"Climate Migration" Gains the World's Attention
By Karin Rives
Staff Writer
Washington - A changing climate that raises sea levels and triggers crop-threatening droughts is driving an increasing number of people from their homes.
At a recent discussion in Washington among climate and migration experts, several said that, for the first time, the international community is acknowledging that movement of people will occur as a result of climate change and that such relocation must be addressed.
Countries are openly addressing "climate migration" in national climate action plans, said participants in the forum "Conversations about Climate Change Adaptation: Displacement, Migration and Planned Relocation," held at the Brookings Institution in Washington October 7.
"You see it with Bangladesh and Cambodia, and a few others, talking about increased crop loss, food shortages and migration particularly from rural to urban areas," said Susan Martin, a professor at Georgetown University. Eritrea and Ethiopia discuss their history of migration in their strategy for dealing with recurring droughts, while Gambia talks about unpredictable rainy seasons affecting movement of people, she said.
It is important to plan ahead for such migration to avoid further environmental degradation, said Chaloka Beyani, a lecturer at the London School of Economics and a specialist on internally displaced people for the United Nations Human Rights Council.
Beyani told the audience of a recent trip he took to a resettlement area for refugees in Kenya that lacked services and adequate water. Because environmental risks were not studied before the area was opened, the influx of people now could result in new environmental problems, he said.
"The more relocation and migration can be proactively planned and facilitated, the less costly and disruptive the future of displacement will be," said Robin Mearns, a World Bank specialist on climate change.
Mearns said that estimates of how many people will be displaced due to climate change vary wildly, from hundreds of millions down to the thousands. Early reports painted a much more alarming picture than did more recent research, which suggests that people are likely to follow already established migration patterns, he said. Environmental problems tend to be one of several reasons people move and when a catastrophic event such as a flood is over, many return home, he said.
"The climate change tends to amplify existing patterns, rather than provoke entirely new flows of people," Mearns said. "We know that migration related to climate change is likely to be predominately from rural areas to towns and cities within developing countries, and that most of the world's migrants - including those moving due to climate change - are likely to move within their own borders rather than across international borders."
An agreement forged at the United Nations-led climate negotiations in Mexico in 2010 included a first-of-its-kind provision calling for countries to coordinate their work to address "climate-induced displacement, migration and planned relocation."
Rich nations have pledged to raise $100 billion annually by 2020 in public and private-sector funds to help developing nations better prepare for such challenges as they will suffer from the brunt of the harmful effects from climate change.
(This is a product of the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State)
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