Climate Change & Mass Migration
This is the 2nd Article in the series of Climate Change: Effect Around the World. In this article, I’ll elaborate on Mass Migration due to climate change. This article aims to give the reader a summarized view about Climate Migrants studied by different researchers, activists & UN experts who are working in this field.
One of the worst effects Climate change will bring along is Mass Migration. As Climate change will be happening the effect will be intensifying and the number of Migrants is expected to grow up to 1 billion by 2050. Well, you must be thinking about how 1 billion people are going to be migrants just because of climate change, so let’s understand the relationship between both first.
How Mass Migration due to Climate Change??
The effects of Climate Change are visible across the globe. Some parts of the world including Russia is gaining from climate change(Will talk about it in a different article) while the UN predicts most of the other parts will be loosing. The adverse effect is visible across the different regions. Definitely, across different part the intensity of effect varies. In countries of Sub-Saharan Africa, the intensity is quite high, while in the Asia Pacific Region, the indirect effect is most visible in Bangladesh, while India faces uneven distribution of unpredicted rainfall lead to flash flood across the country. While few regions of the world are most vulnerable to climate change, the human lives living in these areas will not wait for their destruction, they will migrate towards areas of less vulnerability. And the trend is quite visible, e.g. thousands of families from the drought-affected areas of Somalia migrated to Burco, Somalia. And researchers claim Climate Change was majorly responsible for drought in the region. In short, if there is any disaster in a region, human life living there will migrate to relatively safer region and no boundary can stop them from doing so.
Climate Change & Increasing population
Climate scientists have long warned that the impacts of climate change will hit less developed regions in the global south harder and earlier than wealthier parts of the world. A major consequence of that trend, analysis of the U.N.’s latest population forecast shows, is that countries experiencing the world’s most zx population growth over the coming decades will also be on the front lines of climate change.[1]
Time analyzed the graph of population forecasts of countries, published by the U.N. in June’19 which are most vulnerable to climate change and results look scary. The population growth of most of the vulnerable countries is at least 5X of the world average and now the 1 billion migrants seem very reasonable.
All but one of the 10 most vulnerable countries are in sub-Saharan Africa, a region whose total population is expected to double between now and 2050 and keep on growing long after populations have plateaued or even declined in wealthier parts of the world. Europe, home to 27 of the 36 countries ranked “low risk” on the index, will likely see its population decline by 5% by 2050.
Somalia, Burundi and the DRC will have to deal with their populations more than doubling by 2050 while facing frequent droughts, heavy floods, extreme heat, soil erosion and other physical impacts from climate change.
Migration in Current World Politics
At present, the overall world community is growing to become more conservative & nationalist. Trump’s plan to make a wall across Mexico’s boundary is a hard step to prevent immigrants. Vladimir Putin statement said, “the liberal idea” had “outlived its purpose” as the public turned against immigration, open borders and multiculturalism. China has never been welcoming to immigrants. India implemented NRC to take all legal rights from Bangladeshi migrants and may put them in detention centers anytime soon. Europe seems liberal for now, but for how long is a question as their internal politics have been changing recently.
The world is growing to become more conservative and seems like most of the economic sufficient country will have a very strict policy towards immigrants. The question is who is going to look after the most affected parts, will they be left to die?
International Organization for Migration
IOM looks after migration of humans in general, also runs a special division MECC (Migration, Environment and Climate Change) which monitor Climate Migrants. While IOM objectives are:
- To prevent forced migration that results from environmental factors to the extent possible;
- To provide assistance and protection to affected populations when forced migration does occur in situations of environmental and climate change, and to seek durable solutions to their situation;
- To facilitate migration in the context of climate change adaptation and enhance the resilience of affected communities.
It will be interesting to see the functioning of IOM with changing world politics and there role in supporting immigrants.
Bangladesh: An Overview
Bangladesh because of its flat topography, dense population and weak infrastructure classified as uniquely vulnerable to the powerful and unpredictable forces that climate change is compounding. The results are visible there in the form of flood and drought. In the latest report, UNICEF says “Climate change threatens lives and futures of over 19 million children in Bangladesh”. That is more than 10% of the population of the country. The report cites research showing that Bangladesh has 6 million climate migrants already. Many head to capital Dhaka and other major cities, where children risk being pushed into dangerous forms of labor and into early marriages. It also claims migrants numbers could more than double by 2050. No doubt Bangladesh has improved a lot in children’s access to education and health services, but sadly this progress will also get severely disrupted.
Also by 2100, the sea level rise is predicted by 3ft which will submerge 20% of the country’s land and will create 30 million migrants alone in Bangladesh. As migrants’ numbers will increase migration towards neighboring countries including India will also become streamline even after a strict policy of India towards immigrants.
Sadly, all the superpowers who seems to make strict policy for immigrants today, have been the biggest contributor to Climate Change. And others which have to affect more have been left to suffer. If the world has to minimize the loss from Climate Change, they have to stand as a community ‘together’.
