Rural migration, agriculture and rural development

According to David, the report should examine the impact of productivity and the effects of urbanization on migration, agriculture and rural development.

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Nitya refers to the outcomes of research she has been involved in. For instance, she stresses that in section 4.2 of the report, which deals with the impacts of migration, the entire field of health, nutrition and wellbeing of both migrants and those left-behind, needs to be emphazised. Another point she raises concerns the fact that certain sectors, such as fisheries in India, are being rapidly capitalized in a context of climate change and resource depletion. In order to survive in such a sector, migration becomes the only way of raising the required capital.

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Shiela provides comments on various sections of the report's outline. She refers to the comment made earlier by Flavio Bolliger, stressing that the publication could include a definition of the concept “rural”. Furthermore, she argues that in the chapter on protracted crises and rural migration, the implications of climate change adversities on migration could be stressed, especially with regard to rural communities that are increasingly succumbing to repetitive cycles of extreme weather events. Shiela also attaches the outline document in which she provides additional comments.

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Marie stresses that climate change is one of the main drivers of rural migration. Related to this, she introduces the “Where the Rain Falls" project, for which CARE France and the United Nations University conducted a research project on the links between climate change, rainfall patterns and migrations. The research explored the circumstances under which rural households in different countries, including Guatemala and Vietnam, use migration as a risk management strategy when faced with rainfall variability and food and livelihood insecurity. Furthermore, she shares the report "Fleeing Climate Change: Impacts on Migrations and Displacement", published by CARE.

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Amina argues that rural migration in sub-Saharan Africa negatively affects food quantity and quality. The fact that agricultural labourers are leaving the countryside makes farms vulnerable, especially in the context of climate change. These farms are often left to women and children with the latter ending up in child labour, which poses serious threats to their health, safety and development.

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Carlos elaborates on the situation in Venezuela, where rural workers migrate to the city in search for better living conditions. However, in general this only leads to increasing urban poverty. Carlos believes that migration in his country is mainly caused by a lack of inputs for agricultural producers and by legal insecurity for farmers, which leads to low incomes that are not able to cover basic needs.

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Kuruppacharil discusses migration flows from India to other countries and rural migration within India itself. He highlights that regarding domestic migration, the living conditions of the migrants are often very poor.

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