Climate Change as Migration Driver from Rural and Urban Mexico

Weather deviations linked to undocumented migration and return between Mexico and the United States

As the world's climate continues to change, human populations are exposed to increasingly severe and extreme weather conditions that can promote migration. Here, we examine how extreme weather influences the likelihood of undocumented migration and return between Mexico and the United States. We used data from 48,313 individuals observed between 1992 and 2018 in 84 Mexican agricultural communities. While controlling for regional and temporal confounding factors, we related individual decisions to migrate to the United States without documents and subsequently return to Mexico with lagged weather deviations from the historical norm during the corn-growing season (May to August). Undocumented migration was most likely from areas experiencing extreme drought, and migrants were less likely to return to their communities of origin when extreme weather persisted. These findings establish the role of weather shocks in undocumented Mexican migration to, and eventual settlement in, the United States. The findings also suggest that extreme weather conditions, which are likely to increase with climate change, promote clandestine mobility across borders and, thus, expose migrants to risks associated with crossing dangerous terrain and relying upon smugglers.

How do environmental stressors influence migration? A meta-regression analysis of environmental migration literature

BACKGROUND

The amount of literature on environmental migration is increasing. However, existing studies exhibit contradictory results. A systematic synthesis of the environment-migration relationship is much needed.

OBJECTIVE

This study summarizes research findings, calculates the effect sizes of environmental stressors, identifies publication bias, and investigates heterogeneous environmental effects on migration.

METHODS

We collected 3,380 estimates from 128 studies published between 2000 and 2020 to explore the environment-migration relationship and performed weighted instrumental variable regression to unveil the heterogeneous environmental effects on out- and net migration.

RESULTS

The majority of environmental stressors were not important predictors of out- and net migration. Among the results showing environmental impacts on migration, 58% and 68% reported that environmental stressors increased out- and net migration, respectively, while 58% reported that environmental stressors decreased in-migration. The overall environmental impact on migration was small; however, disaster-related stressors showed a medium effect, and rapid-onset stressors had a stronger impact than slow-onset ones. Multivariate meta-regression analyses demonstrated that environmental stressors were more likely to trigger internal migration than international migration and that developed countries were less likely to experience out-migration. Rapid-onset environmental stressors did not increase out-migration but played an important role in decreasing net migration toward environmentally stressed areas. Meanwhile, we also found a publication bias toward studies showing a positive relationship between environmental stressors and migration in the previous environmental migration literature.

CONCLUSIONS

Environmental stressors may affect migration; however, the environmental effect depends on migration measurements, environmental stressors' forces and rapidity, and the context in which migration takes place.

CONTRIBUTION

This study contributes to migration studies by synthesizing and validating the environment-migration relationship and enhancing our understanding of how and under what circumstances environmental stressors may affect migration.

Exploring interactions between socioeconomic context and natural hazards on human population displacement

Climate change is leading to more extreme weather hazards, forcing human populations to be displaced. We employ explainable machine learning techniques to model and understand internal displacement flows and patterns from observational data alone. For this purpose, a large, harmonized, global database of disaster-induced movements in the presence of floods, storms, and landslides during 2016-2021 is presented. We account for environmental, societal, and economic factors to predict the number of displaced persons per event in the affected regions. Here we show that displacements can be primarily attributed to the combination of poor household conditions and intense precipitation, as revealed through the interpretation of the trained models using both Shapley values and causality-based methods. We hence provide empirical evidence that differential or uneven vulnerability exists and provide a means for its quantification, which could help advance evidence-based mitigation and adaptation planning efforts.

Dry growing seasons predicted Central American migration to the US from 2012 to 2018

Controlling for factors such as criminal violence and poverty, we tested if drier than usual growing season weather was a predictor of emigration from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras to the US between 2012 and 2018. We focus on growing season weather because agriculture is a primary transmission pathway from the effects of climate change upon migration. We secured the migration apprehensions data for our analysis through a FOIA request to US Customs and Border Protection. Border Patrol intake interviews recorded the original home location of families that arrived at the southern US border. We used this geographic information to measure recent weather patterns and social circumstances in the area that each family departed. We found 70.7% more emigration to the US when local growing seasons in Central America were recently drier than the historical average since 1901.

