Warming climate will displace millions — World Bank

WASHINGTON: The wave of refugees f leeing crop failures, droughts and rising sea levels will grow drastically over the next three decades if world governments do not intervene, the World Bank warned Monday.

By 2050, 143 million ‘climate migrants’ will face an ‘existential threat’ and be displaced, the World Bank said in a new report. That includes 86 million in Sub-Saharan Africa, 40 million in South Asia and 17 million in Latin America.

These regions are home to more than half the developing world’s population, and 2.8 per cent of inhabitants are among those at risk, according to the report, which the bank said was the first to address the question of migration spurred by climate change.

Climate change has inexorably become an ‘engine of migration,’ forcing individuals, families and even whole communities to seek more viable homes, World Bank CEO Kristalina Georgieva said.

“Every day, climate change becomes a more urgent economic, social and existential threat to countries and their people,” she said in a statement.

But, she said, “The number of climate migrants could be reduced by tens of millions as a result of global action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and with far-sighted development planning.”

The report said Ethiopia’s population could almost double by 2050 and migration will rise due to diminishing harvests.

In Bangladesh, climate migrants could be the single-largest group among all internally displaced persons.

And i n Mex ic o, p e ople increasingly will gravitate towards urban areas away from more vulnerable regions. — AFP