In October, aligning with our mission to support the dissemination of development research, we organized our first communications training course. Researchers from low- and middle-income countries gained invaluable tools to communicate their papers effectively to a broad, non-academic audience. The training was a success, and we’re excited to now count this activity as a cornerstone of our program, alongside the blog.

All this while, we kept doing what we do best: spreading development research throughout the world, one article at a time, giving you, our readers, the expertise to unpick the problems that hamper successful development. As the year concludes, the GlobalDev team took a moment to reflect on the themes and blogs that we published in 2023. Here is a snapshot of our year.

Climate finance was at the heart of our attention at GlobalDev in 2023. In a series organized with the United Nations University Institute for Environment and Human Security, the Munich Climate Insurance Initiative (MCII) and LUCCC/START, GlobalDev authors tackled the core concepts and roadblocks of climate finance, its sources and its effects on different communities. They notably introduced diverse methods for gauging the shortfall in financial resources for addressing climate change and underscored the critical role of increased access to climate finance for women in low-income countries to enhance community resilience to climate change.

Additionally, research featured in GlobalDev emphasized the potential of directing climate finance toward poverty-fighting cash transfers to aid around 30 million fishers in the Global South, mitigating the impact of climate change on their homes and livelihoods. Climate finance was also explored as a driver for sustainable sanitation systems that reduce emissions while supporting public health, resource recovery, and climate resilience.

Another central theme this year was taxation and development. In a series organized with CERDI, UCA, FERDI, and the conference team at GDN, our authors presented innovative perspectives on tax systems and their potential impact on development. They emphasized the need to restructure tax and spending systems to support impoverished populations without overburdening governments, and to combat illicit financial flows which direct funds away from crucial poverty-alleviating and infrastructure initiatives.

Authors also delved into the crucial role of tax revenue mobilization to support development goals, particularly by promoting compliance through targeted education efforts among the young. Turning to multinational companies in developing nations, authors critiqued the OECD’s proposed global minimum tax, challenged the efficiency of tax incentives and explored alternatives. Shifting our focus to education funding, the positive impact of Nigeria’s Tertiary Education Trust Fund, sustained by a 2% tax on profits, was explored as a potential model for sustainable funding in developing countries.

The series further investigated how taxation directly or indirectly offers solutions to development challenges. Authors presented strategies for reducing informality in economies, using Uganda as a case study. This showed how governments can strategically use the tax system to curb informality while simultaneously fostering entrepreneurship and skills development. In parallel, an article examining the Philippines’ decision to block healthcare professionals’ emigration suggested a tax on temporary labor migration could safeguard local healthcare services.

Finally, the taxation series examined adverse outcomes of certain policies. An article exploring the impact of sector-specific taxation on mobile money warned of unintended consequences that could reverse gains from broader financial inclusion. Attention then shifted to Uganda, where an internet tax raised concerns about limiting women’s access and emphasizes the need to analyze gender equality impacts in tax policy discussions.

We addressed gender equality elsewhere with a two-part piece examining the exclusion of women in the development process in Nigeria and Vietnam, along with a discussion on malleable gender differences in social preferences among young boys and girls. We also covered conflict, social mobility, financing development, health, and more.

Throughout the year, our commitment to spreading development research remained steadfast. Looking ahead to 2024, we invite you to stay connected with GlobalDev for insightful articles on even more development challenges. Through our partnerships with key research and development organizations, we have set the stage for new series on critical policy topics, including biodiversity and development. Thank you for your continued support, and here’s to another year of sharing research that matters for development that works!

The post GlobalDev’s year in a nutshell: getting to the heart of climate finance, effective tax systems and gender inequality appeared first on Globaldev Blog.

In the small city of Avignon in the south of France, the sky turns orange pink with grey tints. It looks like the most beautiful sunset I have ever seen, but it’s still too early for the sun to be going down. As I cross the bridge, under the summer heat, feeling the salty taste of sweat running across my lips, I turn my head to the right, then to the left: on both sides, huge clouds of smoke are finding their way into the sky.