Natural resources modulate the nexus between environmental shocks and human mobility

In the context of natural resource degradation, migration can act as means of adaptation both for those leaving and those supported by remittances. Migration can also result from an inability to adapt in-situ, with people forced to move, sometimes to situations of worse or of the same exposure to environmental threats. The deleterious impacts of resource degradation have been proposed in some situations to limit the ability to move. In this contribution, we use remote sensed information coupled with population density data for continental Africa to assess quantitatively the prevalence of migration and immobility in the context of one cause of resource degradation: drought. We find that the effect of drought on mobility is amplified with the frequency at which droughts are experienced and that higher income households appear more resilient to climatic shocks and are less likely to resort to mobility as an adaptation response.

Time to Mainstream the Environment into Migration Theory?

As with all social processes, human migration is a dynamic process that requires regular theoretical reflection; this article offers such reflection as related to the role of the natural environment in contemporary migration research and theory. A growing body of evidence suggests that environmental contexts are increasingly shifting social and ecological realities in ways that are consequential to migration theory. We review some of this evidence, providing examples applicable to core migration theories, including neoclassical economic and migration systems perspectives, the "push-pull" framework, and the new economics of labor migration. We suggest that neglecting consideration of the natural environment may yield misspecified migration models that attribute migration too heavily to social and economic factors particularly in the context of contemporary climate change,. On the other hand, failure to consider migration theory in climate scenarios may lead to simplistic projections and understandings, as in the case of "climate refugees". We conclude that migration researchers have an obligation to accurately reflect the complexity of migration's drivers, including the environment, within migration scholarship especially in the context of global climate change.

Compound impacts from droughts and structural vulnerability on human mobility

Extreme dry events already disrupt populations' ability to migrate. In a warming climate, compound drought events could amplify vulnerability and drive forced migration. Here, we contribute the first multi-method research design on societal impacts from compound drought events. We show how mobility patterns are shaped by the intersection of drought and social vulnerability factors in three drought-prone countries - Madagascar, Nepal, and Mexico. We find that internal migration in agricultural communities in Mexico increased by 14 to 24 basis points from 1991 to 2018 and will prospectively increase by 2 to 15 basis points in Nepal in case of a compound drought event in 2025. We show that consecutive drought events exacerbate structural vulnerabilities, limiting migrants' adaptation options, including long-range migration. We conclude that the additional social pre-conditions, e.g., social isolation and lack of accurate information, ultimately limit migration as an adaptation option for households vulnerable to compound drought events.

The Childhood Origins of Climate-Induced Mobility and Immobility

The literature on climate exposures and human migration has focused largely on assessing short-term responses to temperature and precipitation shocks. In this paper, we suggest that this common coping strategies model can be extended to account for mechanisms that link environmental conditions to migration behavior over longer periods of time. We argue that early-life climate exposures may affect the likelihood of migration from childhood through early adulthood by influencing parental migration, community migration networks, human capital development, and decisions about household resource allocation, all of which are correlates of geographic mobility. After developing this conceptual framework, we evaluate the corresponding hypotheses using a big data approach, analyzing 20 million individual georeferenced records from 81 censuses implemented across 31 countries in tropical Africa, Latin America, and Southeast Asia. For each world region, we estimate regression models that predict lifetime migration (a change in residence between birth and ages 30-39) as a function of temperature and precipitation anomalies in early life, defined as the year prior to birth through age four. Results suggest that early-life climate is systematically associated with changes in the probability of lifetime migration in most regions of the tropics, with the largest effects observed in sub-Saharan Africa. In East and Southern Africa, the effects of temperature shocks vary by sex and educational attainment and in a manner that suggests women and those of lower socioeconomic status are most vulnerable. Finally, we compare our main results with models using alternative measures of climate exposures. This comparison suggests climate exposures during the prenatal period and first few years of life are particularly (but not exclusively) salient for lifetime migration, which is most consistent with the hypothesized human capital mechanism.

