Editing IPCC:AR6/SRCCL/Chapter-3 (section)

==== 3.6.2.2 Socio-economic responses for economic diversification ====

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'''Livelihood diversification''' through non-farm employment increases the resilience of rural households against desertification and extreme weather events by diversifying their income and consumption (high confidence). Moreover, it can provide the funds to invest into SLM (Belay et al. 2017 <sup>[[#fn:r1211|1211]]</sup> ; Bryan et al. 2009 <sup>[[#fn:r1212|1212]]</sup> ; Dumenu and Obeng 2016 <sup>[[#fn:r1213|1213]]</sup> ; Salik et al. 2017 <sup>[[#fn:r1214|1214]]</sup> ; Shiferaw et al. 2009 <sup>[[#fn:r1215|1215]]</sup> ). Access to non-agricultural employment is especially important for poorer pastoral households as their small herd sizes make them less resilient to drought (Fratkin 2013 <sup>[[#fn:r1216|1216]]</sup> ; Lybbert et al. 2004 <sup>[[#fn:r1217|1217]]</sup> ). However, access to alternative opportunities is limited in the rural areas of many developing countries, especially for women and marginalised groups who lack education and social networks (Reardon et al. 2008 <sup>[[#fn:r1218|1218]]</sup> ).

'''Migration''' is frequently used as an adaptation strategy to environmental change ( ''medium confidence'' ). Migration is a form of livelihood diversification and a potential response option to desertification and increasing risk to agricultural livelihoods under climate change (Walther et al. 2002 <sup>[[#fn:r1219|1219]]</sup> ). Migration can be short-term (e.g., seasonal) or long-term, internal within a country or international. There is ''medium evidence'' showing rural households responding to desertification and droughts through all forms of migration, for example: during the Dust Bowl in the USA in the 1930s (Hornbeck 2012 <sup>[[#fn:r1220|1220]]</sup> ); during droughts in Burkina Faso in the 2000s (Barbier et al. 2009 <sup>[[#fn:r1221|1221]]</sup> ); in Mexico in the 1990s (Nawrotzki et al. 2016 <sup>[[#fn:r1222|1222]]</sup> ); and by the Aymara people of the semi-arid Tarapacá region in Chile between 1820 and 1970, responding to declines in rainfall and growing demands for labour outside the region (Lima et al. 2016 <sup>[[#fn:r1223|1223]]</sup> ). There is ''robust evidence'' and ''high agreement'' showing that migration decisions are influenced by a complex set of different factors, with desertification and climate change playing relatively lesser roles (Liehr et al. 2016 <sup>[[#fn:r1224|1224]]</sup> ) (Section 3.4.2). Barrios et al. (2006) <sup>[[#fn:r1225|1225]]</sup> found that urbanisation in Sub-Saharan Africa was partially influenced by climatic factors during the 1950–2000 period, in parallel to liberalisation of internal restrictions on labour movements: each 1% reduction in rainfall was associated with a 0.45% increase in urbanisation. This migration favoured more industrially diverse urban areas in Sub-Saharan Africa (Henderson et al. 2017 <sup>[[#fn:r1226|1226]]</sup> ), because they offer more diverse employment opportunities and higher wages. Similar trends were also observed in Iran in response to water scarcity (Madani et al. 2016 <sup>[[#fn:r1227|1227]]</sup> ).

However, migration involves some initial investments. For this reason, reductions in agricultural incomes due to climate change or desertification have the potential to decrease out-migration among the poorest agricultural households, who become less able to afford migration (Cattaneo and Peri 2016 <sup>[[#fn:r1228|1228]]</sup> ), thus increasing social inequalities. There is ''medium evidence'' and high agreement that households with migrant worker members are more resilient against extreme weather events and environmental degradation compared to non-migrant households, who are more dependent on agricultural income (Liehr et al. 2016 <sup>[[#fn:r1229|1229]]</sup> ; Salik et al. 2017 <sup>[[#fn:r1230|1230]]</sup> ; Sikder and Higgins 2017 <sup>[[#fn:r1231|1231]]</sup> ). Remittances from migrant household members potentially contribute to SLM adoptions, however, substantial out-migration was also found to constrain the implementation of labour-intensive land management practices (Chen et al. 2014 <sup>[[#fn:r1232|1232]]</sup> ; Liu et al. 2016a <sup>[[#fn:r1233|1233]]</sup> ).

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