The forests surrounding Avignon are burning. As I walk into the city, ashes start falling from the sky like snow. My stomach ties up in knots: climate change never felt so real – and it never felt more frightening.

As Avignon and many other cities around the world are experiencing record high temperatures – forcing some to change their summer habits and others to leave their homes – GlobalDev is focusing on a topic that doesn’t make the news often enough: climate migration.

Climate migrants are people who have been forced to leave their homes because of environmental disruptions. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) estimates that since 2008, an average of 21.5 million people per year have been forcibly displaced by events related to climate, such as floods, storms, wildfires or extreme temperatures. This number is not expected to fall, and the Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP) predicts that 1.2 billion people could be displaced globally by 2050 due to climate change and natural disasters. Here is what our authors have taught us about climate migration.

In his article, Sensible migration policy for a climate-disrupted world, Robert McLeman explains that while we have enough data to give us certainty about the future of climate migration, most governments choose to do nothing about the increasing risk of millions of people migrating for climate-related reasons.

As he explains, we have the scientific knowledge to understand and predict the phenomena that climate change will cause, we know the locations most at risk of experiencing the worst effects, and we know how many people live there and how many more will be living there when the worst effects hit.

We also know that ‘without immediate action to reverse the underlying drivers of climate change, the physical impacts will accelerate and become much worse within the next 50 years if we’re lucky, the next 20 years if we’re not.’ Yet governments stay inactive.

McLeman calls for immediate action and gives several recommendations. Most importantly, he urges governments to make the transition to a low-carbon economy as quickly as possible.

He also calls for loosening migration policies to allow people living in high-risk areas to migrate with dignity. Governments should stop treating migrants as threats to sovereignty and security, he argues: indeed, as research shows, environmental migrants integrate easily into their host countries.

In their article, Rising temperatures: the impact on employment and migration in rural Mexico, Katrina Jessoe and her colleagues perfectly illustrate the predictions that McLeman mentions with the example of Mexico.

The number of extremely hot days in rural parts of the country is rising, and it will continue to do so. Analyzing nearly 30 years of nationally representative household survey data, the authors find that extreme heat reduces the probability of local work in many Mexican regions. As a result, some local workers, mainly farmers, have been migrating, either to urban areas of the country or to the United States.

The authors use these data to project changes in rural employment. They find that ‘under a moderate emissions scenario, there is a decrease in local employment of up to 1.4% and an increase in migration to other parts of Mexico and to the United States of up to 1.4% and 0.25%, respectively.’ Poorer households will suffer most from these changes since ‘their local employment opportunities are most sensitive to extreme heat.’

Poor households are also most at risk in cities hosting climate migrants from rural areas. In his article, Food security in megacities: climate migration and informal food systems, Mohammad Moniruzzaman explains that climate migration leads to growing urbanization, which in turn increases the risk of food insecurity among the urban poor.

He cites the example of the Bangladeshi capital of Dhaka, which each year receives half a million migrants moving from coastal and rural areas. These displacements, mostly caused by weather-related events, shift the problem of food insecurity from rural to urban areas.

Moniruzzaman explains that in Dhaka, climate-induced events disrupt the formal food supply chain. Informal food systems, which are more resilient, are what keep the city running during disasters. Moreover, informal markets are more accessible and affordable to the urban poor: one study shows that in Dhaka, ‘every second city dweller depends on these informal markets for their food procurement.’

Moniruzzaman calls on governments of megacities like Dhaka to consider informal provisioning as part of the solution to reduce food insecurity and to integrate informal food systems into the urban food system.

If you are a researcher interested in writing about climate migration (or other topics related to development and the environment) for GlobalDev, visit our write for us page.

This article was initially published on August 3, 2022.

The post GlobalDev on Climate Migration appeared first on Globaldev Blog.