Climate Change, Agrarian Distress, and the Feminization of Agriculture in South Asia

Agrarian distress-the experience wherein sustaining an agricultural livelihood becomes increasingly challenging-is well documented in South Asia. Another regional trend is the feminization of agriculture, or an increase in women's work and decision-making in agriculture. Scholars have recently linked these two phenomena, demonstrating that agrarian distress results in the movement of men out of agriculture, driving women into the sector. Yet what remains underexplored is the relationship between climate change, a contributor to agrarian distress, and the feminization of agriculture. To examine this, we link socioeconomic and demographic data from India, Bangladesh, and Nepal to high-resolution gridded climate data. We then estimate a set of multivariate regression models to explore linkages between recent temperature and precipitation variability from historical norms and the likelihood that a woman works in agriculture. Results suggest that hotter-than-normal conditions in the year prior to the survey are associated with an increased likelihood of working in agriculture among women. This relationship is particularly strong among married women and women with less than a primary education. While more research is needed to fully understand the mechanisms between climate change and the feminization of agriculture, our findings suggest a need for gender-sensitive climate change adaptation strategies.

Geochemical evolution and seasonality of groundwater recharge at water-scarce southeast margin of the Chihuahuan Desert in Mexico

Climate models for the 21st century project further reduction in the warm season precipitation and more frequent droughts across Mexico. In the possible scenario of enhanced aridity from global warming, the δ¹⁸O (-10.6 to -6.3 ‰) and δ²H (-71.1 to -57.1 ‰) compositions and deuterium-excess (0.2-14.6‰) of shallow groundwater from two different basins (Sandia and El Potosi) with similar geological and geomorphological settings were considered to evaluate the influences of early summer rainfall and later summer tropical storms on aquifers at water-scarce southeast margin of the Chihuahuan Desert. Groundwater of the Sandia Basin was recharged mainly from tropical storms. Higher CO₂ partial pressure (log pCO₂: -2.70 to -1.61) caused more gypsum dissolution (Ca-Mg-SO₄ facies) and the effect of irrigation return flow (Ca-Mg-Cl facies) was minor. Even though the El Potosi Basin is in proximity, its groundwater was recharged from both the early and late summer precipitations. The multivariate factor analysis helped to separate the process of rock-water interactions from the recharge seasonality. Gypsum dissolution was less as the partial pressure of CO₂ was comparatively lower (log pCO₂: -3.01 to -2.15), and the ion exchange along with carbonate mineral dissolutions led to Ca-Mg-HCO₃ facies. Over-exploitation under the condition of reduced warm season rainfall would continue to enhance the salinity of groundwater in this region. Hence, the drought mitigation policies should prioritize sustainability of the depleted aquifers and cultivation of salinity resistant crops.

Climate Mobility and Development Cooperation

Development cooperation actors have been addressing climate change as a cross-cutting issue and investing in climate adaptation projects since the early 2000s. More recently, as concern has risen about the potential impacts of climate variability and change on human mobility, development cooperation actors have begun to design projects that intentionally address the drivers of migration, including climate impacts on livelihoods. However, to date, we know little about the development cooperation's role and function in responding to climate related mobility and migration. As such, the main aim of this paper is to outline the policy frameworks and approaches shaping development cooperation actors' engagement and to identify areas for further exploration and investment. First, we frame the concept of climate mobility and migration and discuss some applicable policy frameworks that govern the issue from various perspectives; secondly, we review the toolbox of approaches that development cooperation actors bring to climate mobility; and third, we discuss the implications of the current Covid-19 pandemic and identify avenues for the way forward. We conclude that ensuring safe and orderly mobility and the decent reception and long-term inclusion of migrants and displaced persons under conditions of more severe climate hazards, and in the context of rising nationalism and xenophobia, poses significant challenges. Integrated approaches across multiple policy sectors and levels of governance are needed. In addition to resources, development cooperation actors can bring data to help empower the most affected communities and regions and leverage their convening power to foster more coordinated approaches within and across countries.

Willingness to help climate migrants: A survey experiment in the Korail slum of Dhaka, Bangladesh

