Climate Migration: A Daunting Challenge Ahead

The media has been informing us, especially this decade, about natural disasters such as hurricanes, droughts, floods and sudden-onset disasters that occur all around the world. These emerging scenes showcase the accelerated effects of climate change which possess completely destructive effect over marine and terrestrial ecosystems, as well as human well-being in both short and long-time spans. Millions of people are currently losing their livelihoods or homes and are not able to provide for their kids because of devastating droughts and floods.

Considering the direct risk of climate change to human security through severe climate and environmental variations, climate change could also easily interact with various political, social and economic factors, hence it plays a big role in exacerbated instability, conflict and fragility along with the issue of human mobility. This multifaceted characteristic of climate change makes it one of the greatest threats that humanity faces in this century. The spilling effect over industry, agriculture, water, tourism, sanitation, health, energy, environment and biodiversity is another aspect to assess the magnitude of the danger.

In a short period of time, it can become a mobilizing factor for millions of inhabitants. According to the World Bank’s Groundswell Report, in the most pessimistic scenario, climate change is expected to displace up to 216 million people across the globe by 2050. In another scenario, according to international thinktank, the IEP predicts that 2 billion people could be displaced globally by 2050 due to climate change and natural disasters.

The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s 2022 report has confirmed that “climate change and weather extremes are increasingly driving displacement in all regions around the world” (IPCC, 2022). And not all the regions have a proportionate share, some regions are more heavily affected by climate change than others due to geographic factors, population growth, states capacities and other socioeconomic factors. For instance, North Africa and the Sahel suffers from extreme and unpredictable weather conditions that caused to natural disasters which possess devastating impact on crop yields, fisheries and socioeconomic development. According to the 2019 Afrobarometer Policy Series on climate change, which represents the largest-ever public opinion survey of Africans’ perceptions on different issues, respondents from 34 African countries stated that climate conditions for agricultural production have worsened over the past decade, which has had a severe impact on their livelihoods and put their household food security at serious risk. Together with North Africa and Sahel regions, the sub-Saharan region is depicted as a real hotspot of climate-induced migration due to severe desertification and droughts in arable and farming areas and the regions’ high dependence on agriculture and pastoral movements. Latin America and South Asia are also among the most vulnerable regions that will be hit the hardest.

Climate-driven migration could occur in two ways: internal and external. Internal migration covers all the movements within the country such as from rural to urban areas while external migration simply means to change countries. However, for now, external migration does not take place as often as internal since few people have the means to afford living in a foreign country for a longer period of time. Nevertheless, internal migration might as well translate into transnational movement following some years of work and saving some money in urban areas.

As majority of these movements are internal, this mobility to urban areas will become a remarkable pressure over the cities. While cities themselves are tackling the issues related to climate change, once climate refugees end up at their door they will be obliged to face with political and economic challenges of migration. When droughts, floods, and heat waves occurs, and agricultural lands are not fit to harvest, these people will move to urban areas without a second thought as they have nothing to lose.

More sudden natural disaster signifies more easily observable migration. Extreme weather events such as hurricanes or torrential storms coerce huge amount of people to flee from their own homes in search of shelter. However, mobility of people due to slowly developing climate agents that negatively affect their lives is not easily observable. Reductions in crop productivity due to long droughts or rising temperatures are a huge negative impact on the well-being of people and remarkable catalyst behind migration, yet it goes unnoticed as it spreads over a long period of time. Slow-onset climate effect is a driver of internal rather than external mobility, as people cannot reap the soil to provide for their family, hence ends up moving to the urban areas which is the only alternative that provides a possibility for making livelihood and habitability apart from transnational migration.

An action plan is necessary to tackle climate change which is one of the most impactful factors that contribute to the world’s already existing migration crisis due to its negative impact on people’s livelihoods and productivity in highly exposed locations. Fortunately, international governments are starting to pay more attention to this growing problem. In November 2021, U.S. President Joe Biden released the Report on the Impact of Climate Change on Migration – the white house report represents the first the U.S. Government has officially recognized a link between climate change and migration.

Collective effort is the answer to this approaching problem and creating economic opportunities in zones that are threatened by environmental change along with attributing protected status are foundational articles of that effort. Climate financing as the White House report indicates is necessary to reduce the impact of internal and external human mobility. Additionally, as the UN Human Rights Council defined in March 2018, they are “the world's forgotten victims”. They have no access to legal protections of human rights. There is not even a consensus on the legal definition. International and national bodies must rearrange their regulations and laws to issue some protection to these people who are facing deadly impacts of climate change on the front row while they have minimal fault in the current status of the globe.

Yet the goals set out in the Paris Agreement still remain as a definitive solution to this urgent problem we call climate change and its spill-over effects on various sectors.

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