Coming Soon: Mass Migrations Spurred by Climate Change

“I don’t want to leave this place,” Gaurpodomando said. “I don’t want to leave this country. I love this place.”

One day soon, Gaurpodomando and an untold number of others in Bangladesh and around the world may no longer have a choice.



A growing body of evidence, including analyses from military experts in the United States and Europe, supports the estimate that by midcentury, climate change will make vast parts of Africa and Asia uninhabitable. Analysts say it could trigger a migration the size of which the world has never before seen.

Some of the big questions remain unanswered: How many people will really move? Where will they go? How will they go? Will they return?

But experts estimate that as many as 250 million people — a population almost that of the entire United States — could be on the move by 2050. They will go because temperatures are rising and desertification has set in where rainfall is needed most. They will go because more potent monsoons are making flood-prone areas worse. They will go because of other water events caused by melting glaciers, rising seas and the slow and deadly seepage of saline water into their wells and fields.

NY Times