Leonie Wenz

Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research

Climate migration globally: empirical evidence and projections

Wednesday, November 6, 2024 – 05:15 – 06:30 PM (CET)

To join in person, you can come to room O 142 (i.e., in the castle, building Schloss Ostflügel, level 1, room 142). To join virtually, please register in advance using this link.

Seminar Abstract
Migration is one of the most consequential disruptions to human society anticipated under climate change. Empirical evidence of climate-induced migration is, however, typically focused on individual regions, rendering global assessments of the scale of this issue challenging. We here provide such a quantification in a causal framework by leveraging rich data on sub-national migration with detailed analysis of climate exposure. Both, warming and exposure to extremes induce outward migration from poorer regions across the globe, with explicit cross-border flows from poor to rich regions identifiable. With climate change amplifying these effects, we project 210 million climate migrants from low-income regions by mid-century and more than 4 billion migrants in 2100 under a high-emission scenario.

Speaker Bio
Dr. Leonie Wenz is deputy head of Complexity Science and research group leader of Data-based analysis of climate decisions at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK).

Leonie conducts research on the societal and economic impacts of climate change by use of various quantitative methods. In particular, she studies how we – individually and as societies – respond to weather extremes and a changing climatic environment with the aim of deriving robust estimates of the cost of warming and of informing sustainable development pathways.

Her research has been published in, among others, Nature, Science, PNAS, Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, and Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control. Her research findings have informed e.g. the German parliament, the European Central Bank and the US White House.

A mathematician by training, Leonie earned her Ph.D. from University of Potsdam and PIK with a dissertation at the intersection of Climate Physics and Economics (summa cum laude, awarded i.a. Leibniz dissertation award). She did a Postdoc at UC Berkeley as part of the Ciriacy-Wantrup programme in Natural Resource Economics and Public Policy. Leonie is an elected Member of German Young Academy (Junge Akademie) at the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Science and the National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina.

Admission information
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