Around 50 Lakh Indians Were Displaced In 2021 Due To Climate Change, Disasters, Says UN Report
Extreme weather incidents, including floods, landslides, cyclones, droughts, forest fires and more are on the rise in India and climate change is making such events more frequent.
India is one of the countries that are highly vulnerable to climate change with 80 percent of the population living in districts that are highly vulnerable to extreme hydro-met disasters.
Every year extreme weather events are making a large section of our population internally displaced as they flee their homes.
Growing number of climate refugees in India
According to the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR), close to 50 lakh Indians were displaced in 2021 due to climate change and natural disasters.
The annual Global Trends Report by the UNHCR said that there were 23.7 million new internal displacements globally due to disasters.
Out of this India accounted for 4.9 million (49 lakhs), the third highest in the world, after China (6.0 million), the Philippines (5.7 million).
In 2020 in India, 3,856,000 people were displaced by environmental disasters, 989 times more than the 3,900 persons displaced by conflicts according to data of the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC).
The number of Indians displaced due to disasters in 2019 was about 27 lakhs.
India will have 4.5 crore climate refugees by 2050
In December 2020, a UN report had said that some 1.4 crore Indians had become displaced due to climate change.
The 'Costs of climate inaction: displacement and distress migration' report estimated that by 2050 over 4.5 crore Indians will be forced to migrate from their homes due to climate disasters.
India is the fifth most vulnerable country in the world when it comes to climate change.
Around 80 per cent Indians are vulnerable to climate change
A 2021 study by the Council for Energy, Environment and Water (CEEW) had found that over 74 per cent of India¡¯s districts are vulnerable to extreme climate events, with 27 out of 35 states and union territories being affected.
Assam, Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra, Karnataka and Bihar are the five states most vulnerable to droughts, floods, cyclones, or a combination of the three.
The latest IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) report by the UN body earlier this year had said that eleven Indian states Odisha, Assam, Meghalaya, Tripura, West Bengal, Bihar, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Uttar Pradesh, Haryana, and Punjab will get most severely affected due to global warming.
If emissions continue to increase, all Indian states may have regions that experience temperatures of 30 degrees Celsius or more, it said.
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