Climate Migration

Mongolia, Climate Change, and Ih Nuudel (Big Migration)

Mongolia, Climate Change, and Ih Nuudel (Big Migration)

Ih nuudel, meaning ‘the big migration’ in Mongolian, is what locals have coined the migration in record numbers of rural populations to the capital of Ulaanbaatar. This pattern of migration has been going on for two decades in Mongolia due to various factors, but climate change is drastically exacerbating it. In recent years various international reports have begun highlighting the alarming rate of climatic variations recorded in Mongolia. Between 1940 and 2015 Mongolia had a confirmed increase in temperature of 2.24°C making it “one of the strongest climate warming signals on Earth.” Another report revealed that Mongolia is warming at a rate three times faster than that seen anywhere else on the globe. This is catastrophic for a nation known for its deep relation with the land.

2021 Deepened Climate Migration as Survival

2021 Deepened Climate Migration as Survival

2021 closed with yet another year of record forcibly displaced persons and the climate crisis played a major role driving over 84 million people out of their homes.

We already know that in 2020, three times as many people - 30.7 million - were internally displaced by the climate crisis than by conflict or violence. Numbers over the last decade don’t fair any better either, where twice as much displacement was triggered by weather-related events than conflict or violence. The trends tell us people are being forcibly displaced, forced to migrate and wherever possible, migrating to survive.

Haitian Migrant Treatment Just the Latest Sign US is Woefully Unprepared for Climate Migration

Haitian Migrant Treatment Just the Latest Sign US is Woefully Unprepared for Climate Migration

Indeed, Haiti is considered the most climate-vulnerable nation in Latin America and the Caribbean. But the far-reaching effects of climate vulnerability, such as diminished crop yields in largely agriculture-dependent societies and resultant poverty, play out in countries around the region, posing an urgent challenge to the US as it emerges from years of blatantly anti-immigrant and anti-science policies.

Legal Status: The Critical Difference Between Two Climate Migrant Stories

Legal Status: The Critical Difference Between Two Climate Migrant Stories

A recent story in The Nation recounts the experiences of two climate migrants seeking refuge in the US with one defining difference between the two: legal status. The ease with which one migrant fleeing climate disaster is able to immigrate to the US mainland is juxtaposed to the difficulty of the other, highlighting the time sensitive need for the US to create legal infrastructure for climate migration.

Cities in Global South Require Investment, Innovative Solutions to Address Climate Migration

A large share of climate-induced migration involves people moving from relatively rural areas to urban areas, often within a given country or region. While cities around the world are faced with this trend, many ‘urban hot spots’ of migration will occur in rapidly expanding cities in so-called developing countries, dubbed “fragile cities” by urban development expert Robert Muggah. These cities are characterized by their limited capacity to prepare, including existing issues of inequality, lack of access to services, and already facing direct threats as a result of climate change such as storm surge risk. For example, many African cities facing increasing climate migration are among the fastest growing in the world, but are also susceptible to sea level rise and fresh water shortages, among other climate challenges. They also generally lack adequate housing, education, and healthcare services. Climate migrants arriving in these ‘fragile cities’ may experience increased vulnerability as they find it particularly difficult to deal with the negative impacts facing the city at large, along with the existing urban poor.

Stop Peddling Fear of Climate Migrants - Republication

Mika Baumeister via UNSPLASH

Mika Baumeister via UNSPLASH

Sarah Nash and Caroline Zickgraft, political scientists whose research areas include climate change and migration, have written an excellent Op-Ed in response to yet another sensational projections report of climate change impacts on migration that you should read.

We’ll link to its entirety here, but a snippet:

“And that is the crux of such reports: it’s not the changes in climate and the floods, heatwaves, extreme weather events, droughts and forest fires that are to be feared. The object of fear is the ‘Other’, people forced to flee their homes as a result of these changes who travel to ‘our’ shores. Despite summer heatwaves in cities across Europe and associated mortality, wildfires in the United States that have reduced entire communities to ashes, and recurring floods affecting the same communities again and again, the Global North is more scared of boats of people traversing the Mediterranean Sea, of people clandestinely moving across its land borders, and scaling walls built to keep them out. In this worldview, the ecological threat isn’t ecological at all – it’s human.”

We also chimed in on that report, with a few additional Perspectives:

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Mongolia, Climate Change, And Ih Nuudel (Big Migration)
Mongolia, Climate Change, And Ih Nuudel (Big Migration)
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