Who will be the future climate migrants?

Due to natural disasters caused by climate change, millions of people are left homeless every year. What is ecological migration? Is it possible to calculate the number of its victims, and why will it grow?

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, humans have become stronger than flora and fauna—they have significantly expanded the boundaries of their 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 relationships primarily affects Homo sapiens themselves.

In 2020, a study was published in which an international group of scientists examined the impact of different scenarios for 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 uninhabitable climatic conditions.

The population is unevenly distributed across the planet—over the past 6,000 years, most of the inhabitants were concentrated in a narrow climate zone, where the average annual temperature is 11–15°C. These regions are the most favourable for life and agriculture. However, in 50 years, the average annual temperature here may rise to 20°C. Today, similar conditions are observed in North Africa, the Mediterranean, and Southern China. The same problem will affect densely populated hot regions, where the average annual temperature already reaches 20–25°C. These latitudes account for the second peak of 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 conditions of the Sahara Desert by 2070, with an average annual temperature above 29°C. Currently, such a thermal regime is common only to 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 behaviour. The authors of the study believe that in response to a shift in the ecological niche, people will have to either adapt to life in a completely different climate or migrate en masse to other places.

Constant sea levels are another factor that allows humanity to live and develop in comfortable conditions. Over the past 20 thousand years, sea levels have risen by about 120m, but about 7,000 years ago, this process slowed down and stabilised. It was then that the first large civilisations appeared, and cities began to grow in coastal areas. However, since the mid-19th century, sea levels have been rising again—and at a rapid pace. In the 20th century alone, the ocean rose by about 17 cm, and since 2016, the upper limit has been shifting by 3.4mm annually. Scientists predict that by 2100, the sea level will increase by more than a meter. At the same time, all coastal agricultural and urban infrastructure depends on the constancy of the ocean, and it has long been out of control and is actively capturing land. It seems that the flooding and destruction of megacities is an element of a movie about the end of the world, which modern people should not be afraid of, but many people around the world are already suffering from natural disasters. Temperature, water, and food crises, an increasing number of extreme events such as hurricanes, floods, and fires — all this forces the population of problematic regions to look for other places to live and gives rise to the phenomenon of climate or environmental migration.

Refugees or migrants?

The media, politicians, and public organisations use variations of the expression “climate (environmental) migrants (refugees)”. However, there is no established and legally enshrined term that would suit each specific situation. Due to the complex relationship between the movement of people and natural conditions, there is confusion in definitions.

In the international legal field, migrants and refugees have different statuses. Refugees are groups of the population forced to leave their country due to a direct threat to their life and health. In this case, people cannot be deported to their homeland. The “Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees” is a protocol adopted by the UN in 1951, which establishes a clear definition and a set of reasons for which 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, and family, but can return without risking their lives. Such movements can be long-term or short-term, for example, related to 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 possible to distinguish refugees from migrants. But when natural causes are superimposed on population movements, it is more difficult to understand.

Environmental or climate-related?

It is important to understand that migrations related to 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 relocations, but also other environmental factors that adversely affect people’s lives: pollution, volcanic eruptions, erosion, and other reasons not related to global warming.

Today, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) continues to use this term, but only for descriptive purposes — it has no legal force. The current IOM definition is: “Environmental migrants are individuals or groups of individuals who are forced to leave their homes, temporarily or permanently, by moving within a country or abroad, because of 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:

• Land degradation, desertification, and drought

• Natural disasters and extreme weather events

• Rising sea levels and floods

• Industrial accidents and environmental pollution by anthropogenic emissions

• Urbanisation and construction of infrastructure (dams, highways, etc.)

• Conflicts related to the struggle for natural resources

The IOM considers “climate migration” an environmental case. This term is used to emphasise that the displacement of people is caused directly by climate change, rather than other environmental factors. Although this definition also has no legal status, it is used in the legally binding Cancun Agreements on Adaptation to Climate Change (a document adopted in 2010 by states parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change).

Climate change is only one of the reasons for human migration. As a rule, displacement 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 remain within their own countries. The key point in refugee status is leaving the home country. If the term “environmental/climate refugee” is given legal force, the legal protection regime for people seeking asylum for other reasons could be undermined.

The Teitiota case

Terms are not just words, they have legal nuances. As long as the confusion with definitions continues, people leaving their countries for environmental or climate reasons are in limbo. Problems are already arising with this. It is necessary to sort this out as soon as possible, because in the future, there will be many more people wanting to move to other places.

The most famous case of seeking climate refugee status happened to a citizen of the island state of Kiribati named Ioane Teitiota. The climate crisis has already seriously affected this country—the sea is taking over the land, drinking water is becoming scarce, soils are degrading, fertile areas are shrinking, which is why violent conflicts are breaking out. In 2007, Teitiota 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 Human Rights Commission, and in 2020, a decision on the case was announced at the World Economic Forum in Davos.

Since the lives of Teitiota and his family members were not in imminent danger at the time, they could not receive refugee status. However, the UN recorded a new legal decision: now countries cannot deport people whose lives in their homeland are threatened by the climate crisis. Thanks to this precedent, the issue of environmental migration has become more visible. UN experts also advise not to reduce the solution to the problem only to assigning refugee status to certain groups of the population, but to learn to work with a new and rapidly growing category of environmental and climate migrants.

Difficulties in calculation

According to the World Bank, if global warming is not properly contained, by 2050 new climate conditions will lead to forced internal migration of 143 million people in three regions of the planet: Africa, South Asia, and Latin America. The 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 aforementioned confusion in definitions, it is difficult to accurately calculate the current and predict the future number of environmental or climate migrants—there is no opportunity to collect such information.

The most reliable facts are provided by the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC). Experts estimate 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 duration of internal migration varies; some forced migrants even risk ending up in this status for life.

The IDMC report details internal displacement in 2020: 40.5 million people in 149 countries were displaced from their homes—30.7 million due to natural disasters, most of which were storms, hurricanes, and floods, and the rest due to conflict.

China, the Philippines, India, and Bangladesh were among the top countries for internal displacement due to natural disasters in 2020, with about 18 million people displaced. Monsoon rains, floods, and tropical storms are increasingly hitting vulnerable 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. However, IDMC data helps to understand the scale of natural disaster-related displacements, both current and future.

The most vulnerable places

According to the IOM, coastal and island lands, mountainous areas, arid territories, and cities will suffer the most from climate change.

Vulnerable areas suffer from “slow” processes: land degradation, desertification, changes in precipitation patterns, and increasing drought. All this leaves its mark on agriculture, livestock, and fisheries. While you can temporarily hide from a flood or a hurricane and then return, you cannot from a drought. Adapting to conditions where access to water is gradually decreasing and the amount of precipitation is decreasing is much more difficult.

Island and coastal areas have their own “bouquet” of problems. Due to climate change, the sea is taking over the land faster, the population suffers more often from storms and hurricanes. Lack of fresh water sources, soil salinisation after floods, disappearance of fertile lands—all this forces people to look for new places to live.

The main problem of mountainous areas is the melting of glaciers, reduction of atmospheric precipitation, and disruption of the hydrological regime of rivers. Many large rivers, on which the lives and agricultural activities of millions of people depend, are fed by glaciers. However, today, many mountainous countries are already seeing a reduction 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 by its gradual decrease. Water shortage will affect both mountaineers and those living below. This will interfere with livestock farming and agriculture, and will cause conflicts over drinking and land resources. As a result, forced migration of the population. Cities will become a centre of attraction for migrants, but this trend has its drawbacks.

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