As climate change renders vast regions increasingly risky or even uninhabitable, more than a billion people will move to safer areas. Today’s anti-immigrant policies will prove deadly for climate refugees, argues Gaia Vince, an Honorary Senior Research Fellow at University College London’s Anthropocene Institute and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, Manufacturing, and Commerce. Anti-immigrant policies also will sabotage the economic well-being of potential host nations, which face steep declines in their working-age population. Vince suggests practical, compassionate migration management strategies in advance of the coming wave.
Massive Global Migration
Climate change will cause extreme weather, intense heat, rising sea levels and increasingly large, frequent fires. The warming climate also will intensify social inequality and poverty. In the global south, blistering heat will render large regions uninhabitable, and people will flee to safer locations.
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