ARTICLE | Climate Migrants
Net-zero commitments by cities essential to address issues of IDPs
T
he COP26 is just about three weeks away. As world governments sharpen their negotiation skills to bargain for better deals for their respective countries and regions, I would suggest that cities look into the recently submitted report of the UN Secretary-General’s High-Level Panel on Internal Displacement. In this column, I have been writing how internal displacements due to climate change and other reasons will impact the cities. They need to accommodate more and more people and have the task of providing them with a life of dignity, along with creating sustainable environments for the cities to thrive. Cities, where more than 55 per cent of world population now lives, contribute the most to the climate crisis and, at the same time, bear a lot of devastating impacts caused by climate change. While different governments have taken different stands on the netzero commitments, and it is going to be a hot topic during the COP26, cities need to understand the implication of the growing number of migrants they will receive if emission targets are not achieved. The concern that there is lack of due international attention on internal displacement prompted the Secretary General of the United Nations to announce, on May 10, 2019, the formation of an independent high-level panel to examine the growing crisis and to suggest concrete and practical recommendations to member states, the United Nations system and other relevant stakeholders, particularly where it is protracted. The first-of-itskind report has just been submitted to the UN Secretary General in
40 October 2021 | www.urbanupdate.in
September 2021.
The report informs that a staggering 55 million people were internally displacement at the end of 2020. Conflicts, violence, disasters and climate change are said to be the major drivers for these people to flee their homes and search for new places to stay. The recent decades have been experiencing more new displacements than before. These internally displaced people (IDPs) are forced to leave their histories, geographies, sociocultural settings, livelihoods and secured societies to land in relief & rehabilitation camps, unorganised and informal settlements, and untold miseries. Among other challenges for rehabilitating them, local governments have to face with problems of the most vulnerable people such as women, children, persons with disabilities, elderly people, so on and so forth. The above report informs that women and girls make up over half of the world’s IDPs, five million IDPs are living with disabilities, an estimated 2.6 million are elderly, and over 30.5 million are children and youth. Cities, where most of these people would land up, have their tasks cut out. Inclusive and sustainable growth models are the need of the hour. The added population to cities will increase the pressure on local natural resources and basic amenities. With climate change-triggered IDPs on the rise, the challenge is to make these models ready at super-fast speeds.
events and related disasters, sea level rise and droughts are forcing people to migrate out of their homes to relatively safer places. The number of IDP caused by climate change has been growing exponentially. It is estimated that, of the 40.5 million new internal displacements in 2020 – the highest annual figure for 10 years – almost 30.7 million people were displaced due to weather-related disasters. That is an increase of about 5.8 million over the previous year’s figure of 24.9 million, which itself had jumped by almost 7.7 million over 2018. The World Bank’s signature Groundswell Report on internal migration due to climate change estimated in 2018 that the number of internal climate migrants, or the IDPs, could be more than 143 million by 2050. The very latest update of the Groundswell Report, released in September 2021, projects this to increase to 226 million people by 2050. In fact, desertification alone can cause about 135 million people to migrate worldwide in a decade. Climate change, the Groundswell Report says, is an increasingly potent driver of migration in six world regions, and will force these people to move within their countries. “Hotspots of internal climate migration could emerge as early as 2030 and continue to spread and intensify by 2050. By 2050, sub-Saharan Africa could see as many as 86 million internal climate migrants; East Asia and the Pacific, 49 million; South Asia, 40 million; North Africa, 19 million; Latin America, 17 million; and Eastern Europe and Central Asia, 5 million,” the report further says.
Climate change induced internal displacement
Cities to benefit from netzero commitments
A crisis in need of attention, local solutions
With
increased
extreme
weather
Cities have grown as a separate world,
