It has been said for years that one of the biggest consequences of climate change will be increased human migration, as many areas become inhospitable due to rising average temperatures, greater drought or rising sea levels. It is also said that these migrations, some of which are already ongoing, can in turn have economic consequences (in the countries of origin and in the countries of arrival) and can cause political instability and possible social conflicts.
In concrete terms, it is difficult to imagine what will happen and what scenarios are possible from the measurement of global warming, also because migrations, like other human phenomena, are influenced by many factors. However, the latest major report by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), released on February 28, attempted to make some predictions: Compared to the previous major IPCC report from 2014, it contains much more analysis on the Theme Social Effects of climate change.
limits
The report indicates that most climate migration will occur within the borders of individual countries, with internal dynamics taking precedence over international ones. After all, this is already the case today.
The main climaterelated reasons people choose to move from one area to another within the same country are the effects of tropical storms and flooding; in contrast, in subSaharan Africa and parts of southern Asia and South America, people move because of drought.
Globally, there is no complete and reliable data on the motivations of people migrating voluntarily due to climate change (in general, little research is done on the reasons for moving elsewhere), but for the scientific community, the assessments say of the IPCC, international migrations are in the minority compared to national migrations. In most cases, they occur between neighboring countries, including agreements on migrant working conditions, or with strong cultural ties. The decision to migrate is indeed the last thing to consider and if you do decide, prefer to do it without going too far.
migration and natural disasters
There is more data on forced migration due to individual natural disasters, which in many cases have been made worse or more frequent by climate change: this data has been collected since 2008 by the Internal Displacement Monitoring Center (IDMC), an international nongovernmental organization that collects data and internal migration studied within countries.
According to the IDMC, major storms and major floods are the meteorological events that cause the largest migrations worldwide: it is estimated that on average more than 20 million people migrate each year for this reason, with large variations from year to year depending on the frequency and severity of catastrophic events in densely populated areas.
In general, the report states: “Climate change has created and perpetuated forms of vulnerability through forced migrations due to extreme weather events and climate changes. And even if we manage to contain as much as possible the increase in average global temperatures, it will too likely to continue to do so.
A map from the latest IPCC report shows the current refugee camps around the world and forecasts the number of days that will exceed 35°C between 2041 and 2060: in the darker areas it will exceed 100 per year (Sixth Assessment Report of the IPCC)
forecasts
At the moment, the report says, it is not possible to predict how many people will be involved in climate migration over the coming decades and which countries will be most affected by the movement, as migration is influenced by multiple factors, including economic development , and because it all depends on how high average temperatures will rise.
Among others, the IPCC cited two studies by Kanta Kumari Rigaud, an environment, climate and migration expert at the World Bank, which attempted to estimate the magnitude of future climate migration by considering population growth projections in different parts of the world, as well as variables such as rainfall and agricultural productivity different models of climate change.
One estimate suggests that water scarcity, rising sea levels and famine will move between 31 and 72 million people to subSaharan Africa, South Asia and Latin America by 2050, even with large reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, the cause of climate change. “In Africa, climate migration could take place on a larger scale within different countries,” Rigaud told Vox, which dedicated an extensive article to the topic.
The article notes that in recent years, awareness that climate change will impact human migration has led to the subtext in debates on these issues that “a warmer world will bring hordes of people from poorer countries to richer countries will push security and the economy of the latter ». According to Vox’s analysis, this interpretation has fueled alarmist tones in the newspapers and fostered xenophobia, and is wrong, as most climate migration is expected to happen within individual countries.
Affected countries will need specific adaptation strategies to cope with the displacement of their populations. They already exist in the Pacific Ocean island nations threatened by sealevel rise: in Fiji, the government is moving coastal communities further inland; In Vanuatu, climate change and migration are taken into account in all areas of policy making, including education.
Since, in general, the countries most exposed to internal migration are those that have historically had less responsibility for climate change, these issues will have increasing weight in international negotiations to combat global warming, which so far have not had any particular Have achieved results: at the last United Nations climate change conference, COP26 in Glasgow, confirmed the provision of a $500 billion fund to be paid over 5 years by the richest countries for the poorest, but a similar promise was formulated ten years earlier.
In fact, the latest IPCC report confirms, from a scientific perspective, the usefulness of this aid, which is referred to in the jargon of climate negotiations as compensation for “loss and damage, the losses and damage that climate change inflicts on countries that are not responsible for it responsible.
damage
The report also reiterates, always with more evidence, things that were already well known, noting in some cases a greater severity than previous estimates: the damage associated with climate change is showing up faster than expected and it is estimated that it is 40% of global damage Population is ‘very vulnerable’ to its effects; Technologies to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere alone will not solve the problem, on the contrary they risk pushing us to emit more of it; There is less and less time to act against the changes taking place, and drastic action must be taken within this decade, according to the IPCC.