Climate change expected to drive increase in migration levels

Leading climate scientists are warning governments that climate change is likely to render large areas of the planet unsuitable for human habitation, triggering rising migration.

Data from the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre in Geneva have shown that 22 million people were displaced by extreme events in 2013, such as Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines. That is over twice the numbers displaced by natural events forty years ago.

A United Nations panel of climate experts has asserted that there has been a sea level rise of 19cm since 1900 caused by factors such as a global thaw of glaciers and the melting of Greenland’s ice sheet, causing storm surges.

The panel also estimates it is 95% likely that the burning of fossil fuels is the main cause of warming. Low-lying island countries such as Tuvalu are predicted to disappear under the rising sea by the end of the 21st Century.

According to Jan Egeland, Secretary General of the Norwegian Refugee Council, "natural disasters displace three to ten times more people than all conflicts and war in the world combined." He has also pointed out that people in growing populations in the developing world are more likely to be exposed to extreme weather.

Olivier Deschenes has argued that environmental regulations such as air quality control standards have negative effects on industry employment, but that these costs are small relative to better health outcomes for the whole population.

Read more here.

Related articles:
Environmental regulations and labor market outcomes, by Olivier Deschenes
Employment effects of green energy policies, by Nico Pestel

Related subject area: Migration