Regional Perspectives on Migration, the Environment and Climate Change

The perception that large numbers of people may be forced to migrate due to the effects of climate change has fuelled a renewed interest in the subject of migration and the environment. Recent estimates suggesting that between 200 million and 1 billion people could be displaced by climate change over the next 40 years have alarmed policymakers. Even though such estimates have been dismissed as, at best, “guesswork” by many experts (IPCC 2007; Foresight 2011), they have helped to focus policymakers’ attention on the linkages between migration and climate change. Concerns about the migration-related consequences of climate change have encouraged policymakers around the world to focus more on how environmental change will affect people’s lives and human security. The Chairman of the leading expert authority, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), for example, has talked about the “human faces of climate change” (Piguet 2013). Unlike indicators of environmental health, such as carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions or changes in rainfall or temperature, migration reflects the human dimension of climate change.