Over the past two decades, policy-makers, practitioners and members of the broader public have increasingly questioned the extent to which climate change influences human migration. Yet, scientific research has so far struggled to provide a clear picture of the impact of climate change on migration, owing in part to limited data and the use of several different modeling approaches, resulting in a fragmented perspective of migration. Modeling intercomparison, which is essentially about applying different models to the same question or case study, offers crucial opportunities to understand this process from different lenses and generate fine-grained policy insights. Yet, despite success stories in other fields,  research on environmental migration has not leveraged model intercomparison and/or model integration to address some of the existing questions.

To address this issue, STEP Ph.D. alum Nicolas Choquette-Levy and Columbia University’s Fabien Cottier led a workshop on Climate Migration Modeling Intercomparison at Princeton University from September 25-27. 

This workshop is only the first step towards initiating a new research agenda centered around model intercomparison. In regard to what’s next, participants at the workshop identified potential case studies, including locations in South Asia and West Africa, where an intercomparison effort could help generate important policy insights on the influence of climate change on migration. Participants also developed ideas for a future collaboration.