Millions Will Be Trapped Amid Climate Change, Study Warns - New York Times (blog)

Millions of people are expected to become trapped in places that are extremely vulnerable to environmental change in the course of this century, according to a British government study released on Thursday.

Prepared by the Foresight group, a think tank that advises the government on planning for the future, the report explores the complex relationship between human migration and changing environmental conditions and argues that the issue must become a top policy priority on national and international agendas.

The study, titled "Migration and Global Environmental Change," warns that trying to block migration will result in increased poverty and ultimately, potentially unmanageable waves of movement.

It therefore recommends planning for and financially aiding some migration, both within and between countries.

"Reduced options for migration, combined with incomes threatened by environmental change, mean that people are likely to migrate in illegal, irregular, unsafe, exploited or unplanned ways," it warns.

The Foresight study cautions that it is often impossible to distinguish "environmental migrants" from people who move for any number of other related factors.

One of the report's messages is that environmental change is just as likely to trap people as it is to make them flee — or that it can cause them to flee to even more vulnerable areas. Imagine a Nigerian farmer who can no longer grow enough food because of persistent drought, and who then moves to Lagos, a sprawling, overcrowded city built on a floodplain.

By 2060, as many as 552 million people across Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean could be affected by flooding related to climate change, and immigrant populations may be more likely to live in the most dangerous areas, the group's research indicates.

"Human survival may depend on unplanned and problematic displacement," the report says.

The study also cautions that urban planning must begin to focus on the vulnerability of migrants. Across the planet, 150 million people live in cities with "significant" water shortages; by 2015, Africa's urban poor will number 400 million.

The Foresight study involved the work of about 350 people who generated more than 70 research papers over two years that inform the final report.

Geoffrey Dabelko, who heads the Environmental Change and Security Program at the Woodrow Wilson Center and was not directly involved with the research, said the report demonstrated that previous estimates of migration are nothing more than "very fuzzy aggregate global figures that have weak to no methodology behind them."

He said the study departed from what he called "old methodologies" like seeking "to overlay sea-level-rise maps with population distribution maps and say everybody who's flooded moves."

"As we saw in New Orleans, not everybody moves," Dr. Dabelko said. "It was people who are fairly empowered who moved."

The World Bank plans to discuss migration and related risk at a summit meeting in London in December.