Will Climate Change Cause More Migrants than Wars?
Daniel Gutman writes that climate change is one of the main drivers of migration and will be increasingly so. It will even have a more significant role in the displacement of people than armed conflicts, which today cause major refugee crises.
This was the warning sounded by Ovais Sarmad, the Deputy Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), who was in Buenos Aires to participate in a meeting of international representatives and senior Argentine government officials, on May 16 to analyse the impacts of this phenomenon.
“One example I use is that recently there was migration of refugees and migrants in Europe because of the Syrian conflict and other conflicts in Sub-Saharan Africa. That is a big political issue,” Sarmad told IPS.
“But the climate change impact will make one million look like a small number. Because a hundred or four hundred million people live in developing countries in low-lying areas, in cities which are very close to the sea. If sea level rises, then people will have to move.”
Ovais Sarmad, Deputy Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), spoke at a conference in Buenos Aires, during a meeting, T20 and Climate Change: Planning, Risk and Response Facing the Emergency, to study the emergencies caused by this phenomenon. Credit: Argentine Council on Foreign Relations. Photo courtesy of Inter Press Service
KJ