Climate change-driven heat waves, droughts and floods will become riskier and push vulnerable people into extreme poverty according to a new research by Harvard University researchers.
The study Climate change increases resource-constrained international immobility published in the journal Nature Climate Change said that due to a constraint of resources, people will not be able to migrate to escape climate disasters.
Migration is a widely used adaptation strategy to climate change impacts. Yet, resource constraints caused by such impacts may limit the ability to migrate, thereby leading to immobility.
The researchers found that as conditions become more extreme, it will get harder for many of the world’s poorest and most vulnerable people to move. Thus, some will be unable to escape the harmful impacts of climate change.
Harvard University Centre for the Environment researcher Hélène Benveniste said, “It’s costly to move, particularly if you’re going to move further away and especially if you’re going to move across borders.”
Climate change-driven heat waves, droughts and floods can damage crops and destroy houses — pushing low-income people further into poverty. Extreme weather could also make it more difficult for just one or two family members to move away and send money back home.
This effect would leave resource-constrained populations extremely vulnerable to both subsequent climate change impacts and increased poverty.
Dr Benveniste said, “What that means is kind of a double whammy. You have climate change impacts in origin communities in those locations … but you also have limited options of having access to credit that is being sent back to origin communities because migrants are not being able to leave in the first place.”
He said that as much as the world is focused on climate refugees, we also need to pay attention to people who cannot afford to escape climate disasters at all.
The present study provides a quantitative, global analysis of reduced international mobility due to resource deprivation caused by climate change. It shows that climate change induces decreases in emigration of lowest-income levels by over 10% in 2100 for medium development and climate scenarios compared with no climate change and by up to 35% for more pessimistic scenarios including catastrophic damages. M