In 1990, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) noted that the greatest single impact of climate change could be on human migration—with millions of people displaced by shoreline erosion, coastal flooding and agricultural disruption. Since then various analysts have tried to put numbers on future flows of climate migrants (sometimes called ‘climate refugees’)—the most widely repeated prediction being 200 million forced climate migrants by 2050.
PNUD/UNDP |