Post-War Environmental and Socio-Economic Crisis and Their Contribution to Youth Migration

2026-09-22T11:39:14+00:00

International youth migration has increasingly become a defining socio-economic challenge, particularly in ecologically vulnerable and conflict-affected regions like the Horn of Africa. This systematic review examines the compounding impacts of the 2020–2022 Tigray war, post-war environmental degradation, and socio-economic crises on youth out-migration in Northern Ethiopia. Adhering to the PRISMA guidelines, a rigorous literature search of electronic databases and gray literature sources published between 2020 and 2026 yielded 43 eligible studies for qualitative synthesis. The findings reveal that the intersection of prolonged armed conflict and severe environmental shocks such as recurrent droughts, land degradation, and the destruction of agricultural and livestock buffers has severely eroded rural livelihoods. Consequently, traditional coping mechanisms have broken down, transforming youth migration from a standard livelihood diversification strategy into an often unmanaged, forced survival mechanism. While remittances offer temporary relief to struggling households, mass out-migration accelerates rural labor shortages, deepens dependency ratios, and exposes young people to the severe hazards of irregular migration. The review highlights critical institutional gaps and emphasizes that sustainable post-war recovery requires integrated policies combining environmental restoration, rural livelihood revitalization, and youth-targeted economic opportunities.

Rethinking Coastal Spatial Planning Through Equity: Evidence from Semarang and Dutch Water Governance

2026-09-01T02:02:18+00:00

Coastal spatial planning can generate socio-spatial exclusion when infrastructure-led development prioritizes physical protection over social equity and local livelihood security. This systematic literature review synthesizes 47 peer-reviewed studies and 8 government documents to evaluate the implementation of Semarang’s Spatial Plan (RTRW 2011–2031) and the Giant Sea Wall project. Despite inclusive policy narratives, hard-engineering interventions remain insufficient in addressing extreme relative sea-level rise driven by the combined effects of land subsidence and sea-level rise (103–128 mm/year), while potentially transferring flood risks to vulnerable coastal communities. The synthesis identifies seven critical global implementation gaps: (1) political-economic priorities overriding risk-based zoning, (2) limited institutional recognition of geodetic hazards, (3) inadequate participatory planning mechanisms, (4) fragmented regulatory responsibilities across administrative institutions, (5) tenure insecurity associated with coastal commodification, (6) technological path dependency in hydraulic infrastructure, and (7) disconnected livelihood compensation frameworks. Drawing on comparative insights from Dutch democratic waterschappen and the Room for the River approach, this study demonstrates how infrastructure-centric coastal governance may undermine the resource access and livelihood security of traditional fishing communities, thereby reinforcing distributional inequalities. Moving beyond conventional engineering solutions, this paper proposes an equity-centered spatial governance framework that integrates social justice considerations into formal coastal zoning regulations. Future research should develop spatially explicit socio-ecological vulnerability indices to quantitatively assess long-term displacement risks and economic pressures affecting informal marine economies.

Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences (JHASS)

Post-War Environmental and Socio-Economic Crisis and Their Contribution to Youth Migration

Rethinking Coastal Spatial Planning Through Equity: Evidence from Semarang and Dutch Water Governance