Climate Change Forces More Than 20 Million People a Year to Migrate

It’s hot. Really hot. So hot that more than 2,000 people in Spain and Portugal died from a scorching heat wave in July. India’s blistering weather has managed to spontaneously combust a massive landfill outside of Delhi. The United States is sweltering, from the Northeast to the Pacific Northwest.

With this disastrous worldwide heat comes drought, job losses, increased illness, failing crops, and death. Extreme heat is also associated with an increase in some violent assaults, such as rape and murder, a 2021 study published in The Lancet found. And that’s just heat. Other climate-change related crises — hurricanes, floods, rising coastal waters, and more — are on the rise. And with their increase comes an uptick in the number of people who are being driven from their homes, and often their cities and villages — or even countries.

The U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change confirms that climate change and extreme weather events are forcing mass migration across the globe. The more vulnerable the population, the greater the hit it will take from global warming, says IPCC. The greater the hit, the more people flee. The more they flee, the more vulnerable they become. It’s a continuous loop.

Every year, an average of 21.5 million people are displaced because of weather-related events, like wildfires and storms, says the UN Refugee Agency. It’s only going to get worse. “There is high agreement among scientists that climate change, in combination with other drivers, is projected to increase displacement of people in the future,” the agency writes, noting that Asia at particular risk for climate-related hazards, and, therefore, forced migration.

“Over one billion people live in 31 countries where the country’s resilience is unlikely to sufficiently withstand the impact of ecological events by 2050, contributing to mass population displacement,” according to the Institute for Economics and Peace, an international think-tank.

The institute predicts that in the next 30 years, 141 countries will be exposed to “at least one ecological threat.” The 19 countries with the highest number of threats have a combined population of 2.1 billion people, the institute says, which is approximately 25 percent of the world’s population.

The UN Refugee Agency cites an example of how threats lead to financial insecurity from its work in northern Mali: “In early 2019, grazing land became scarce south of Gao, due to floods. Pastoralists were worried about travelling with their livestock for fear of being attacked by armed groups or bandits. Instead, they often gathered in areas close to water sources, creating tensions with farmers and fishermen. As their animals became weaker, herders were forced to sell them at discounted prices.”

Financial insecurity is a strong driver of migration.

There is also a link between climate change and conflict, in that people dealing with one have a lowered capacity to deal with the other.

The International Committee of the Red Cross has found that countries affected by armed conflict “are disproportionately vulnerable to climate variability and change, because the adaptive capacity of people, systems and institutions already coping with the consequences of conflict tend to be limited.” They came to this conclusion by studying events in southern Iraq, northern Mali, and the interior of the Central African Republic.

And while most researchers believe that climate change does not directly cause armed conflict, many think it may “indirectly increase the risk of conflict by exacerbating existing social, economic and environmental factors,” according to the Red Cross.

As people move to find work and a less disaster-prone place to live, vulnerable populations rise. Still, climate migrants are not given refugee status under international law, which offers protection only to people fleeing persecution due to their race, religion, nationality, political opinion, or social group.

What can be done? That’s up to the politicians, unfortunately — not the people directly affected, the ones who are losing their livelihoods, and even their lives.