Bangladesh faces a severe rural to urban migration challenge, which is accentuated by climate change and the Rohingya crisis. These migrants often reside in urban slums and struggle to access public services, which are already short in supply for existing slum dwellers. Given the inadequacy of governmental efforts, nonprofits have assumed responsibility for providing essential services such as housing, healthcare, and education. Would local slum-dwellers in Dhaka be willing to support such nonprofits financially? We deploy an in-person survey experiment with three frames (generic migrants, climate migrants, and religiously persecuted Rohingya migrants) to assess Dhaka slum-dwellers' willingness to support a humanitarian charity that provides healthcare services to migrants. Bangladesh is noted as a climate change hotspot and its government is vocal about the climate issue in international forums. While we expected this to translate into public support for climate migrants, we find respondents are 16% less likely to support climate migrants in relation to the generic migrants. However, consistent with the government's hostility towards Rohingya, we find that respondents are 9% less likely to support a charity focused on helping Rohingya migrants. Our results are robust even when we examine subpopulations such as recent arrivals in Dhaka and those who have experienced floods (both of which could be expected to be more sympathetic to climate migrants), as well as those who regularly follow the news (and hence are well informed about the climate and the Rohingya crisis).

Mapping farmers' vulnerability to climate change and its induced hazards: evidence from the rice-growing zones of Punjab, Pakistan

In developing countries like Pakistan, agriculture constitutes the primary source of support for the majority of rural and the adjacent urban population. Despite the large part it plays in the economy, it faces significant challenges caused by climate change, such as rising temperatures, floods, droughts, and yield losses. In Pakistan, rice, which is the second most essential food crop and livelihood source for the millions of farm households, is facing significant yield reduction due to climate change. It is pertinent to consider the vulnerabilities of farm households and related factors to create a climatic-resilient farming system. The current study is aimed at mapping the vulnerability of rice-growing communities of Punjab province while considering climatic challenges beyond temperatures and rainfall changes. The Climate Change Vulnerability Index (CCVI) was calculated for four rice-growing districts of Punjab province using the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's three-indicator approach (sensitivity, exposition, and adaptive capacity). According to the results, farmers in the study area are highly vulnerable to climate change (CCVI 0.81). Specifically, the indices of vulnerability components showed that farmers have a high level of exposure (EVI 0.72) and susceptibility (SVI 0.59) to the climatic uncertainties with the least adaptive capacity (AVI 0.50). Further, the vulnerability analysis across different rice-growing regions showed that farmers, particularly in the low-yield region, are more vulnerable (EVI 0.73, SVI 0.61, AVI 0.49, CCVI 0.85) than the farmers in the high-yield region (EVI 0.71, SVI 0.58, AVI 0.51, CCVI 0.78). These findings imply that regional priority must be given despite the difference in farm performance to reduce production losses. Besides, climate-smart adaptation initiatives should be facilitated at the farm and regional levels through the implementation of appropriate policies and investment plans.

Climate anomalies, land degradation and rural out-migration in Uganda

Globally, rural livelihoods are increasingly challenged by the dual threats of land degradation and climate change. These issues are of particular concern in sub-Saharan Africa, where land degradation is believed to be severe and where climate change will bring higher temperatures and shifts in rainfall. To date, however, we know little about the relative effects of these various potential environmental stressors on migration. To examine these processes, we link longitudinal data from 850 Ugandan households with environmental data on soils, forests, and climate, and then analyze these data using approaches that account for potential spatial and temporal confounders. Our findings reveal that climate anomalies, rather than land degradation, are the primary contributor to environmental migration in Uganda, with heat stress of particular importance. Short hot spells increase temporary migration, an element of a diversified household livelihood strategy, while long-term heat stress induces permanent migration through an agricultural livelihoods pathway.

Evacuees and Migrants Exhibit Different Migration Systems After the Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami

Research on the destinations of environmentally induced migrants has found simultaneous migration to both nearby and long-distance destinations, most likely caused by the comingling of evacuee and permanent migrant data. Using a unique data set of separate evacuee and migration destinations, we compare and contrast the pre-, peri-, and post-disaster migration systems of permanent migrants and temporary evacuees of the Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami. We construct and compare prefecture-to-prefecture migration matrices for Japanese prefectures to investigate the similarity of migration systems. We find evidence supporting the presence of two separate migration systems-one for evacuees, who seem to emphasize short distance migration, and one for more permanent migrants, who emphasize migration to destinations with preexisting ties. Additionally, our results show that permanent migration in the peri- and post-periods is largely identical to the preexisting migration system. Our results demonstrate stability in migration systems concerning migration after a major environmental event.