As 2022 draws to an end, the GlobalDev team has looked back at your favorite articles of the year. Below are the most read articles in English, French and Spanish!

Child marriage in Pakistan: evidence from three development programs

This year, our most read article in English shed light on the causes, consequences, and potential ways to tackle child marriage in Pakistan, where, according to a survey conducted in 2017, nearly 40% of women had been married before the age of 18.

Albena Sotirova and her colleagues explain that ‘although fines and punishments exist, laws on child marriage have little impact as they are not well enforced.’ Social norms, religion but also economic reasons are among the main causes of child marriage in Sindh and Punjab, where it is usually the father and grandfather who arrange marriages.

Although according to the authors’ research, ‘young people in both Sindh and Punjab speak positively about some aspects of early marriage’, child marriage has been proven to cause mental and physical harm to girls, and also to have negative effects on boys.

Married girls typically become pregnant early, which leads to them dropping out of school. In case they do not conceive early or do not give birth to a son, they also face the risk of being treated harshly by their in-laws, ‘to the extent of not being allowed to speak in extreme cases.’ In parallel, ‘young men – who are seen as responsible for supporting their wives financially – often struggle to secure a stable income, leading to household poverty and stress. This in turn can increase the chances of domestic violence.’

The authors conclude that child marriage should be addressed through a multi-dimensional approach, seeking not only to help at-risk girls but also to influence social norms as well as leaders and decision-makers responsible for enforcing laws.

Entrepreneurship and development economics: convergence for better policy

In 2022, our French-speaking audience was most interested in the role of entrepreneurship in development. In their article, Jolanda Hessels and Wim Naudé argue that the persistence of weak entrepreneurship policies might be caused by the fact that ‘the positive impact of entrepreneurs is overestimated, and their detrimental effect underestimated.’

As they explain, these biases might exist due to the absence of a unified scientific approach that studies the intersection between entrepreneurship economics and development economics. Nonetheless, to determine the impact of entrepreneurship on development, they identify five areas in which the two fields are converging:

They first talk about externalities: ‘unintended consequences or actions not captured in the market price of the product or service provided.’ They argue that the more externalities an entrepreneur creates the more they drive development.

Second, they explain that the role of entrepreneurs varies across different stages of development. They give the example of Asia, where, in order to catch up with the first industrial revolution in Western Europe, entrepreneurs ‘identified, copied, and adapted existing technologies.’ Once rapid growth was underway, the most prosperous countries shifted to ‘innovation at the frontiers of knowledge.’

Third, they talk about the importance of ‘entrepreneurial ability’ in the transition to an innovation-driven economy.

Fourth, the authors pinpoint the central role of institutions in facilitating development. They give the example of the West in which the growth take-off ‘was accompanied by facilitating institutions (…) that encouraged and rewarded risk-taking by entrepreneurs.’

Last but not least, ‘there has been a recognition in entrepreneurship research that development is about more than monetary wealth and that subjective wellbeing matters as well.’

The authors conclude on the importance of these convergences in creating a better environment for start-ups, a more effective allocation of funds, and ‘better support of the kind of entrepreneurship that generates positive externalities.’

Migration: evidence from Mexico of the effects on sending countries

Our most read article in Spanish – and also our most read article overall – shifts the discussion about migration away from the effects it has on receiving countries to the impact on sending countries. Taking the example of Mexico, one of the largest sending countries in the world, Emily Conover and her colleagues explore the effects of the sex imbalance resulting from migration on labor markets.

As they explain, migrants from Mexico tend to be ‘men of working age with an average level of schooling.’ The large number of men leaving causes delay in marriage and sometimes leads to women never marrying or having kids. ‘This in turn could lead to women extending their time in schooling and university, and going into the labor market.’ Migration hence ‘affects the labor market, education, marriage, and fertility outcomes in the sending country.’

