THE SCOPE OF CLIMATE CHANGE IS GETTING BIGGER

Human migrations may be caused by a lot of reasons, but this particular one is unscrutinized by the media. Climate change has provoked many natural disasters and destroyed more regions, obligating the habitants to move out in order to survive. However, not much importance has been given to this issue caused by a bigger problem.

According to the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC), an institution that coordinates and monitors the migrations incentivized by climate disasters, almost 2,000 disasters have caused the movement of approximately 25 million individuals in 2019. This is a considerable amount when compared to other motives of displacement.

Most of these migrations have happened in South and East/Pacific Asia as well as in Sub-Saharan Africa. The blame would be given to the monsoons, typhoons, earthquakes caused by cyclones like Bulbul or Idai.

It must be noted that the connotation of “climate refugee” may be misunderstood. To be considered a refugee, an individual must have been forced to cross borders because of race, religion, nationality, social issues, among others; but moving countries because of climate disasters is not included. Thus, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) has provided a proper definition for climate migrants:

“Migrants for environmental reasons are people who, due to sudden and gradual changes in the environment that negatively affect their living conditions, move temporarily or for reasons from parts of their own country or outside of it.” - 2011

The extreme weather events, the icebergs melting, the rising sea level, the oceans acidifying, species becoming extinct, etc; are examples of what the ecological crisis and climate change are doing. In consequence, droughts, famines, water scarcity and geostrategic conflicts are taking a higher presence. So we must not put emphasis just on climate change as a cause of climate migration because other factors also come into play.

Unfortunately, the climate migrations and the ecological crisis have not been interrupted by the pandemic. Even if mobility is restricted, one element does not cancel the other, disasters keep happening. This is an issue to pay attention to because the economic and health crisis caused by the COVID-19 may affect these vulnerable individuals harder.

Source: The Conversation