Seeking Safer Ground

RESPONDING TO THE LOOMING CLIMATE MIGRANT CRISIS

Nearly

15 million people worldwide – approximately the population of Cambodia – were forced from their homes in 2015 by weather-related disasters, including violent storms, floods and landslides.

As climate change intensifies, those numbers will rise. Not everyone will end up resettling elsewhere, but a large, undetermined number of displaced people are already becoming environmental migrants, defined by the International Organization for Migration as people who are obliged or choose to leave home due to sudden or progressive environmental changes that adversely affect their lives.

Climate change is one factor in the rising numbers of these displaced people, but the associated crisis is where many of these people live. Research by Climate Central, an independent organisation of scientists and journalists, shows that up to 650 million people currently live in vulnerable areas that will be submerged or exposed to chronic flooding by the year 2100.

The majority of people facing such threats make their home in Asia and the Pacific, the world’s most disaster-prone region, which is acutely exposed to the impacts of climate change.

Sea level rise, one of the most destructive climate change impacts, poses an irreversible life-altering threat to coastal communities and island states. Nine of the 10 countries with the largest number of vulnerable people living in low-lying areas are in Asia. In the Pacific, climate change threatens to literally redraw the map.

Entire countries and cultures on the small states in the world’s largest body of water confront an uncertain future. Australian climate researchers have identified five small reef islands in the Solomons that have vanished over the past seven decades, and six other islands which have lost much of their land to the sea. Receding shorelines have wiped out two villages, forcing residents to higher ground. The isolated nation of Tuvalu, just two metres above sea level, appears to be the country most threatened by climate change. Peak tides have reached as high as 3.4 metres.

The international community has awoken to the human toll of environment-related displacement, and to the likelihood that climate change will exacerbate these conditions. In 2015, governmental delegations from 109 countries endorsed the Nansen Protection Agenda for people displaced by disaster and climate change, and the Platform for Disaster Displacement has been established to implement this agenda. More than 20 events discussing the link between climate change and migration were held during the COP22 meeting last November in Marrakech, Morocco.

The 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change, which was enacted just before COP22, called for the creation of a task force to develop ways of avoiding or minimising human displacement caused by climate change. This was a significant advance, and it is important that the task force be formed, funded, and active as soon as possible.

Up to 650 million people live in areas that will be submerged or exposed to chronic flooding by the year 2100

PAPUA NEW GUINEA 2008 High Tides 75,000 internally displaced

INDIA & BANGLADESH 2009 Cyclone Aila More than 2 million displaced

PAKISTAN 2010 Monsoon Flood 1.9 million displaced

SOMALIA 2011–2012 Drought 1.3 million internally displaced, 290,000 to Yemen, Kenya, Ethiopia and Djibouti

JAPAN 2012 Kyushu Flood and Landslides 250,000 displaced

PHILIPPINES 2013 Typhoon Haiyan More than 4 million internally displaced

Climate Migration In Numbers