Looking back and forward

This year, more and more of you have been following our articles, we thank you very much for your continuous support and wish you a happy new year. 2023 will mark the fifth anniversary of the blog and we are preparing some surprises for the occasion – stay tuned!

The post GlobalDev in 2022: Our most read articles appeared first on Globaldev Blog.

The 2022 report by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations on the state of food security and nutrition in the world states that there should be no more ‘lingering doubts that the world is moving backwards in its efforts to end hunger, food insecurity and malnutrition in all its forms.’

According to an FAO-World Food Programme report, 222 million people in 53 countries/territories are expected to face acute food insecurity and be in need of urgent assistance over the period from October 2022 to January 2023. The Covid-19 pandemic coupled with the war in Ukraine have exacerbated problems of access and availability of food around the world, and the distance from reaching the “zero hunger” targets of the Sustainable Development Goals seems to be growing every year.

At the end of this week, 16 October, it is World Food Day 2022, commemorating the founding of the FAO in 1945. We are marking the occasion by looking back at articles we have published on food insecurity. Here is what we have learned.

Innovations in food systems: the key to human and planetary health

In his article ‘Innovations in food systems: the key to human and planetary health’, Shenggen Fan, former director general of the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), talks about the role of innovation in reshaping food systems for better nutrition, health, inclusion, and sustainability.

As he explains, ‘food systems use nearly 85% of the world’s fresh water, and almost a quarter of all global land is degraded. Food systems contribute around one-fifth of all greenhouse gas emissions. Yet food systems have the unique potential to fix many of these problems – and they can also help to meet broader development goals, such as employment and women’s empowerment.’

Fan argues that innovations in technologies, policies, and institutions will be critical for preserving human and planetary health. He gives examples of several technological innovations that have proven their efficiency in improving food systems, but he insists on the importance of considering the impact of these technologies on smallholders, children’s nutrition, and employment. Fan also talks about policy innovations that prioritize humans, health, and the environment.

Lastly, he mentions institutional innovations that will give space for technologies and policies to have a considerable impact on food systems. He concludes his piece calling for global cooperation as key to disseminating these different types of innovations.

The role of youth in transforming food systems in Africa

Technological innovations are also the focus of Olga Mapanje and Rodney Mushongachiware’s article, ‘The role of youth in transforming food systems in Africa’. In particular, they point to the important role of tech-savvy youth in transforming food systems in Africa, as agricultural solutions increasingly lie in digitalization, automation, and artificial intelligence.

‘Despite initiatives to promote agricultural production and the engagement of youth in agriculture, agricultural production in the African continent remains low compared with the rest of the world.’ This is exacerbated by the limited adoption of modern technologies, which can be countered by greater participation of young people in food systems, as they are more inclined to adopt new technologies.

The authors call on African policy-makers to incorporate youth aspirations into future endeavors and interventions in the agricultural sector as well as to ‘address the challenges associated with access to resources, such as land and credit.’

Diversity for farm resilience and food security: evidence from Finland

In their article ‘Diversity for farm resilience and food security: evidence from Finland’. Helena Kahiluoto and Janne Kaseva talk about a different kind of innovation. They debunk a persistent myth, explaining that the paradigm of streamlined efficiency has spread the mistaken belief that diversity in farming leads to inefficiency. In a study on Finnish farms, they prove that ‘farms with greater diversity of land use – more diverse crops – are no less efficient in their resource use than farms with less diverse crops.’

The authors conclude that ‘careless specialization’ has made ‘food supply unnecessarily fragile in our era of global ecological and social instability’, calling for changes in farming practices for the sake of sustainability and resilience.

Food security in megacities: climate migration and informal food systems

In his article, ‘Food security in megacities: climate migration and informal food systems’, Mohammad Moniruzzaman makes the case for a policy innovation: he calls on governments of megacities to consider ‘informal provisioning’ as part of the solution to reduce food insecurity and to integrate informal food systems into the urban food system.

