Population shift. It happens all the time, because of economic opportunity, war, and increasingly, climate change. According to the World Bank, more than 140 million people could move because of climate change by 2050, mostly within Sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, and Latin America.
Those three regions are home to 55 percent of the developing world’s population.Mass climate migration would cause severe humanitarian and development issues, and unsurprisingly, the poorest people will be hit the hardest.
The World Bank’s study, Groundswell – Preparing for Internal Climate Migration, is the most comprehensive of its kind. It focuses on climate change and how it impacts internal migration patterns, and finds that over the next three decades, tens of millions of people will be forced to leave home because of water scarcity, sea-level rise, storm surges, and crop failure. This is on top of millions of people already moving for political and economic reasons. It doesn’t have to be this way, but major national and global changes would need to take place for it to be prevented.
In Pacific and Oceania island chains, people are already migrating away from coastal areas. From Chad to Bangladesh to the United States, people are fleeing drought, flooding, hurricanes, and heat waves. In Bangladesh, it is estimated that 2,000 people per day moved to Dhaka in 2015 to escape sea-level rise. According to the Bangladesh government, a three-foot rise in sea level would erode almost 20 percent of the entire country. Some scientists predict a five-to-six foot rise by 2100, and if that were the case, 50 million people would be displaced. The World Bank says the coming internal migration will move people from rural areas to cities, something that is already happening.
“Rural populations, whose livelihoods depend on agricultural, are particularly vulnerable to migration pressures. They are more exposed, have high natural resource dependency and limited ability to cope with and manage risk,” said UN Migration Director General William Lacy Swing in 2017. “We cannot ignore the families, who put down the hoe and pick up their suitcases, because they make less and less each year from the same plot of land. Even when the yield is good, they struggle to survive. In this common case, migration to cities is not a true choice. The impact of this migration in urban planning and development must be acknowledged for the migrants and cities to thrive and prosper.”
We haven’t even touched on external climate migration, which should matter to those of us in the United States, where border debates rage. According to one estimate, one- percent of the entire population of Guatemala and Honduras could end up on the U.S.-Mexico border this fiscal year. Not all of this migration is due to climate change, but it does play a large role. The World Bank report says climate change could cause 1.4 million people in Central America (where one-third of jobs are in agriculture) and Mexico to leave their homes in the next three decades. “There are always a lot of reasons why people migrate,” Yarsinio Palacios, an expert on forestry in Guatemala, told the New Yorker’s Jonathan Blitzer. “Maybe a family member is sick. Maybe they are trying to make up for losses from the previous year. But in every situation, it has something to do with climate change.”
The western highlands take up twenty percent of Guatemala, from Antigua to the Mexican border. Residents–who are mostly indigenous–depend on agriculture to live, and in 2014 a group of scientists and agronomists working as part of Climate, Nature, and Communities of Guatemala, reported that the highlands region “was the most vulnerable area in the country to climate change.” Drought, floods, landslides, and hurricanes, combined with poor infrastructure, have destroyed their land and their livelihoods. Climate change is affecting migration to the United States, yet the Trump administration has cut aid programs geared toward mitigating the effects of climate change in Central America.
To bring it even closer to home for many of our readers, this month the New York Times ran an article suggesting that people within the United States move to Duluth, Minnesota or Buffalo, New York to escape the effects of climate change. “As the West burns, the South swelters and the East floods, some Americans are starting to reconsider where they choose to live,” the article begins. This is not an issue we can dismiss as far from home or only happening in developing countries.
There is some positive news, though. If taken seriously, “this worst-case scenario of over 140 million could be dramatically reduced, by as much as 80 percent, or more than 100 million people,” according to the World Bank Report.
“We have a small window now, before the effects of climate change deepen, to prepare the ground for this new reality,” said World Bank Chief Executive Officer Kristalina Georgieva. “Steps cities take to cope with the upward trend of arrivals from rural areas and to improve opportunities for education, training and jobs will pay long-term dividends..”
The issue can seem overwhelming, but it’s not hopeless. Here’s what can be done at a national and global level:
- Cut global greenhouse gas emissions
- Transform development planning to factor in the entire cycle of climate migration
- Invest in data and analysis to improve understanding of internal climate migration trends
And here’s how you can help:
- Use your vote. Climate change should not be a partisan issue. This goes for the U.S., as well as places like Germany. Every politician’s children and grandchildren will suffer the effects of climate change if the people who have the ability to make big changes don’t act. Donate to and vote for candidates who make stopping and reducing climate change major parts of their platform. Read their plans and hold them accountable.
- Consider donating to these organizations already working to help climate refugees worldwide.
“Without the right planning and support, people migrating from rural areas into cities could be facing new and even more dangerous risks,” said Kanta Kumari Rigaud, the team lead for the World Bank report. “We could see increased tensions and conflict as a result of pressure on scarce resources. But that doesn’t have to be the future. While internal climate migration is becoming a reality, it won’t be a crisis if we plan for it now.”
