Remittances—funds sent by migrants to family and friends back home—are an important source of global monetary flows, and they have implications for the maintenance and transformation of land systems. This open-access paper was recently published in World Development. Under the lead of Elizabeth A. Mack from Michigan State University, this paper was written by a group of authors from the Working Group on Remittance Dynamics and Land Change of the Global Land Project of which Kerstin Nolte is a member. The goal was to understand the specific roles remittances play in land system changes and thereby clarify the multiple processes associated with migration and their independent and interactive effects. Our systematic review of 51 journal articles finds that the linkages uncovered were commonly subtle and/or indirect. Very few studies looked at the direct connections between receipt of remittances and quantitative changes in land. Most commonly, the relationship between remittances and land change was found to occur through specific pathways. We find four non-exclusive pathways through which households spend remittances with consequent changes to land systems: (1) agricultural crops and livestock, (2) agricultural labor and technologies, (3) land purchases, and (4) non-agricultural purchases and consumables. In the papers reviewed, these expenditures are linked to various land system change outcomes, including land use change, soil degradation, pasture degradation, afforestation/deforestation/degradation, agricultural intensification/extensification/diversification, and no impact.
Mack, E. A.; Sauls, L. A.; Jokisch, B. D.; Nolte, K.; Schmook, B.; He, Y.; Radel, C.; Allington, G. R. H.; Kelley, L. C.; Scott, C. K.; Leisz, S.; Chi, G.; Sagynbekova, L.; Cuba, N.; Henebry, G. M. (2023): Remittances and land change: A systematic review. World Development, 168, 106251. DOI: 10.1016/j.worlddev.2023.106251
