Climate change exacerbates desertification forcing millions of rural people to urbanize, especially in developing countries. Our quantitative analysis across African countries highlights migrants' two typical sequential moves: i) people escape from villages to cities; ii) through cities' enabling settings, some of them emigrate to developed countries. We find that: i) previous lower fresh water availability our climate-related proxyand drops in GDP's agricultural share in Sub-Sahara seem to boost subsequent urbanization: ii) previously heightened urbanization subsequently inflates emigration rates. Thus, policies to combat land impoverishment/desertification would help both the environment and easing the stress that migration casts on societies' balance.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.