

west (most accurate) (Held, et al., 2005)• Present climate trends produce unreliable results

– Rectified by USAID’s Famine Early Warning System Network (FEWS NET)

• FEWS NET Trend Analyses (FTA)• FEWS NET Climatology (FCLIM)

The case of Mali

• Wide range of land cover and agricultural livelihoods

• Mali’s climate and related nutritional situations can be generalized for the Sahel and other sub-Saharan African countries

Methods for Climatic Measurement

• Variables represent spatial gradients of temperature and precipitation– Variables: Latitude, longitude, elevation, slope and

satellite observations of rainfall, infrared brightness temperatures and LST

• PPET = Rainfall – PET (potential evapotranspiration)– Used as an input variable for the malnutrition

modeling

Modeling Malnutrition using Demographic and Health Surveys

• Conclusions drawn at cluster level• Simple OLS regression model for child

malnutrition • Relationship between PPET, livelihood

zones, and three measures of child malnutrition–Child malnutrition measures: anemia,

underweight, and stunting

Individual/Household Variables

• number of durable goods• age of household head• years of mother’s education• children ever born to mother• wealth index of household• the use of an unprotected well by the

household• the child’s age in months

Warming Results

• 1960-2009, Kenya-Ethiopia and Sudan-Niger-Mali warmed– Disrupted seasonal

cycle of crops– Additional water from

soil/plants drawn– Reduced grain

production

Malnutrition Results

• Cluster’s location within PPET<-100 predicts severity for stunting and underweight– Likely due to climate driven livelihoods that fail to

support cereal crops• Cluster’s location within PPET<-100 predicts

lower cluster anemia measures– Likely due to the practice of livestock rearing

Meat and iron consumption

Shifting of PPET

• The PPET<-100 contour is demonstrably shifting southward due to drying and warming– Enveloping more Malians and therefore vulnerable

children• PPET<-100 negatively influences underweight

and stunting and positively influences anemia• Shifting of PPET into the southern, agricultural

areas of the country would impact Mali’s ability to sustain its food needs and export cash crops

Migration implications

• More people will be pushed into the vulnerable arid zones or will migrate out of them

  Total [millions] PPET -100 position based on 1990-2009 climatology

PPET -100 position based on 2010-2039 climatology

  PPET > -100 PPET <= -100 PPET > -100 PPET <= -100

2010 44.8 32.4 12.4 31.2 13.6

2025 65.8 49 16.8 47.4 18.4

Conclusions• Available agricultural land is a diminishing and

constraining resource. Human-land relations are critically linked to demography, health, economic sustainability, and environmental/climate change

• Space (scale) and place matter! Future research may usefully consider the concept of shifting places of vulnerability and climate front-lines and climate-health-migration linkages.

• Coupled migration-health transitions remain a missing link in environmental change and climate adaptation science and policy

• The environment and climate change remain a missing link in migration-health research.

• Opportunities abound in collaboration!

Thank you!

Variable Description MeanStandard Deviation

Anemia Cluster anemia measure (rank 1 to 4) 2.4 0.5

Stunting Cluster stunting measure (height/age std. deviations)

-1.4 0.7

Underweight Cluster underweight measure (weight/age std. deviations)

-1.2 0.5

Age of Head Cluster average of age of household head (years)

41.9 3.9

CEB Children ever born per mother in cluster 4.4 0.9

Wealth Average cluster household wealth (based on index from poorest to richest, 1 to 5)

3.1 1.1

Age of Child Average age of children in cluster (months) 27.5 2.8

Unprotected Well Percent of cluster using an unprotected well for drinking water

37.1 34.2

Table 2. Global cluster descriptive statistics for model input variables.

PPET and Livelihoods Results• Mali’s climate transitions significantly,

providing a wide variety of livelihoods– All livelihoods are dependent on the Niger River

and its inland delta for waterZone Description # Clusters Anemia

x Stunting

x Underweight

x

Arid Climate Clusters with PPET values less

than -100 144 2.287 -1.576 -1.335

Pastoral Nomadism, trans-Saharan trade,

transhumant pastoralism 38 1.903 -1.454 -1.229

Rice Fluvial rice, Niger Delta rice,

Irrigated rice, livestock rearing 50 2.272 -1.612 -1.453

Plateau Millet, shallots, wild foods,

tourism 27 2.469 -1.715 -1.277

Millet Millet and transhumant livestock

rearing 33 2.469 -1.492 -1.320

Rainfed Millet

West and central millet/sorghum 68 2.570 -1.402 -1.255

South Crops Sorghum, millet, cotton, maize,

fruit 120 2.535 -1.492 -1.214

Malnutrition ResultsTo test if the climatic health effects found in the first set of models was entirely explained by livelihoods, the all cluster climate models were re-run to include both PPET < -100 and the significant livelihoods for each health outcome. The following table shows only the PPET < -100 and livelihood results.