India is fourth worst-hit when it comes to climate change-induced migration: Report

India is the fourth worst-hit when it comes to climate change-induced migration, with more than threemillion people forced to leave their homes in 2020-2021, the latest report said.

According to the 'State of India's Environment-2022' report, maximum migrations took place in China with more than five million people driven out of their homes due to weather-related disasters.
Following China, the Philippines and Bangladesh recorded over four million climate change-induced displacements, the report said.

The report found that climate was a bigger problem compared to conflicts and violence as the number of people displaced due to the former was much higher than the latter.

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It said that more than 40 million people were forced to migrate across the globe in 2020, out of which 30.7 million migrated due to climatic events like floods, droughts, storms, cyclones, landslides, extreme temperatures and other such events while 9.8 million people were displaced due to conflicts and violence.

Floods and storms in the regions of East Asia, the Pacific and South Asia triggered the most disaster-related displacements, the report said.

In a startling revelation, the report said that nearly 143 million people, which is a little more than the population of India's state of Maharashtra, could be moving within their own countries in the next 30 years because of adverse climate impacts.

It said that 44 million additional people will be forced to migrate due to droughts in 2059, compared with the 2000–2015 period.

Scientists said that by 2020, new internal displacements took place across 42 countries due to conflict and violence and 144 countries due to disasters.

"Human migration and mobility are age-old phenomena, but their triggers are fast changing due to deteriorating environment and ecosystems. Despite the COVID-19 pandemic, the world saw large-scale displacements triggered by climate and weather events in 2020 and 2021," the report said.

While coastal states of India are seeing a rapid increase in floods and cyclones brought on by the impacts of climate change, interior regions see slower effects such as droughts.

As a whole, the country is at severe risk to climate change, says the Indian government’s Climate Vulnerability Index in 2019-20.

The growing threat of climate change impacts also increases the instances of displacement and migration, making people more vulnerable to trafficking, the report said.

India's states of Bihar, Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal are seeing frequent extreme weather events as well as high numbers of trafficking cases, the report said.

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