Climate migration waiting to happen

By Thushara Dissanayake

Rural to urban migration is a common phenomenon in any country. This type of migration is mainly influenced by socio-economic factors like getting better employment opportunities and achieving higher living standards. According to the World Bank, 55 percent of the world’s population currently live in cities, and the figure will increase to 70 percent by 2050.

In Sri Lanka rural-to-urban migration is already happening. The majority of those who live in Colombo slums are believed to be people who migrated from rural areas in search of employment opportunities in the city. However, with the onset of war in the 1980s, the migration rate further increased as many people living in war-torn areas started to flee. The phenomenon of internal migration will increase further when people start to migrate due to climate change impacts. This type of migration is called climate migration or environmental migration. The World Bank predicts that climate change could force over 140 million to migrate within countries by 2050.

Climate migration can take many different forms: forced and voluntary, temporary and permanent, local and cross border, individual and group, and of short-distance and long-distance. Other important characteristics of climate migration are the nature, duration and scale of it.

Sometimes, the causes could be slow processes like increasing temperatures, rising sea-levels, changes in rainfall patterns, and land degradation. Floods, cyclones, and high-intensity rainfall-induced landslides act as sudden onset events. Climate migration can have either positive or negative results. On the positive side, it will help people be safe and develop resilience, and on the negative side, people can be vulnerable to many different hazards in their new habitats. Perhaps, those who migrate to urban areas, expecting better opportunities, may end up in miserable situations if they are deprived of good living conditions. Many will face new issues like lack of clean water and sanitation, exposure to health risks and failure to educate their children.

Climate migration not new

According to archaeological evidence, climate change affected ancient human settlements, and the formation of civilisations of Egypt and Mesopotamia is a consequence of that. People left the water-stressed arid lands and settled in riverine areas. Likewise, the expansion of communities in Mediterranean and southern Europe in the 8th century is believed to have been driven by prolonged droughts in West Asia.

As observed throughout the world gradual environmental changes due to climate change have led to the migration of people though this has been a slow and ongoing process. When people are exposed to repeated climate change shocks, they move long distances away from such harsh areas because their livelihood and well-being are no longer secure. When people engaged in agriculture, in rural areas, find it difficult to survive on farming due to water scarcity, especially those engaged in rain-fed agriculture, they move to urban areas in search of alternative means of living. People who opt to live elsewhere naturally choose different destinations that they perceive as more suitable for their expectations.

Predictions of climate change

The intergovernmental panel for climate change (IPCC) in its latest reports has indicated that the South Asian subcontinent will experience a 2 Celsius rise in temperature by 2050. Yet another report by Reuters reveals that 63 million South Asians will move to urban areas from rural settlements by 2050. The main driver of such movement will be people’s inability to sustain agriculture.

The growing water scarcity will lead to crop failures or make it difficulty to raise livestock anymore. Further, rainfall patterns will drastically change and probable high-intensity rains would cause severe flooding at some places. Moreover, high-intensity rain will wash away fertile topsoil reducing agricultural productivity. Many people will have limited natural resources such as drinking water. Other impacts would be extreme temperature, wildfire, and wildlife issues. Saltwater intrusion into the rivers is also on the rise due to dwindling flows during dry spells. There may even be rising sea levels and more intense coastal storms displacing people in littoral areas.

What could lead to climate migration in Sri Lanka

Sri Lanka is one of the countries least responsible for greenhouse gas emissions, but unfortunately it is highly vulnerable to climate change impacts. It has been predicted that wet regions in Sri Lanka will be getting wetter and dry areas drier due to climate change. In other words, we will experience increased flood and drought risks. Sri Lanka has been identified as a country with a higher displacement risk due to disasters in South Asia. According to estimates, 15 are at risk of being displaced out of every thousand inhabitants in Sri Lanka on yearly basis.

In 2017 alone, 135,000 people were displaced by a series of disaster events where floods and landslides were dominant. During many rainy seasons, landslide warnings are issued in the central hilly areas prone to landslide risks. The vulnerable people are mostly the rural poor or their urban counterparts.

Sri Lanka still has a low adaptive capacity to climate change impacts according to the geography and fragile ecosystem. The rural poor dependent on agriculture account for about 70% of the population and they cater to 80% of the local food demand. A vast majority of them engage in rain-fed agriculture, which is highly vulnerable to climate change impacts.

Climate migration out of coastal areas is also probable in the future according to the predicted sea-level rise and coastal storm surges as many of our coastal areas are densely populated and many occupants of those areas are engaged in fishing and tourism-related activities. Nevertheless, the country will hardly see any movement of people out of the country due to climate stressors, being an island nation having diverse agro-ecology.

How to deal with the issue

Improving the resilience of vulnerable populations seems to be the most viable solution for climate migration. For the sustenance of agriculture, traditional crop varieties should be replaced with climate-resilient crops capable of withstanding climate stresses, especially in rain-fed areas. Serial food crops like maize, barley, green gram, and soybeans are such varieties, according to agriculture experts. Similarly, vegetable and fruit varieties which could tolerate climate stressors, should be grown in these areas.

As regards developing resilience to flood risks, construction of flood defences and flood-proof settlements are vital. The development of water resources to meet demands in dry zone areas that are highly prone to drought hazards is to be expedited. To this end, the implementation of possible reservoir projects and transbasin water diversion schemes is important and farmers depending on rain-fed agriculture should be given irrigable lands developed under those projects.

Researching on migration dynamics coupled with climate change scenarios is also important owing to the complexity of the issue. Before the formulation of better policies in the future, it is very important to know the migration patterns in detail as human movement is inextricably linked with socioeconomic factors as well. It is also important to educate people and help them make better decisions on migration. People should be warned to stay where they are unless the new locations they want to move into are less vulnerable. Unless the country plans for it now itself, climate migration will be another crisis in the future.

(The writer is a Chartered Engineer specialized in water resources engineering with over 20 years of experience)