Climate change could internally displace 216M people, World Bank warns

Unchecked climate change could lead 216 million people to migrate within their own countries by 2050, the World Bank warns. But taking steps now to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions may help cut that figure by 80%, and development planning can avert a crisis for those who will still have to move.

In a report released Monday, called “Groundswell Part 2,” the bank builds on research first done in 2018. But this study is more global, providing a picture with increased precision. However, it excludes cross-border migration and does not analyze high-income countries, meaning its worrying numbers might still be on the conservative side.

“For the first time now, we are able to get a global picture of the potential scale of internal climate migration,” said Kanta Kumari Rigaud, a lead environmental specialist at the bank, as she cautioned about the emergence of “hotspots” around the world that will be vulnerable to inflows and outflows of people.

The World Bank report said in regions such as North Africa, water scarcity and rising sea levels will likely drive migration, with areas of the Nile Delta in Egypt expected to see sharp outflows. This would put pressure on urban centers such as Cairo, which are already crowded. Vietnam would see similar trends in the Mekong Delta.

“We see that it’s going to be the poorest and most climate-vulnerable areas that are going to be hardest-hit,” said Viviane Clement, a senior climate change specialist at the bank, in an interview with Devex before the report’s release.

The warning comes less than two months before the start of the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Scotland — though activists are calling for it to be postponed because of the COVID-19 pandemic — where there will be a push for more ambitious goals to cut emissions and tackle climate change.

Rigaud said the most important step to avoid mass displacement in the short term is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

“That is of overarching importance because if we continue the emissions, it fuels the climate impact and aggravates the situation for more migrants,” she said. “Climate migration will be a reality, but the scale of it depends on what we do now.”

The report also notes that climate change can lead to “compounding shocks,” meaning it can worsen existing vulnerabilities such as conflict and serve as a “threat multiplier” at the onset of fresh shocks. Moreover, a deteriorating environment will make it harder to deliver aid to people hit by climate disasters or fighting.

Some preemptive steps can enable more communities to stay in place and help prevent chaotic and forced movement from rural to urban areas. These include changing agricultural production to focus on crops that are more resilient to new conditions.

Also, development that considers how the environment is changing — which Rigaud characterizes as “climate-smart” — can both help people remain settled and facilitate smoother movement if they eventually have to migrate.

“Internal climate migration … if it’s not managed well, if it’s not anticipated, planned, and prepared for, then it can increase the chances that such movement happens under distressed conditions. And that puts pressure on people, communities, and different livelihood systems,” Clement said.

Cities such as Dhaka, Bangladesh, are already seeing large influxes of migrants and struggling to absorb new arrivals. Such situations are only likely to worsen as climate change becomes more severe.

One idea floated by academics, the report notes, is for planners to consider places that are likely to be hit hardest by climate change and then identify climate-resilient areas nearby, which can serve as hubs to receive migrants.

With proper planning, health care and sanitation services can be established in these hubs, and economic projects would allow for job creation, the report says.

“The window of opportunity is rapidly shrinking,” Rigaud said, noting that scientists’ warnings about climate change have gotten direr since the first migration report was released three years ago. “Our action now is extremely urgent and important to be done at scale.”