COP29: Climate-induced migration in the spotlight

COP29: Before Cyclone Aila battered the southwestern coast of Bangladesh in 2009, Vikas Das lived with his family in a coastal hamlet, tending a small vegetable plot and fishing in a nearby river.

As the powerful storm submerged the region, killing hundreds and forcing hundreds of thousands to flee, the Das family sought shelter in a nearby village.

Hoping to rebuild, Das rented a house with some government and charity assistance and resumed fishing and farming. For several years, the family managed, but the cyclones kept returning, salinating the river, eroding the soil, and diminishing fish and crop yields.

With the water levels rising each year, the family faced a relentless chore: constantly moving their ramshackle house to safety.

"We needed extra money to lift the house every month," Das said in an interview with VOA.

The unending struggle eventually drove Das to Dhaka, the Bangladeshi capital, where he took a job he never envisioned for himself: driving a rickshaw to support his family.

"I did not study that much," said Das, who now lives in a Dhaka slum. "I started driving a rickshaw because I didn't know anything else."

While many Cyclone Aila survivors returned to their villages, countless others like Das ended up in Dhaka and other distant cities, living in overcrowded slums and enduring poverty.

The country's climate migrant population has continued to swell since Alia. Last year, Bangladesh saw an estimated 1.8 million internal displacements due to disasters, ranking it among the top five countries globally, according to the International Displacement Monitoring Center.

With the country ranking high on the list of climate disaster risks, experts warn Bangladesh's climate migration crisis could worsen without action. The World Bank predicts that Bangladesh could have 13.3 million internal climate migrants by 2050.

South Asia's climate woes

South Asia is a climate change hot spot, with ever more intense cyclones, storms, floods, droughts and heat waves displacing millions every year. Last year, natural disasters displaced 2.9 million people across the region: Afghanistan had 1.5 million IDPs, Pakistan 1.2 million, India 90,000 and Bangladesh 55,000, according to IDMC.

"In Pakistan, India and Bangladesh, the migration trends are very rapid. They occur almost every year," said Zainab Naeem, a research fellow at the Sustainable Development Policy Institute (SDPI).

Worldwide, more than 26 million people were newly displaced by natural disasters last year, according to the IDMC, many of them driven from their homes by floods.

The World Bank says climate change could force as many as 216 million people to migrate within their own countries by 2050.

COP29 gives attention to migration

Though the link between climate change and migration has long been recognized, it wasn't always a focus of policymakers and activists. That changed last year, as the U.N. climate talks in Dubai — known as COP28 — officially recognized migration as a climate impact.

The increased attention continued this year at COP29 in Baku, Azerbaijan, where despite the conference's focus on climate change finance, delegates also discussed the climate-migration nexus, according to Rania Sharshr, climate action director for the International Organization for Migration.

"COP29 has featured a wide array of proposed actions to address climate-induced displacement and migration," Sharshr said.

Several developed countries, including Germany, Sweden, Australia and New Zealand, pledged contributions to a climate-caused loss and damage response fund that communities can use for climate migration programs, she said in an email.

Additionally, the Baku Principles call for concrete action "to invest in solutions for communities and migrants affected by climate change," Sharshr said.

The Baku Principles, adopted at COP29, are a set of guidelines that aim to integrate human development into climate action strategies.

But other delegates called the focus inadequate and the pledges insufficient. A draft financing plan released by the summit on Friday would commit developed nations to providing $250 billion per year by 2035 to help poor nations cope with the effects of climate change. However, rich and poor countries remained divided over the figure, with some delegates calling for no less than $1 trillion.

"As long as that's not happening, you'll still find people migrating because of the impact of climate change, and so getting to the roots of the problem is critical," said conference observer Sonia Basinia Kwami.

Pakistan facing further risk

Policymakers acknowledge a gap in policies linking climate change to migration, despite increased awareness of the issue. Mazhar Hayat, deputy secretary of Pakistan's Ministry of Climate Change, said climate-induced migration is a relatively new topic for policymakers.

"Most of the time the response is reactionary, but now we are thinking for long-term planning in this regard," Hayat said in an interview with VOA's Azeri Service.

Hayat noted that Pakistan is still grappling with the aftermath of the 2022 "super floods," which affected more than 33 million people.

"We're still in the process of rehabilitation," Hayat said.

In recent years, extreme weather events such as floods, droughts and heat waves have become increasingly common in Pakistan, putting the country on the top 10 list of the 2021 Global Climate Risk Index by Germanwatch. While floods displace people temporarily, droughts tend to force long-term internal migration, according to Climate Action Network South Asia.

Take Ali Zeb, a fruit farmer from Khanozai in Pakistan's western Balochistan province. Zeb once had a thriving fruit business, tending an orchard of 350 apple and apricot trees that earned him up to $23,000 a year.

"Life was good before, and I worked hard to maintain the orchard," Zeb said in an interview with VOA's Deewa Service.

But Balochistan, rich in resources, is also prone to natural disasters such as earthquakes, floods and drought. In recent years, droughtlike conditions across much of the region worsened, hitting the agriculture sector hard.

Zeb said he had lost his orchard first, as his trees withered in a long dry spell. Then, the 2021 floods destroyed his house.

With nothing left, he moved to the district center, where he now works as a day laborer to make ends meet.

"Now I do any work," he said. VOA/SP