Written by: Helene Bie Lilleør and Kathleen Van Den Broeck

Environmental migration is a topic which has given rise to widespread debate and gloomy predictions about the state of the world in 2050, but where rigorous research and empirical evidence are unfortunately in short supply. In this paper, the authors review the existing research on and empirical evidence of how climate change and climate variability in Less Developed Countries (LDCs) affects two main drivers of migration identified by migration models in the economic literature, namely income level differentials between origin and destination areas and income variability in origin areas, and how they in turn affect migration.