Rural-Urban Migration and the Growth of Informal Settlements: A Socio-Ecological System Conceptualization with Insights Through a “Water Lens”

Informal settlements i.e., slums emerge from the interplay of multidimensional factors related to urbanization and sustainability. While the contribution of urban factors is well understood, the role of external drivers, such as uncontrolled migration to urban areas, is rarely addressed in research or policy-making. This study develops a novel conceptualization of slums by reviewing the pushing and pulling factors of migration and their contribution to informal settlements through 1) a socio-ecological system approach and 2) the concept of adaptive capacity. Further, it advances the discussion around synergistic and coherent policy-making in the urban context by reviewing three urban agendas and further using water as a case with the concept of cross-cutting domains. We show that the emergence of urban challenges can, and should be, linked to the root causes of flows into urban areas. Understanding these linkages through a socio-ecological system framework opens a window for knowledge-based policy development and addressing the question of how to avoid unsustainable urban development. Urbanization is one of the phenomena where the excessive complexity and dimensions of problems should not hamper action but instead, actions should be encouraged and enabled with synergistic and integrative pathways for sustainable urban development.

Climate Migration at the Height and End of the Great Mexican Emigration Era

Previous research has linked increasing climate-change-related variability to Mexico-US migration, but only under particular climatic/social conditions and periods of high irregular migration. Using the 2000 and 2010 Mexican censuses, we examine this environment-migration nexus across a broader set of socioecological contexts and during periods of both increasing (1995-1999) and declining (2005-2009) migration. Consistent with the notion that climate can "trap" populations in place, we find that frequent/severe bouts of hot or dry conditions are associated with lower US-bound migration from most of rural Mexico. However, we do find higher climate outmigration during episodes hot and dry climate, or out of places with lower vulnerability. Our comparisons across periods suggest that climate migration is affected by conditions in the U.S. in a similar or slightly weaker manner as other forms of migration are. Altogether, our findings suggest that rural Mexico is unlikely to push large numbers of international "climate refugees" and that climate migration is indeed sensitive to conditions in sending and destination areas.

Climate Change and the Neglected Tropical Diseases

Climate change is expected to impact across every domain of society, including health. The majority of the world's population is susceptible to pathological, infectious disease whose life cycles are sensitive to environmental factors across different physical phases including air, water and soil. Nearly all so-called neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) fall into this category, meaning that future geographic patterns of transmission of dozens of infections are likely to be affected by climate change over the short (seasonal), medium (annual) and long (decadal) term. This review offers an introduction into the terms and processes deployed in modelling climate change and reviews the state of the art in terms of research into how climate change may affect future transmission of NTDs. The 34 infections included in this chapter are drawn from the WHO NTD list and the WHO blueprint list of priority diseases. For the majority of infections, some evidence is available of which environmental factors contribute to the population biology of parasites, vectors and zoonotic hosts. There is a general paucity of published research on the potential effects of decadal climate change, with some exceptions, mainly in vector-borne diseases.

Internal and International Mobility as Adaptation to Climatic Variability in Contemporary Mexico: Evidence from the Integration of Census and Satellite Data

Migration provides a strategy for rural Mexican households to cope with, or adapt to, weather events and climatic variability. Yet prior studies on "environmental migration" in this context have not examined the differences between choices of internal (domestic) or international movement. In addition, much of the prior work relied on very coarse spatial scales to operationalize the environmental variables such as rainfall patterns. To overcome these limitations, we use fine-grain rainfall estimates derived from NASA's Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) satellite. The rainfall estimates are combined with Population and Agricultural Census information to examine associations between environmental changes and municipal rates of internal and international migration 2005-2010. Our findings suggest that municipal-level rainfall deficits relative to historical levels are an important predictor of both international and internal migration, especially in areas dependent on seasonal rainfall for crop productivity. Although our findings do not contradict results of prior studies using coarse spatial resolution, they offer clearer results and a more spatially nuanced examination of migration as related to social and environmental vulnerability and thus higher degrees of confidence.

Environmental Inequality and Pollution Advantage among Immigrants in the United States

Environmental inequality scholarship has paid little attention to the disproportional exposure of immigrants in the United States (U.S.) to unfavorable environmental conditions. This study investigates whether new international migrants in the U.S. are exposed to environmental hazards and how this pattern varies among immigrant subpopulations (e.g., Hispanics, Asian, European). We combine sociodemographic information from the American Community Survey with toxicity-weighted chemical concentrations (Toxics Release Inventory) to model the relationship between toxin exposure and the relative population of recent immigrants across Public Use Microdata Areas (PUMAs, n=2,054) during 2005-2011. Results from spatial panel models show that immigrants tend to be less exposed to toxins, suggesting resilience instead of vulnerability. This pattern was pronounced among immigrants from Europe and Latin America (excluding Mexico). However, our results revealed that Mexican immigrants are disproportionately exposed to environmental hazards in wealthy regions.

