MORE THAN 30 million people were displaced last year by environmental and weather-related disasters across Asia, experts have warned, and the problem is likely to get worse as climate change exacerbates such problems.
Tens of millions more people are likely to be similarly displaced by the effects of climate change, including rising sea levels, floods, droughts and reduced agricultural productivity. Such people are likely to migrate in regions across Asia, and governments must start to prepare for the problems this will create, the Asian Development Bank warned.
The costs will be high – about $40 billion (€29 billion) is the likely price for adapting and putting in place protective measures, from sea walls to re-growing mangrove swamps that have been cut down and that can help to protect against storm surges.
“While large-scale climate-induced migration is a gradual phenomenon, communities in Asia and the Pacific are already experiencing the consequences of changing environmental conditions, including eroding shorelines, desertification and more frequent severe storms and flooding,” the bank said last week. This could lead to a widespread crisis across the region if preparations are not made.
Robert Dobias, climate change project chief at the Asian Development Bank, said climate change was still a relatively small cause of migration, as economic causes loomed largest and as environmental disasters happened independently of global warming. However, the problem was likely to increase, with potentially severe consequences, including conflict, as people are forced to move long distances.
Areas most at risk are low-lying islands such as the Maldives, whose environment minister, Mohamed Aslam, said the populations of entire islands in the archipelago had been forced to move.
The Asian Development Bank warned that governments must start to make preparations now, to be ready for the multiplying threats, and because more extreme weather has already started to take effect.
The bank is working on a report that will detail the likely problems and propose a range of potential policy changes to help to deal with them. – ( Guardianservice)