Contents
Due to natural disasters caused by climate change, millions of people are left homeless every year. Trends explain what ecological migration is, is it realistic to count the number of its victims and why it will increase
degree of patience
People, like all living organisms, have their own ecological niche – a habitat within which a species can exist indefinitely and develop comfortably. However, man has become stronger than flora and fauna – he has significantly expanded the boundaries of his niche, populating even the coldest and hottest places on Earth. But climate change and pollution of the biosphere make it clear that people continue to depend on the planet, and the discord in their relationship primarily hits Homo sapiens themselves.
In 2020, a study was published in which an international team of scientists examined the impact of different scenarios of temperature and population growth on the ecological niche of our species. It turned out that by 2070, from 1 billion to 3 billion people may find themselves in uncharacteristic and almost unsuitable climatic conditions.
The population is unevenly dispersed across the planet – over the past 6 years, most of the inhabitants have concentrated in a narrow climatic band, where the average annual temperature is 000-11 ° C. These regions are the most favorable for life and agriculture. However, after 15 years, the average annual temperature here may rise to 50 °C. Today, similar conditions are observed in North Africa, the Mediterranean and South China.
The same problem will affect densely populated hot regions, where the average annual temperature is already reaching 20-25°C. These latitudes account for the second peak in population density – and the birth rate here is growing at a high rate. Scientists warn that more than 3,5 billion people from Africa, South America, Northern Australia and Southeast Asia will be forced to live in the Sahara desert by 2070 – with an average annual temperature above 29 ° C. Now such a thermal regime is distributed only on 0,8% of the world’s land, but in 50 years it will cover 19% of the territories. For comparison: the average annual temperature in Sochi is only 15 °C.
Living in such conditions is difficult – high temperatures seriously affect physical and psychological health, performance, mood and behavior. The authors of the study believe that in response to a shift in the ecological niche, people will either have to adapt to life in a completely different climate, or migrate en masse to other places.
A constant sea level is another factor that allows humanity to live and develop in comfortable conditions. Over the past 20 years, the sea level has risen by about 120 m, but about 7 years ago this process slowed down and stabilized. It was then that the first major civilizations appeared, and cities began to grow in coastal areas. Since the middle of the 000th century, however, sea levels have been rising again, and at a rapid pace. In the 17th century alone, the ocean has risen by about 2016 cm, and since 3,4, the upper bar has been moving by 2100 mm annually. Scientists predict that by XNUMX sea levels will rise by more than a meter. At the same time, the entire coastal agricultural and urban infrastructure depends on the constancy of the ocean – and it has long gone out of control and is actively seizing the land.
It seems that the flooding and destruction of megacities is an element of the film about the end of the world, which modern man should not be afraid of, but many people around the world are already suffering from natural disasters. The temperature, water and food crisis, the increasing number of extreme events such as hurricanes, floods and fires – all this forces the population of problem regions to look for other places to live and gives rise to the phenomenon of climatic or environmental migration.
Refugees or migrants?
The media, politicians and public organizations use variations of the expression “climate (environmental) migrants (refugees)”. However, there is no well-established and legislatively fixed term that would be suitable for each specific situation. Due to the complex relationship between the movement of people and natural conditions, confusion in definitions has arisen.
In the international legal field, migrants and refugees have a different status. Refugees are groups of people who are forced to leave their country because of a direct danger to their lives and health. In this case, people cannot be deported to their homeland. The Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, a protocol adopted by the UN in 1951, establishes a clear definition and set of reasons why a person can be considered a refugee, and environmental issues are not among them.
Migrants are those who leave their place of origin in order to find better conditions for education, career, family, but at the same time can return back without risk to their lives. Such movements can be long-term or short-term, for example, associated with seasonal employment in other countries. And there is also the risk of deportation – the authorities are not obliged to provide asylum to such migrants.
Outside the context of environmental change, it is realistic to distinguish refugees from migrants. But when natural causes are superimposed on population movements, it is more difficult to figure it out.
Ecological or climatic?
It must be understood that migrations associated with changes in the natural environment have always existed. Until climate change was widely discussed on the world stage, experts used the term “environmental migrants”. This definition included not only climatic reasons for moving, but also other environmental factors that adversely affect people’s lives: pollution, volcanic eruptions, erosion and other causes not related to global warming.
Now the International Organization for Migration (IOM) continues to use this term, but only for descriptive purposes – it has no legal force. The modern definition of the IOM reads: “Environmental migrants are individuals or groups of individuals who are forced to leave their homes temporarily or permanently, having moved within the country or abroad due to sudden or progressive environmental change that adversely affects their lives.” This interpretation shows that environmental migration can take many forms: forced or voluntary, temporary or permanent, internal or international, individual or collective.
