OVER 30 MILLION people who were newly displaced within their countries last year were victims of natural disasters, in particular, ones related to extreme weather events.
Climate-induced migration is not a new phenomenon, but climate change is increasing the intensity and frequency of such extreme weather events. As a result and the number of internally displaced people (IDPs) is expected to grow globally.
In Europe, floods have been the main type of hazard triggering displacements across the continent. In July, huge storms battered northwestern Europe and forced an unprecedented wave of floodwater through densely populated valleys.
The World Weather Attribution team of experts found that such floods were between 1.2 and nine times more likely to happen in today’s warmed climate.
According to figures from the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC), 566,000 people were displaced by floods between 2008 and 2020 – 44.8% of all displacements in Europe during the 13-year period. Wildfires were the second most common hazard, displacing 139,000 people within their country’s borders.
The most impactful flood event in terms of displacement was the Balkan Floods of May 2014 which triggered 139,000 displacements across Bosnia, Serbia, and Croatia.
The IDMC developed a model to assess the risk of displacement associated with sudden-onset hazards such as cyclones, earthquakes, tsunamis, and floods. It shows that on average, 13.9 million people are expected to be displaced each year globally.
And, about 6% of them, or 859,000, live in Europe.
Of these, 712,000 could be displaced by floods – Russia, Ukraine and Serbia hold about 58% of the annual displacement risk mostly due to these countries having a high population density near major river basins that are prone to flooding.
IDMC regional coordinator for Europe and Central Asia Ricardo Fal-Dutra Santos told TheJournal that these future projections are underestimates given the models don’t account for all hazards.
Likewise, when it comes to previous displacements the numbers are believed to be much higher due to limited data collection at the time.
“Even though the number seems high, we would guess that the actual extent of disaster displacement is much higher,” Fal-Dutra Santos said.
By understanding who is at risk of being displaced, how long those who are displaced are likely to remain so and in what conditions, governments and the international community will be better equipped to prevent future displacement and address the needs of displaced persons, the IDMC argues.
But in order to do that, the centre says better data on displacement is needed, particularly for displacement associated with slow-onset events such as droughts, coastal erosion, sea-level rise, glacial retreat and permafrost melt.
“Rather than buy into sensational headlines about ‘mass climate migration’, we must provide robust information on the scale, patterns and impacts of the human mobility involved,” according to a recent IDMC report.
“Tuning our tools to better understand disaster displacement and the role of climate change has to be a priority.”
Secondary displacements
Fal-Dutra Santos says the IDMC are building their capacity for data collection, but one particular issue that they face globally is the collection of data on the number of people who are displaced months after a disaster takes place.
“This is also an important part of the information that could be informing better policies: knowing how long people are displaced by floods in a certain area, how long they stayed displaced for etc.”
He notes that this lack of data is not just an issue in Europe, it’s an issue globally.
Difficulty also lies in the monitoring of slow-onset hazards and the displacements associated with them.
“Factors like livelihoods, water, land, are also shaped by human action and decision making, so it is challenging for us to distinguish between forced displacement and voluntary migration,” said Fal-Dutra Santos.
A convergence of conflicts and natural disasters is also making the problem worse, with 95% of last year’s new conflict displacements occurring in countries vulnerable to the impacts of climate change, according to the IDMC.
“With increasing pressure on natural resources, climate change can fuel tensions and conflicts that result in further displacement, Fal-Dutra Santos said.
“For example, there were recently border clashes in Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, and the whole dispute started over the installation of a camera in the water facility.”
Once people are displaced, climate change can further compound existing vulnerabilities in a crisis.
In Syria, recurrent heavy rains the past few winters have generated widespread flooding throughout the northwest region of the country. In January, more than 300 camps for IDPs fleeing conflict were flooded – affecting an estimated 122,950 people.
“These different factors go on top of one another and you have climate change aggravating a humanitarian crisis that was not originally linked to climate change,” said Fal-Dutra Santos.
This work is co-funded by Journal Media and a grant programme from the European Parliament. Any opinions or conclusions expressed in this work is the author’s own. The European Parliament has no involvement in nor responsibility for the editorial content published by the project. For more information, see here.
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