Imagine for a moment that you run out of water, you have no access to any food, or you have no home to stay. What would you do?
We generally think that migrations are caused by wars, poverty, cultural and social reasons. However, climate change has changed the structure of the phenomenon of migration, which has been known from the past to the present, by causing people to have to leave their homes and living spaces. This concept, called "climate immigrants", is used for people who migrate due to natural disasters and temperature changes. El-Hinnawi, the author of The State of Environment, defines climate migrants as “people who are forced to leave their traditional habitats, temporarily or permanently, due to a significant environmental degradation (triggered by natural processes and/or humans) that endangers their existence or seriously affects their quality of life.” he defines it as. Unfortunately, there are millions of people experiencing this situation. According to the International Environmental Partnership (IEP), it is estimated that 1.2 billion people globally will be forced to migrate by 2050 due to climate change and natural disasters.
Let's talk about developments in recent years... A 2017 study in the journal Science Advances found that by 2100, temperatures could rise to the point where going outside for even a few hours "could result in death for even the strongest people" in some places, including parts of India and eastern China. took it out. In the hurricanes that hit Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador in November 2020, people lost their homes and livelihoods due to torrential rains and landslides. People in this region flocked across the border into Mexico and then headed for the United States. Millions of people in the African Sahel region have flocked to coasts and cities due to drought and widespread crop failures. If escape from warmer climates reaches the scale suggested by current research, this would mean a massive remapping of the world's population.
While climate migration is becoming an increasing threat, changing the balance on the maps, anti-immigrant reactions are also becoming an important problem, especially in countries with nationalist governments. Erin Sikorsky, director of The Center for Climate & Security, states that as populations move from rural areas to more urban areas, the risk of increased political instability in key countries and regions will increase and raise security concerns. In addition, taking in more immigrants may increase interstate tensions and cause social unrest and civil unrest. Erin Sikorsky concludes her words as follows. “This is not just climate change, it is climate change combined with political violence, stattı corruption, and existing instability.” Thus, climate migrants, who have problems meeting their basic needs such as food, shelter, and security, turn into an element of political disputes because, from another perspective, they are perceived as the source of social unrest in the countries they migrate to.
RESOURCES
https://bianet.org/haber/2050-ye-kadar-1-2-milyar-insan-iklim-multecisi-olabilir-261649
El-Hinnawi, E. (2013). The State of Environment. Butterworth-Heinemann.England.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/07/23/magazine/climate-migration.html
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