The climate crisis is devastating. But it is not the same for everyone
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Climate change affects the whole world but it does not affect everyone equally. Climate injustice and social injustice go hand in hand. Extreme weather events, floods, floods, droughts, destruction of ecosystems, rising temperatures, together with soil depletion and resource hoarding, affect poor countries most devastatingly (despite the fact that the rich ones are the main culprits of emissions of greenhouse gases), the poorest population in rich countries, children especially in low and middle income countries, girls, displaced and migrant children. The climate crisis accentuates migrations caused by extreme or long-term weather events, however vast and nuanced the phenomenon may be.
There is even more. The map of the countries most vulnerable to the climate crisis is superimposed on the map of countries suffering from conflict and war situations and the map of countries from which the population is fleeing.
The climate crisis is increasing climate migrants, or climate refugees. Making an exact estimate is perhaps impossible, also considering the absence of a shared definition of climate migrants and above all of recognition in international legislation. But we are talking about numbers that vary from a minimum of 25 million up to 1 billion people forced to migrate by 2050 for causes attributable to the climate and environmental issue.
To trace a synthesis is the dossier Environmental migrants. The other face of the climate crisis, with which Legambiente takes stock of the current crisis on the basis of the data known so far. (1)
Climate change, poverty and migration
Climate change they are not the same for everyone and they will not be in the future either. They affect, as mentioned, above all the poor countries and the poor of the rich countries. Climate injustice and social injustice are welded together and migration becomes the strategy of adaptation to climate change put into practice by those who have no alternative but to escape from poverty and all its forms.
How many flee? Secondo global trends UNHCR's 82,4 million people were forced to migrate in 2020, nearly double that of 2010. Of these, just under half (42%) are minor. In ten years, people forced to migrate have almost doubled and increased by over 16% compared to 2018 (when they were 70,8 million).
Internally displaced persons
But if the outlines of the phenomenon 'environmental migrants' are blurred because this figure has no international recognition, the numbers of internally displaced people are more precise. They are the people forced to leave their land but who remain within national borders. Internally displaced people flee mainly due to phenomena such as earthquakes, floods, droughts, desertification and fires.
According l 'Internal Displacement Monitoring Center (IDMC) 'during 2020 there were 40 and a half million new internally displaced people, of which 30 million and 700 thousand people were forced to flee due to environmental disasters; 9 million and 800 thousand people due to violence and conflicts'.
How many environmental migrants will there be in the future?
The crisis is in progress but quantifying it is not easy, also because it is difficult to measure those slow processes of transformation and degradation of the environment that are spread over the long term and that, of course, are intertwined with other issues such as the increase in conflict, the outbreak of wars and persecutions, clashes to contend with increasingly insufficient natural resources such as water and land.
All this it also explains the difficulty of framing environmental migrants with precise numbers between now and 2050.
According to some estimates of the World Bank, in a scenario essentially devoid of action (without significant measures to reduce emissions and with unfair development processes) from the three macro regions Sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia and Latin America in 2050 there will be about 143 million people forced to migrate. In a more optimistic scenario, with sustainable policies and global warming contained below 1,6 degrees, forced migrants from these regions would be between 31 and 72 million. In an intermediate scenario, there would be 65 to 105 million climate migrants. Other estimates speak of 200 million climate migrants between now and 2050.
Wars, disasters and migrations in a single map
There is a different set of causes at the basis of migration: conflicts and persecutions, sudden environmental catastrophes or phenomena of deterioration of ecosystems that spread over a long period of time.
But you can already see it that the map of countries vulnerable to climate change overlaps with that of countries experiencing wars and conflicts and that of countries from which the population is fleeing. According to theInternal Displacement Monitoring Center, '95% of the conflicts recorded in 2020 occurred in countries with high or very high vulnerability to climate change and environmental degradation '.
Just look at sub-Saharan Africa where desertification, land grabbing, loss of ecosystems, guerrilla warfare, instability mix. The civil war itself in Syria had a 'climate trigger' due to a severe drought.
Migrations to Italy
If you look at the migratory flows to Italy and in detail to arrivals by sea in the last four years, continues the dossier of Legambiente, '' almost 38% of the nationalities declared by migrants are attributable to the Sahel area, a region which, as is well known, is experiencing a real environmental and social storm, amidst the progress of desertification, the hoarding of resources and conflicts also of a terrorist matrix '.
At least 68% of migrants landed in Italy from 2017 to 2020, almost seven out of ten, come from areas very vulnerable to climate change, such as Ivory Coast, Guinea, Bangladesh, Pakistan.
'We can assume, with a reasonable chance not to go too far from the truth, that at least 76% of migratory flows to our country are due to environmental causes or contributory causes'.
The climate crisis on children
Climate change they affect children born today more than their grandparents and parents. And children from poor countries more than others.
As a complaint Save the Children, 'children born in 2020 will be exposed to extreme climatic phenomena much more than in the past. Excessive heat waves will affect them on average 7 times more than their grandparents. Today's newborns will also suffer 2,6 times more drought, 2,8 times more river floods, almost 3 times more crop losses and double the devastating fires. '. (2)
I'm at risk health care and education for the little ones. Children in poorer countries are at risk than in other areas of the world, girls more than boys, migrant children more than others. 'Children in sub-Saharan Africa will face 2,6 times more crop losses than their peers, and children in the Middle East and North Africa up to 4,4 times more. Some of these children are at risk of experiencing these disasters simultaneously or in rapid succession, with the indirect effect of being trapped in a long-term spiral of poverty. '.
Sabrina Bergamini
Note
Environmental migrants. The other side of the climate crisis, Legambiente 2021
https://www.legambiente.it/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/I-migranti-ambientali_dossier_2021.pdf
Born in a climate crisis. Because we must act now to protect the rights of boys and girls, Save the Children 2021. Press release and dossier:
https://www.savethechildren.it/press/crisi-climatica-i-bambini-nati-oggi-esposti-7-volte-pi%C3%B9-rispetto-ai-nonni-ondate-di-calore-26
