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Only proactive policies can minimize the human displacement caused by climate change.
Nearly 15 million people worldwide — approximately the population of Cambodia — were forced from their homes in 2015 by weather-related disasters, including violent storms, floods and landslides.
As climate change intensifies, those numbers will rise. Not everyone will end up resettling elsewhere, but a large, undetermined number of displaced people are already becoming environmental migrants, defined by the International Organization for Migration as people who are obliged or choose to leave home due to sudden or progressive environmental changes that adversely affect their lives.
Climate change is one factor in the rising numbers of these displaced people, but the associated crisis is where many of these people live. Up to 650 million people live in areas that will be submerged or exposed to chronic flooding by 2100. The majority of people facing such threats make their home in Asia and the Pacific, the world’s most disaster-prone region, which is acutely exposed to the impacts of climate change.
Sea level rise, one of the most destructive climate change impacts, poses an irreversible threat to coastal communities and island states. Nine of the 10 countries with the largest number of vulnerable people…
