The reasons that are generally given to justify the departure of populations from one country to another are, among others, socio-political situations, economic or cultural reasons. However, that’s not all. In recent years, we have been witnessing more and more population movements for climatic reasons due to floods, scarcity of rainfall, drought, bush fires, etc. This article takes stock of both internal and cross-border climate migration.

Projections on mobility in Africa indicate internal migration of about 86 million people by 2050 if no action is taken to reduce the impacts of climate change, Le Monde reported. In September 2023, a study on climate migration was launched in Kinshasa with the aim, according to Le Monde, of improving knowledge on the extent of climate migration and its consequences on populations, in order to be able to anticipate this migration and take it into account in development plans.

The climat.be information platform  estimates that there were 33.4 million internal displacements in 2019 and 145 countries and territories affected. The majority of them (nearly 25 million) were caused by 1,900 natural disasters.

iDMC  adds that nearly 1900 disasters caused 24.9 million new displacements in 140 countries and territories in 2019. This is the highest number since 2012 and is three times higher than displacement caused by conflict and violence. The same source cites the most affected countries as Bangladesh, China, India and the Philippines, which have each recorded more than 4 million disaster displacements.

In Sub-Saharan Africa, iDMC estimated 3.4 million people displaced by natural disasters, 631,000 in the Middle East and North Africa, 9.6 million in East Asia and the Pacific, and 9.5 million in South Asia. The Americas are at 1.5 million and 101,000 for Europe and Central Asia.

Climat.be points out that the legal protection of people forced to leave their homes and countries for environmental reasons is still inadequate: their status is not legally defined, and there is no specific international body to monitor the protection of their rights.

For its part, the International Labour Organisation considers climate change to be the main obstacle to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG). There is growing evidence that climate change is becoming an additional driver of migration, both internal and cross-border.

For IOM, environmental factors need to be integrated into all areas of migration management, such as displacement prevention, preparedness and response, border management, labour migration and integration, and return and reintegration.