A string of studies commissioned by the Biden administration are coming to a scary conclusion—Climate change will turn "tens of millions" of people into refugees. No government on the planet will escape the catastrophe.
Soon after becoming President, Biden had commissioned various reports related to climate change and future threats to the US. The document, Report on the Impact of Climate Change on Migration, released earlier this week forewarns that the climate crisis will generate migrants over the next few decades due to climate change.
Yahoo News quotes the report as saying: “Tens of millions of people, however, are likely to be displaced over the next two to three decades due in large measure to climate change impacts”.
Another report says that geopolitical tensions may worsen due to climate change particularly in poorer nations, and this is likely to “exacerbate the risks to US national security interests”.
The US reports say that Afghanistan, Colombia, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, India, Iraq, Myanmar, Nicaragua, North Korea and Pakistan are the 11 countries where climate disasters could cause migration.
The reports have been released barely 10 days before the all-important COP 26, the international climate change conference begins in Glasgow, Scotland, in October end.
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Unlike his predecessor Donald Trump—a non-believer in climate change—Biden takes the looming environmental crisis seriously. Among his important initial steps after becoming the President was to re-join the Paris Agreement on climate change and organise the two-day Leaders Summit on Climate in April.
The Biden administration believes that migration from Central America to the US is also due to the environmental crisis.
Vice President Kamala Harris had alluded to this in April when she said: “We are looking at extensive storm damage because of extreme climate, we’re looking at drought in an area in a region where agriculture is one of the most traditionally important basis for their economy, we’re looking at what’s happening in terms of food scarcity as a result of that and, in fact, incredible food insecurity, which we used to call hunger food insecurity".
According to CNN, the US is coming around to believe that the climate displaced people will move to the nearest stable democracies which is likely to cause insecurities among those countries including the US. The Biden administration is now looking at ways to help mitigate the environmental impacts of a man-made changing climate to protect its own security.
The US department of defence will now focus on the strategic and geopolitical threats for the US that emerge from climate change.
This year has been bad with major forest fires ravaging large parts of the world including the US, Canada and Australia. Simultaneously, floods devastated Europe, China, India and many other countries.
With the number of extreme weather events increasing, governments are beginning to take note of adverse impacts of climate change.
