Types of Climate induced migration in India

Within the Indian context, climate-induced migration can be broadly divided into two categories.

Category 1: The first category is migrants who are forced to move from rural to urban areas as a result of an environmental disaster that might have destroyed their homes and farms.

• These migrants often seek refuge in mega-cities for the large range of opportunities they present. So in the case of Mumbai, a number of migrants from the South might have moved to the city as a result of land degradation and desertification back home while migrants from the North have largely moved owing to drought.

Category 2: The second category of climate-induced migrants most relevant to India are migrants who move from Bangladesh in search of a better life in India. Bangladesh is one of the world’s most natural disaster prone countries — a fourth of its land is just five feet above sea level, while two-thirds is less than 15 feet above sea level.

• In the last three decades, close to a million people have been rendered homeless as a consequence of increasing erosion in the Brahmaputra river basin.
• The Sunderban Delta in Bangladesh is also seeing a constant rise in sea levels and incidents of salt-water intrusions. It is estimated that a mammoth 50-120 million migrants may end up becoming climate refugees of Bangladesh in India.

Source: The Diplomat