Latin American Countries Are Facing ‘’Internal Climate Migration’’

close-up photography of world map

22 November 2021 – by Deniz Saygi

Climate change impacts every area involved with human interaction, and these suffering areas could force people to migrate in distress. Regarding these unfortunate events, the governments are expected to declare an emergence of hotspots where livelihoods are threatened by climate change as early as 2030. These hotspots will continue to intensify and expand – if governments will not take action to reduce climate emissions. 

Today, climate change is emerging as a dominant cause of internal migration throughout Latin American countries. According to the Groundswell Report, internal climate migrants could number over 17 million, representing up to 2.6 per cent of the region of South America’s total population. 

In the recent past, floods and landslides displaced 295,000 people in Brazil, while Hurricane Dorian caused 465,000 new displacements in seven countries in the Caribbean. Also, concerning the decrease in the production of crops and food shortages, Guatemalan people were forced to migrate after droughts and floods. 

Currently, this internal migration process is gradually evolving amongst Latin American countries since the region is vulnerable to the effects of climate change. By 2030, Latin Americans could lose their jobs (2.5 million jobs, in particular) because of the increasing heatwaves. Moreover, it is estimated that the damages caused by climate change and global warming will cost the countries in the region US$ 100 billion per annum by 2050. Therefore, internal migration amongst the regions is inevitable. 

To incorporate the internal migration component into their climate change strategies and regulations, some Latin American countries are making progress: For example, Peru’s Framework Law on Climate Change calls for addressing forced migration as a result of negative climate impacts. Additionally, Honduras’s National Strategy for Climate Change proposes to establish both legal and institutional frameworks for the adaptation strategies with regard to the migrations due to climate change. 

Needless to say, the governments must promote adaptation measures to reduce vulnerability and prevent internal migration for the effects of climate change in the regions where the local people and small scale industries suffer most. Also, a more inclusive focus on adaptation and resilience strategies is needed to support vulnerable communities at risk of migration between Latin American countries.

The 2021 Nobel Prize in Physics is Given to Research on Climate Change

iceberg on water

8 November 2021 – by Deniz Saygi

Regarding his work of climate change models that provide help for predicting the impact of greenhouse gases (carbon dioxide, methane etc.) on climate change, Syukuro Manabe, a senior meteorologist at Princeton University, won the Nobel Prize in Physics (along with Klaus Hasselmann, a professor at the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology in Hamburg, and Giorgio Parisi, a professor at the Sapienza University of Rome).

Using a high-speed computer in the 1960s, Mr Manabe has developed physical models which predicted that if the level of carbon dioxide in Earth’s atmosphere doubles, the global surface temperature increases by 2.36 C. In 1989, he gained success in developing a model for the scientific predictions about global warming by involving the weather conditions of the atmosphere, ocean and land. Manabe also led a research team concerning global warming and climate change in Japan for four years beginning from 1997.

Highlighting the difficulty of carrying out the experiments to classify the problems and their status, Syukuro Manabe underlines the significance of the scientific predictions to fight against global warming and climate change. Since his numerical modelling system predicts and investigates how the Earth’s surface temperatures are influenced by atmospheric conditions and the Earth’s complex climate systems, Syukuro Manabe’s ideas and works are foundational for all modern climate researches that have been ongoing.

“Climate [policy] involves not only the environment but also energy, agriculture, water and just about everything you can imagine. I never imagined that this thing I was beginning to study [would have] such huge consequences,” Mr Manabe said during the conference after winning the 2021 Nobel Prize in Physics.