Climate Change and the Potential for Conflict and Extreme Migration in the Andes: A Computational Approach for Interdisciplinary Modeling and Anticipatory Policy-Making

Abstract

I present an agent-based model to support the thesis that extreme migration and social conflict can emerge by simply extending the current social and natural conditions, and by replicating simple mechanisms at the individual level. To carry out this work, every available information on water supply and demand has been collected and organized using official data sources, producing a baseline dated in 2011; and the basic demographics of the population has been implemented using the last official census (2007). Based on these data, many computations have been made to find, calibrate and represent the trends in population growth and water balance. For the basic mechanisms at the individual level, field work guided both by theoretical considerations and ethnographic findings has been done. A key assumption on the processing of information, not identified from the field work, has been introduced via a Bayesian belief updating mechanism.