LAHORE: The problem of climate change in South Asia is expected to push 100 million people into poverty and also increase internal and external migration by 2030, says Laura Tuck, in-charge Sustainable Development at the World Bank.

“In the new World Bank Group report we find that by 2050 over 140 million people in the three regions we monitored including South Asia may have to migrate within their own countries because of water scarcity, drought, crop failure, sea-level rise and storm surges – creating a looming human crisis,” she said.

Tuck was speaking at an online discussion of the World Bank headquarters in Washington DC on April 19 which the bank had convened to discuss the ongoing issues of South Asia’s hotspots and its vulnerability to climate change, and to find solutions.

She said, “forty million of the 140 million migrating people will be from South Asia. We also have evidence that climate change is increasing in not just intensity but also frequency and it will cost us about $520 billion a year in consumption losses.”

She also said climate change had already been linked to poverty. The World Bank report says that average temperatures in South Asia have increased in the last 60 years and will continue rising. Rainfall is becoming more erratic and it is expected that in the future some areas will experience more droughts, others more rain, impacting agriculture, health and productivity. Changes in average temperature will create hotspots in South Asia and living standards of communities will be impacted.

“There are more than 800 million people living in these potential hotspots. Hotspots do not have enough water eventually impacting vulnerable families, but they are also cut off from main city. The hotspots will become more severe if the global community will take no action against carbon emissions.”

Muthukumara S. Mani, Lead Economist, South Asia Region, World Bank said all countries have by now some kind of action plan and recognised the problem. However there are costs to implement these plans so the countries must prioritise their plans. He said some areas have experienced an annual average rise in temperature of 3 degrees, while others 2 degrees centigrade.

“For a farmer, even one degree change matters and a week’s shift in rainfall matters,” he said.

World Bank Chief Executive Officer Kristalina Georgieva said the new research provides a wake-up call to countries and development institutions.

“We have a small window now, before the effects of climate change deepen,” she said. “Steps cities take to cope with the upward trend of arrivals from rural areas and to improve opportunities for education, training and jobs will pay long-term dividends. It is also important to help people make good decisions about whether to stay where they are or move to new locations where they are less vulnerable.”

The research team, led by World Bank Lead Environmental Specialist Kanta Kumari Rigaud and including researchers and modelers from CIESIN Columbia University, CUNY Institute of Demographic Research, and the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research looked at three potential climate change and development scenarios.

They compared the most “pessimistic” (high greenhouse gas emissions and unequal development paths), to “climate friendly” and “more inclusive development” scenarios in which climate and national development action increases in line with the challenge. Aisha Khan, from Pakistan, who is the executive director for the Civil Society Coalition for Climate Change (CSCCC) and CEO of Mountain and Glacier protection Organization (MGPO), said Pakistan was a country of low human development indices. “By 2050 existing land under cultivation for agriculture will be reduced by half and population will double,” she said.

“Can all this be attributed to climate change, and how much of the vulnerability is because of policies or weak government practices – we must ask ourselves.”

She said she was in favour of more open government approaches, because these were ambitious steps developed in the National Action Plan which must be realised in 18 months. She reiterated that civil society must be on board because at the end of the day they are the ones suffering from bad policies.

“Policies must be owned by both government and civil society,” she said and also underlined the need for women to be included.

“We need to create sovereign wealth for women through international financial institutions and help improve access to financial windows for women,” she said.

“There must be projects for the women and run by the women. Also countries – especially those connected by land boundaries -- must collaborate on climate change as their fates could be similar.”

The report recommends key actions nationally and globally, including cutting global greenhouse gas emissions to reduce climate pressure on people and livelihoods, and to reduce the overall scale of climate migration; transforming development planning to factor in the entire cycle of climate migration (before, during and after migration) and investing in data and analysis to improve understanding of internal climate migration trends and trajectories at the country level.The report, Groundswell – Preparing for Internal Climate Migration, is the first and most comprehensive study of its kind.

Published in Dawn, April 25th, 2018