Pakistan’s climate refugees
The writer is an academic and researcher. He is also the author of Development, Poverty, and Power in Pakistan, available from Routledge
Multitudes of people around the world continue to be forcibly displaced from their homes due to varied factors ranging from widespread conflicts to more specific forms of persecution based on ethnicity, religion, or gender. Over the past few decades, an increasing amount of people are being uprooted from their places of origin due to growing climate related stresses, a phenomenon which is expected to continue worsening for the foreseeable future.
Recent research by ActionAid International and the Climate Action Network for South Asia estimates that over 18 million people in South Asia have already been forced to migrate due to sea-level rise, water stress, crop yield reductions, ecosystem loss, and drought. It is important to note that these estimates do not include people who will be displaced due to a sudden natural disaster, such as a cyclone or a flood. By 2050, the number of people displaced due to these so-called ‘slow-set’ climate stresses if expected to grow to 63 million.
Pakistan had over 680,000 estimated climate migrants in 2020 and this number may jump to 2 million by 2050. Again, these numbers do not include people displaced by the 2010 floods, for instance, which damaged around 132,000 square kilometers of area and triggered one of the largest climate-induced displacements in human history. While the displacement occurring due to sudden natural disasters can be more temporary, many people displaced by sudden natural disasters can also become permanently displaced, if they are not adequately rehabilitated.
Pakistan is consistently ranked among the top 10 most climate-vulnerable countries in the world, yet it is also not acting fast enough to combat the daily impacts of climate change ranging from heatwaves to droughts, floods, landslides and glacial lake outbursts. These climate-induced environmental stresses are evident across all parts of the country ranging from Gilgit-Baltistan to southern Punjab and large parts of Sindh and Balochistan. Yet, our ill-maintained irrigational networks continue wasting precious freshwater, and unregulated ground water extraction across the country is leading to rapid underground aquifer depletion. In the southern Sindh province, the consequences of damning our major riverways have resulted in major sea intrusion. More than 1.2 million acres of land has been invaded by sea which has, in turn, compelled tens of thousands of people with no option but to migrate and search for an alternative livelihood.
According to a joint Asian Development Bank and World Bank study, Pakistan is losing around $3.8 billion annually because of climate change. Unfortunately, the agricultural policies espoused by these same lending agencies are part of the problem. Consider, for instance, the so-called ‘green revolution’ which encouraged increased use of mechanisation and intensive chemical farming to boost yields, which have caused many of the environmental stresses confronting our rural areas today.
Over these coming decades, Pakistan will need billions of dollars to contend with the varied impacts of climate change. Besides trying to mitigate against future climate related stresses, our policymakers need to address its already unfolding impacts which will continue causing climate related displacements in the foreseeable future.
It is vital to proactively create safe havens for hapless climate migrants, rather than just letting poor displaced people haphazardly pour into already overflowing urban slums in a handful of large cities. Consider, for instance, how Bangladesh has turned Mongla (about 30 miles inland from the Bay of Bengal) from a small town into a major export processing zone, with accompanying infrastructure and resilience measures. This effort is part of a broader vision of ‘transformative adaptation’ to alleviate pressure on Dhaka by diverting climate refugees to smaller urban centres. Pakistan could do the same with CPEC-aligned projects, which thus far seem to be compounding our environmental stresses, rather than alleviating them.
Published in The Express Tribune, March 4th, 2022.
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