Without immediate action to combat climate change, rising sea levels, water scarcity and declining crop productivity could force 216 million people to migrate within their own countries by 2050 , the World Bank said in a new report on Monday.
The report, Groundswell 2.0, modeled the impacts of climate change in six regions, and concluded that the “hotspots” of climate migration will emerge as early as 2030 and intensify in 2050 and affect the poorest parts of the world. world harder.
Sub-Saharan Africa alone would account for 86 million of internal migrants, with 19 million more in North Africa, according to the report, while 40 million immigrants were expected in South Asia and 49 million in East Asia. and the Pacific.
These movements will put significant stress on both the sending and receiving areas, the tension of cities and urban centers and the jeopardization of gains in development, according to the report.
For example, rising sea levels threaten rice production, aquaculture and fishing, which could create a migration point in the lower Mekong Delta in Vietnam. But the Red River Delta and the Central Coast region, where these people are likely to flee, face their own threats, including severe storms.
Economic and health conflicts and crises, such as those triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic, could exacerbate the situation, the bank said. And the number of climate immigrants could be much higher, as the report does not cover most high-income countries, Middle East countries and small island states or migrations to other countries.
The report’s authors say its findings should be seen as an urgent call on regional and national governments and the global community to act now to reduce greenhouse gases, reduce development gaps and restore ecosystems. Doing so, they said, could reduce that number of migrations by 80 percent to 44 million people.
“We are already locked in a certain amount of warming, so climate migration is a reality,” said Kanta Kumari Rigaud, the bank’s lead environment specialist and one of the co-authors of the report. “We need to reduce or reduce our greenhouse gases to achieve the Paris goal, because these climate impacts will increase and increase the scale of climate migration.”