A comparitive political ecology of migration in highland Ethiopia

This project will explore the relationship between environmental change and human migration. Work on this relationship is pertinent due to the dramatic changes in the physical environment thought likely to accompany anthropogenic climate change. Understan ding the mechanics of the relationship between environmental change and migration is important both in order to understand both the manner in, and conditions under, which migration can play a potentially important role in adaptation to climate change and so that the processes by which groups made vulnerable as a result of being forced to migrate by changes in climate, can be afforded effective protections. In an attempt to nuance the existing work on this topic this project will, instead of viewing enviro nmental degradation as deterministic of migratory responses, seek to explore how contextual socio-political and economic factors interact with conditions of physical environmental change to generate incentives, opportunities and capabilities to migrate. In order to achieve these goals the project will undertake a comparative political ecology assessment of migration in two highly degraded areas of the Ethiopian highlands. The work will explore areas affected by dramatic rates of soil erosion and depleti on, thought to have impacted farm productivity in a fashion similar to that predicted by future climate change. It is hoped that this analogous study of climate change impacts in a socio-politically dynamic environment will prove informative of both what sorts of migration-environmental-change narratives we might be able to identify and to speak more broadly about the manner in which a limited focus on the role of socio-political factors in generating migration has had on both the migration-policy, and en vironmental-policy agendas.