He cites the example of the Bangladeshi capital of Dhaka, which each year receives half a million migrants moving from coastal and rural areas. ‘As a result, the number of people living in urban slums without access to basic services and amenities has increased by 60% since 2000. The informal food systems of Dhaka have become a dense and diverse network of informal markets, mobile traders, hawkers, retailers, street vendors, suppliers, and transporters.’

These systems make food more accessible and affordable to low-income migrants: one study shows that in Dhaka, ‘every second city dweller depends on these informal markets for their food procurement.’ For Moniruzzaman, integrating informal systems is key to making ‘megacities more resilient to the combined impacts of climate change and rapid population growth.’

Lessons from a life in food policy

Finally, we cannot talk about food security on GlobalDev without mentioning Shenggen Fan’s article ‘Lessons from a life in food policy’. In this piece, which we highly recommend you read, Fan shares the lessons he has learnt after working for more than 40 years in the field of food policy (including 10 years as the director general of IFPRI).

Here are the main lessons he learned from his experience:

• Start with the local context.
• Improve access to well-functioning markets.
• Work in partnership.
• Food alone is not enough.
• Use a food systems lens.

Food security was a big concern during the pandemic. Here are some articles that we have published:

Covid-19 and the food crisis in Bangladesh: a proposal for action, by Asad Islam and Firoz Ahmad 

Food insecurity during Covid-19, by Firoz Ahmad, Asad Islam, Debayan Pakrashi, Tabassum Rahman, and Abu Siddique

Panic could cause a global food crisis under Covid-19, by Shenggen Fan

The post GlobalDev on Food Insecurity appeared first on Globaldev Blog.

August 5, 2020. It is 8am and the streets of Beirut are filled with thousands of young people. No, it’s not a festival, a rave party or anything of that sort. In fact, it looks nothing like it. Under the summer heat, I walk silently, in dismay, among the rubble, hearing only the piercing sounds of car alarms and broken glass being pushed into metal shovels. Yesterday, my city witnessed the largest non-nuclear blast in history.

No one is talking, everyone is in shock. But the youth of Lebanon, the same people who had taken over the streets earlier in the year, have spontaneously returned to those streets, armed with shovels and brushes, to clean up the city and help the victims and displaced. Within a few days, before the authorities even venture into the field to assess the damage, young volunteers have already cleared the main streets from rubble, and the reconstruction process can begin.

It was clear to me then, and in the months that followed, that young people would be the drivers of my country’s future. But they also turned out to be among the main victims of the social, political, and economic crises that the country is going through. Youth unemployment rates reached 47.8% in May 2022, and the youth emigration rate is at an all-time high.

It is undeniable that the Greta Thunbergs and Malalas, but also all the young unnamed heroes, activists, and engaged citizens of the planet have an important role to play in determining the future of the world in which we live. But they are also often among the main victims of crises.

As the world celebrated International Youth Day earlier this month, the GlobalDev team decided to reflect on the challenges but also the strength of young people in today’s developing countries. Here is what we have learned from our authors.

The scourge of unemployment is not exclusive to Lebanese youth. Indeed, a new report by the International Labour Organization (ILO) asserts that the pandemic has hurt young people more than any other age group. The global number of unemployed youth is estimated to reach 73 million in 2022 – six million above the pre-pandemic level of 2019.

In their article, Skill certification for better job matches: evidence from South Africa, Eliana Carranza and her colleagues explore skill assessment and certification as a way to increase employment and earnings among the 15-24 age group. As they explain, high unemployment may be partly driven by what economists call ‘information frictions: ‘mistakes in either firms’ hiring decisions or work seekers’ search decisions due to limited information about the skills of the latter.’

The researchers conducted an experiment on a group of work seekers. ‘Over two days, participants completed six assessments of their numeracy, communication (verbal and written), grit, focus, and planning skills.’ Those who received a certificate and used it in their job applications saw a five percentage points increase in their employment rate compared with the control group. Certification also increased their earning of 34% compared with the control group.

