Climate Change and Human Migration
This one-day webinar will bring together scientists and policy makers from South Asia, Africa and Latin America to explore the ongoing debates on the patterns of human mobility in the face of anthropogenic climate change.
Human-induced climate change is responsible for temperature rise, glacier retreat, sea-level rise and rapidly changing extreme weather events. It is disproportionately impacting communities at risk, ecosystems, and livelihoods. The least developed countries and conflict-affected fragile states are more exposed and less able to cope with the effects of climate change. As a consequence, climate change is exacerbating existing social vulnerabilities, influencing disaster risks, and affecting how people migrate both internally and internationally.
The World Bank’s flagship report on ‘Groundswell - Preparing for Internal Climate Migration’ projected that globally there would be around 143 million climate migrants by 2050 from South Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa, and Latin America regions. The Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC) recorded around 25 million internally displaced people across 140 countries in 2019 that were mostly linked to weather-related hazards. In July 2020, the Department of Political and Peacebuilding Affairs at the United Nations (UN) stated that the climate emergency is a danger to peace and advised the Security Council to address climate-related security risks more effectively.
At present, climate change-induced displacement is a highly debated topic. Some assume that climate change will create the world’s biggest refugee crisis; others debate this statement on legal, moral, and empirical grounds. Climate change migrants are untraceable in most cases, and their deteriorating economic conditions and health hazards are sometimes said to be exceedingly greater than other migrants. Reasons discussed include wide dissemination of fake news, misconceptions about their existence, contrasting research conducted by a wide range of scientists, and negligence by the top-level global policymakers.
Join us online as we bring together experts from around the world to consider some of the critical topics and ongoing debates on climate migration using case studies from Sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia and Latin America.
Workshop programme (in British Summer Time (BST)):
10:00 – 10:30 Conference digital platform login on Zoom
10:30 – 10:45 Welcome Speech by Professor Peter Sammonds, Director, UCL IRDR
10:45 – 12:00 Panel Discussion 1: The Uncertain Journey of Climate Migrants in Bangladesh
12:00 – 13:00 In conversation with `Professor Ilan Kelman [Moderator: Christopher Gunness]
13:00 – 14:00 Lunch Break
14:00 – 15:00 Keynote Speech by Dr Kanta Kumari Rigaud, the World Bank Group [Moderator: Dr Bayes Ahmed]
15:00 - 16:20 Panel Discussion 2: Climate Migration in Latin America and Africa [Moderator Dr Bryan Jones]
16:20 - 16:30 Closing Remarks [Dr Bayes Ahmed, Organiser]
For more information visit the event page