According to the UN, there are six main causes of environmental migration:
The IOM considers “climatic migration” as an ecological case. This term is used when they want to emphasize that the movement of people is caused directly by climate change, and not by other environmental causes. And although this definition also has no legal status, it is used in the legally binding Cancun Accords on Adaptation to Climate Change (a document adopted in 2010 by the states parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change).
Climate change is just one of the causes of human migration. As a rule, resettlement occurs due to a combination of factors – economic, social, political and natural. Since climate change unfolds more slowly than natural disasters, the term “refugees” is not always correct. In addition, most people who change their place of residence due to environmental problems usually do not cross an international border, but stay within their own countries. The key moment in the status of a refugee is the departure from the native country. If the term “environmental/climate refugee” is given legal force, then the legal regime for protecting people seeking asylum for other reasons could be undermined.
Teitiota case
Terms are not just words, legal nuances are hidden under them. As confusion over definitions continues, people leaving their countries for environmental or climate reasons are in limbo. There are already problems with this. You need to figure it out as quickly as possible, because in the future there will be much more people who want to move to other places.
The most famous case of applying for climate refugee status occurred with a citizen of the island nation of Kiribati named Ioane Teytiota. The climate crisis has already hit the country hard – the sea is taking over the land, drinking water is becoming scarcer, soils are degrading, fertile areas are shrinking, which is causing violent conflicts. In 2007, Teytiota and his family moved to New Zealand, in 2010 he applied for refugee status, but in 2013 they were sent back. In 2015, he filed a complaint with the UN Commission on Human Rights and in 2020, at the World Economic Forum in Davos, a decision on this case was made public.
Since the lives of Teytiota and his family members were not in imminent danger at that time, they could not receive refugee status. But the UN has fixed a new legal solution: now countries cannot deport people whose lives are threatened by the climate crisis in their homeland. Thanks to this precedent, the issue of environmental migration has become more visible. Also, UN experts advise not to reduce the solution of the problem only to the assignment of refugee status to certain groups of the population, but to learn how to work with a new and rapidly growing category of environmental and climate migrants.
Difficulties in counting
According to the World Bank, if warming is not properly controlled, then by 2050 new climatic conditions will lead to forced internal migration of 143 million people in three regions of the planet: Africa, South Asia and Latin America. IOM, in turn, assumes that by mid-century the total number of climate migrants will grow to 200 million. There are other independent estimates, but due to the confusion in definitions mentioned, it is difficult to accurately calculate the current and predict the future number of environmental or climate migrants – opportunities for no such information is collected.
The most reliable facts are provided by the International Center for the Study of Internal Migration (IDMC). Experts evaluate internal displacement—i.e. those who are forced to leave their homes due to military conflicts and natural disasters, but remain in their country. The term of internal migration varies, some internally displaced persons run the risk of being in this status for life.
The latest IDMC report looks at internal displacement in 2020: 40,5 million people in 149 countries were displaced from their homes – 30,7 million did so due to natural disasters, most of which were storms, hurricanes and floods, and the rest – in the result of military conflicts.
China, the Philippines, India and Bangladesh were among the top countries in 2020 for internal displacement associated with natural anomalies, with about 18 million migrants registered in these states. Monsoon rains, floods and tropical storms are increasingly hitting the thinly protected areas of South and East Asia, where millions of people live.
Not all of these disaster victims can be strictly classified as environmental or climate migrants. Nevertheless, IDMC data helps to understand the scale of displacement associated with natural disasters, both current and future.
Most vulnerable spots
According to IOM, coastal and island lands, mountainous regions, drylands and cities will be most affected by climate change.
Arid areas suffer from “slow” processes: land degradation, desertification, changes in rainfall patterns and increasing drought. All this leaves its mark on agriculture, animal husbandry and fisheries. If you can temporarily hide from a flood or a hurricane, and then return back, then you cannot avoid a drought. Adapting to conditions where access to water is gradually decreasing and rainfall is decreasing is much more difficult.
Its “bouquet” of problems – in the island and coastal areas. Due to climate change, the sea captures land faster, the population is more likely to suffer from storms and hurricanes. The lack of fresh water sources, soil salinization after floods, the disappearance of fertile land – all this forces people to look for new places to live.
The main problem of mountainous regions is the melting of glaciers, the reduction of atmospheric precipitation and the violation of the hydrological regime of rivers. Many large rivers, on which the life and agricultural activities of millions of people depend, are fed by glaciers. However, already today in many mountainous countries there is a decrease in the volume and duration of snow cover. The melting of glaciers will be followed by a short-term increase in the surface runoff of rivers, but then its gradual decrease. Water scarcity will affect both the highlanders and those living below. This will interfere with animal husbandry and agriculture, and will cause conflicts over drinking and land resources. The result is forced migration.
Cities will become the center of attraction for migrants, but this trend has its drawbacks. Trends will talk about them in the next article on environmental and climatic migration of the population.