The authors conclude that while there remain other barriers to employment, skill assessment and certification offer an effective and cheap policy to increase employment among youth.

Skill certification for better job matches: evidence from South Africa

Simon Franklin examines a different way to increase employment in his article Getting unemployed urban youth into work with transport subsidies. He shows a causal link between the costs of transport required to look for a job and individual employment outcomes.

Franklin focuses his study on the Ethiopian capital of Addis Ababa, in which formal job offers are advertised on physical boards at three locations in the city center. He finds that over time, as young people run out of cash and can’t afford transport costs to the city center, they get discouraged and decrease their search efforts.

Franklin calls for policies reducing the costs of finding work and supporting the unemployed throughout their search. He highlights the importance of online tools in job searches as well as the ‘importance of encouraging denser, affordable urban housing, so that economically disadvantaged jobseekers can live closer to jobs and thus have better access to opportunities in growing cities.’

Getting unemployed urban youth into work with transport subsidies

While some young people end up finding a job, others get discouraged and prefer to leave their homeland seeking better opportunities in more developed countries. In their article, David McKenzie and his colleagues tell us about the intentions of Gambian youth to migrate to Europe and the effects of Covid-19 on their decisions.

As they explain, ‘expanding youth populations, lack of economic opportunity, political instability, and conflict have all contributed to the growth of irregular migration from Africa to Europe over the last decade.’ After a coup in 1994, Gambia became the African country with the highest incidence of illegal migration relative to the population.

But the pandemic dissuaded some from leaving. According to the study, 30.6% of the respondents were less likely to want to migrate. Nonetheless, ‘the desire to migrate to Europe remains incredibly high among these young men, with 65% saying they are likely or very likely to try to migrate, and 58% saying that they would consider (illegal routes).’

The authors call for actions to explore options that would ‘open more legal avenues for migration to Europe, given (the) high demand’ as well as ‘to experiment with different approaches to reducing the demand to migrate irregularly.’

Intentions of Gambian youth to migrate to Europe: effects of Covid-19

At the same time, it is important that there are incentives for young people to stay as they can play a key role in the development of their own countries. In an article on The role of youth in transforming food systems in Africa, Olga Mapanje and Rodney Kurai Mushongachiware argue that as agricultural solutions increasingly lie in digitalization, automation, and artificial intelligence, tech-savvy youth need to play a role in transforming food systems in Africa.

As they explain, the majority of youth in African countries are based in rural areas, making them more familiar, through family subsistence farming and the educational curriculum, to the agricultural sector. In addition, with more than 40% of the population aged between 15 and 34 in several sub-Saharan countries in Africa, most agricultural interventions are targeting youth to increase their participation in agricultural and economic development.

Nonetheless, agricultural production in the African continent remains low compared with the rest of the world, even more so due to climate change and the limited adoption of modern technologies. Moreover, as Mapanje and her colleague explain, young people ‘tend to farm on smaller pieces of land, preferring shorter seasons and high-value farm enterprises, such as horticultural production, poultry, bee-keeping, and rabbit rearing.’

For these reasons, they call on African policy-makers to incorporate youth aspirations in future endeavors and interventions in the agricultural sector as well as to ‘address the challenges associated with access to resources, such as land and credit.’

The role of youth in transforming food systems in Africa

At GlobalDev, we are encouraging young researchers to take the opportunity to share their knowledge and perspective on development issues. You can find their articles in our youth section.

Are you interested in writing for GlobalDev? Please read our one pager and style guide and send us your proposal at editors.globaldevblog@gdn.int.

The post GlobalDev on Youth appeared first on Globaldev Blog.

In the small city of Avignon in the south of France, the sky turns orange pink with grey tints. It looks like the most beautiful sunset I have ever seen, but it’s still too early for the sun to be going down. As I cross the bridge, under the summer heat, feeling the salty taste of sweat running across my lips, I turn my head to the right, then to the left: on both sides, huge clouds of smoke are finding their way into the sky.

