Geographic Areas

International

Focus area(s)

• Climate Change / Energy
• Environmental Justice

Contact Name

Luis Davila

Contact Email

ldavila@ega.org

Climate Change and Migration: Vulnerable Communities Adapting to Global Warming

Back in 1990, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) noted that the greatest single impact of climate change could be on human migration—with millions of people displaced by shoreline erosion, coastal flooding and agricultural disruption. Since then, various analysts have tried to put numbers on future flows of climate migrants (sometimes called ‘climate refugees’)—the most widely repeated prediction being 200 million forced climate migrants by 2050.

Climate processes such as the slow-onset changes such as sea-level rise, salinization of agricultural land, desertification, growing water scarcity and food insecurity, tied to climate-related events such as monsoon floods, glacial lake outburst floods, storms, hurricanes and typhoons, will force people off their land much more quickly and dramatically. Climate change will challenge the adaptive capacities of many different communities, and overwhelm some, as land becomes no longer capable of sustaining livelihoods and people will be forced to migrate to areas that present better opportunities.

Moderator: Oli Brown, International Institute for Sustainable Development

Speakers:

Amy Shannon, Program Officer for Latin America – C.S. Mott Foundation

Ursula Rakova, Executive Director – Tulele Peisa

Chris Allen, Africa Program Director – Global Greengrants Fund