Climate shocks and rural-urban migration in Mexico: Exploring nonlinearities and thresholds

Adverse climatic conditions may differentially drive human migration patterns between rural and urban areas, with implications for changes in population composition and density, access to infrastructure and resources, and the delivery of essential goods and services. However, there is little empirical evidence to support this notion. In this study, we investigate the relationship between climate shocks and migration between rural and urban areas within Mexico. We combine individual records from the 2000 and 2010 Mexican censuses (n=683,518) with high-resolution climate data from Terra Populus that are linked to census data at the municipality level (n=2,321). We measure climate shocks as monthly deviation from a 30-year (1961-1990) long-term climate normal period, and uncover important nonlinearities using quadratic and cubic specifications. Satellite-based measures of urban extents allow us to classify migrant-sending and migrant-receiving municipalities as rural or urban to examine four internal migration patterns: rural-urban, rural-rural, urban-urban, and urban-rural. Among our key findings, results from multilevel models reveal that each additional drought month increases the odds of rural-urban migration by 3.6%. In contrast, the relationship between heat months and rural-urban migration is nonlinear. After a threshold of ~34 heat months is surpassed, the relationship between heat months and rural-urban migration becomes positive and progressively increases in strength. Policy and programmatic interventions may therefore reduce climate induced rural-urban migration in Mexico through rural climate change adaptation initiatives, while also assisting rural migrants in finding employment and housing in urban areas to offset population impacts.

Domestic and International Climate Migration from Rural Mexico

Evidence is increasing that climate change and variability may influence human migration patterns. However, there is less agreement regarding the type of migration streams most strongly impacted. This study tests whether climate change more strongly impacted international compared to domestic migration from rural Mexico during 1986-99. We employ eight temperature and precipitation-based climate change indices linked to detailed migration histories obtained from the Mexican Migration Project. Results from multilevel discrete-time event-history models challenge the assumption that climate-related migration will be predominantly short distance and domestic, but instead show that climate change more strongly impacted international moves from rural Mexico. The stronger climate impact on international migration may be explained by the self-insurance function of international migration, the presence of strong migrant networks, and climate-related changes in wage difference. While a warming in temperature increased international outmigration, higher levels of precipitation declined the odds of an international move.

Climate, migration, and the local food security context: Introducing Terra Populus

Studies investigating the connection between environmental factors and migration are difficult to execute because they require the integration of microdata and spatial information. In this article, we introduce the novel, publically available data extraction system Terra Populus (TerraPop), which was designed to facilitate population-environment studies. We showcase the use of TerraPop by exploring variations in the climate-migration association in Burkina Faso and Senegal based on differences in the local food security context. Food security was approximated using anthropometric indicators of child stunting and wasting derived from Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) and linked to the TerraPop extract of climate and migration information. We find that an increase in heat waves was associated with a decrease in international migration from Burkina Faso, while excessive precipitation increased international moves from Senegal. Significant interactions reveal that the adverse effects of heat waves and droughts are strongly amplified in highly food insecure Senegalese departments.

Climate Shocks and the Timing of Migration from Mexico

Although evidence is increasing that climate shocks influence human migration, it is unclear exactly when people migrate after a climate shock. A climate shock might be followed by an immediate migration response. Alternatively, migration, as an adaptive strategy of last resort, might be delayed and employed only after available in-situ (in-place) adaptive strategies are exhausted. In this paper, we explore the temporally lagged association between a climate shock and future migration. Using multilevel event-history models, we analyze the risk of Mexico-U.S. migration over a seven-year period after a climate shock. Consistent with a delayed response pattern, we find that the risk of migration is low immediately after a climate shock and increases as households pursue and cycle through in-situ adaptive strategies available to them. However, about three years after the climate shock, the risk of migration decreases, suggesting that households are eventually successful in adapting in-situ.