The forests surrounding Avignon are burning. As I walk into the city, ashes start falling from the sky like snow. My stomach ties up in knots: climate change never felt so real – and it never felt more frightening.

As Avignon and many other cities around the world are experiencing record high temperatures – forcing some to change their summer habits and others to leave their homes – GlobalDev is focusing on a topic that doesn’t make the news often enough: climate migration.

Climate migrants are people who have been forced to leave their homes because of environmental disruptions. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) estimates that since 2008, an average of 21.5 million people per year have been forcibly displaced by events related to climate, such as floods, storms, wildfires or extreme temperatures. This number is not expected to fall, and the Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP) predicts that 1.2 billion people could be displaced globally by 2050 due to climate change and natural disasters. Here is what our authors have taught us about climate migration.

In his article, Sensible migration policy for a climate-disrupted world, Robert McLeman explains that while we have enough data to give us certainty about the future of climate migration, most governments choose to do nothing about the increasing risk of millions of people migrating for climate-related reasons.

As he explains, we have the scientific knowledge to understand and predict the phenomena that climate change will cause, we know the locations most at risk of experiencing the worst effects, and we know how many people live there and how many more will be living there when the worst effects hit.

We also know that ‘without immediate action to reverse the underlying drivers of climate change, the physical impacts will accelerate and become much worse within the next 50 years if we’re lucky, the next 20 years if we’re not.’ Yet governments stay inactive.

McLeman calls for immediate action and gives several recommendations. Most importantly, he urges governments to make the transition to a low-carbon economy as quickly as possible.

He also calls for loosening migration policies to allow people living in high-risk areas to migrate with dignity. Governments should stop treating migrants as threats to sovereignty and security, he argues: indeed, as research shows, environmental migrants integrate easily into their host countries.

Sensible migration policy for a climate-disrupted world

In their article, Rising temperatures: the impact on employment and migration in rural Mexico, Katrina Jessoe and her colleagues perfectly illustrate the predictions that McLeman mentions with the example of Mexico.

The number of extremely hot days in rural parts of the country is rising, and it will continue to do so. Analyzing nearly 30 years of nationally representative household survey data, the authors find that extreme heat reduces the probability of local work in many Mexican regions. As a result, some local workers, mainly farmers, have been migrating, either to urban areas of the country or to the United States.

The authors use these data to project changes in rural employment. They find that ‘under a moderate emissions scenario, there is a decrease in local employment of up to 1.4% and an increase in migration to other parts of Mexico and to the United States of up to 1.4% and 0.25%, respectively.’ Poorer households will suffer most from these changes since ‘their local employment opportunities are most sensitive to extreme heat.’

Rising temperatures: the impact on employment and migration in rural Mexico

Poor households are also most at risk in cities hosting climate migrants from rural areas. In his article, Food security in megacities: climate migration and informal food systems, Mohammad Moniruzzaman explains that climate migration leads to growing urbanization, which in turn increases the risk of food insecurity among the urban poor.

He cites the example of the Bangladeshi capital of Dhaka, which each year receives half a million migrants moving from coastal and rural areas. These displacements, mostly caused by weather-related events, shift the problem of food insecurity from rural to urban areas.

Moniruzzaman explains that in Dhaka, climate-induced events disrupt the formal food supply chain. Informal food systems, which are more resilient, are what keep the city running during disasters. Moreover, informal markets are more accessible and affordable to the urban poor: one study shows that in Dhaka, ‘every second city dweller depends on these informal markets for their food procurement.’

Moniruzzaman calls on governments of megacities like Dhaka to consider informal provisioning as part of the solution to reduce food insecurity and to integrate informal food systems into the urban food system.

Food security in megacities: climate migration and informal food systems

New research and resources on climate migration

You can navigate additional resources on migration research from the Global Development Network’s (GDN) wider work:

• A call for proposals is currently open for multidisciplinary teams interested in the topic  ‘Integrated Approaches to Migration/Mobility in an Era of Rapid Global Change’. This is a Collaborative Research Action by the Belmont Forum, in partnership with FutureEarth, the National Science Foundation of South Africa and GDN. Deadline: 12 August2022.
• GDN has been collecting the experience of researchers working on migration, with a focus on different research methods. The ‘Deep Dive’ videos are available on GDN’s YouTube Channel.
• Browse further featured studies on migration from our network.

And if you are a researcher interested in writing about climate migration (or other topics related to development and the environment) for GlobalDev, please read our one pager and style guide and send us your proposal at editors.globaldevblog@gdn.int.

The post GlobalDev on Climate Migration appeared first on Globaldev Blog.

According to the World Health Organization, one in eight people or 970 million people around the world were living with a mental disorder in 2019. This number rose dramatically during the first year of the Covid-19 pandemic with an increase of 25% in anxiety and depression. Yet relatively little attention is given by development practitioners to mental health. At GlobalDev, we decided to highlight the interactions of mental health and development with a series of columns on the topic. Here is what we have learned so far. 

As Marc Rockmore and colleagues put it in their piece Mental health challenges of development and the environment, “mental health disorders are a first order development concern.” Not only does mental illness lead to direct costs in general health, but it has also been shown that mental health disorders have an important impact on careers, labor markets, and earnings. 

The authors explain that early life exposure to substantial shocks are not an exclusive cause of adult mental health problems. In fact, research finds that events such as income fluctuations and climatic variations can also be a cause of mental disorders.

Mental health challenges of development and the environment

Similarly, in his article on Mental health and the Sustainable Development Goals, Crick Lund explains that depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder, and schizophrenia are socially determined and hence treating them without tackling the environment that causes them could be counter-productive. As he puts it, “why treat people only to send them back to the circumstances that made them sick in the first place?”

Lund calls for an integrated development agenda using mental health both as a means and a goal of international development. He illustrates this need as follows: “reduction of gender-based violence, cash transfers, housing improvements, improved education, and early responses to humanitarian emergencies all carry mental health benefits – and their impact and sustainability could potentially be enhanced with integrated mental health interventions.”

Mental health and the Sustainable Development Goals

Another major factor affecting mental health is exposure to conflict. In her article Evidence-based mental health interventions in post-conflict countries, Theresa Betancourt suggests using education and employment training programs as potential delivery platforms for mental health services. 

As she explains, one in six children live in countries affected by conflict – which can have grave consequences for their mental health, increasing the risk of depression, anxiety, and post-traumatic disorders. In addition, while conflict deepens the need for healthcare, it also wrecks healthcare infrastructure, leaving a majority of individuals suffering from mental disorders untreated. Hence, “integration of evidence-based mental health interventions into innovative delivery platforms such as youth educational, employment and entrepreneurship programs may be key to supporting young people’s daily functioning and interpersonal relationship.”

Evidence-based mental health interventions in post-conflict countries

We cannot mention mental health without talking about the pandemic. As mentioned earlier, during the first year of the pandemic, there was a 25% increase in cases of anxiety and depression. 

In their article, Mental health costs of lockdowns: evidence from curfews in Turkey, Onur Altindag and colleagues show that in the short run, restricted mobility led to a considerable decline in mental health through social and physical isolation, especially among the most vulnerable populations. 

Mental health costs of lockdowns: evidence from curfews in Turkey

The decline in mental health during the pandemic was also mentioned in several of our articles tackling food insecurity during Covid-19, resilience through the pandemic and the ways in which southern think-tanks have responded to the challenges linked to this period. 

Are you a researcher interested in writing about mental health and development for GlobalDev? Read our one pager and style guide and send us your proposal at editors.globaldevblog@gdn.int.

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