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Earlier this month, the United States reached an agreement with its southern neighbors to increase security after an increase in the number of Central Americans trying to migrate to the U.S. People are fleeing multiple and often interconnected crises in their countries, but a significant factor is the impact of climate change; in addition to the devastation caused by last season’s record hurricane season, slow-moving climate challenges such as drought have contributed to increased food insecurity.
The climate crisis is fast becoming a key driver of migration; In 2019, 72% of new relocations were climate-related. Many of these trips take you to cities. On the front lines of both migration and the climate crisis, city mayors are responding, often moving faster than national governments to reduce emissions, and providing humanitarian assistance to migrants even when they have no formal responsibility or budget. But so far nations have tackled climate migration primarily as a security challenge and have left mayors out of planning and decision-making. Now, it is crucial that city leaders be at the table where climate migration policy and investment decisions are made.
Without urgent action on the climate, many parts of the world will soon become inanimate. Sea level rise, crop failures and record temperatures will affect the movement of unprecedented people. According to a World Bank report, by 2050, climate impacts may require more than 140 million people to move to their countries in only three regions – sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia and Latin America. Globally, it is estimated that a billion people could be evicted in the next 30 years, less than half their lives. If so, human civilization has not migrated in its history.
It is likely that those who leave their homes will settle in cities that offer multiple opportunities for access to employment and services. This is especially true for the forcibly displaced, as more than 60% of refugees and at least 80% of internally displaced persons (IDPs) live in urban areas.
Going to cities is not without risk. Here, migrants and displaced people can settle in already marginalized neighborhoods and suffer from labor exploitation, dangerous working and living conditions, or traffic. Cities themselves are very vulnerable to climate risks, which means that newcomers can swap one set of climate risks with another.
This puts a lot of pressure on cities, as the pressure on services and infrastructure during migration increases, as climate impacts – extreme heat and fires, floods and landslides – can shift within the city limits. However, the mayor is taking steps to protect new and existing residents as they prepare an inclusive and green path that will take into account the contributions made by newcomers and the goods they bring.
In Freetown, where the population is expected to double in the next 10 years due to climate migration from all over Sierra Leone, Mayor Yvonne Aki-Sawyerr’s administration has been working with young immigrants to improve waste services in informal settlements. In the United States, Houston took in hundreds of thousands of people displaced by Hurricane Katrina in 2005 when Hurricane Harvey struck in 2017 to deal with its devastating devastation. In response, the city, led by Mayor Sylvester Turner, launched the Resilient Houston Strategy, which works to protect people in at-risk neighborhoods and provide opportunities for residents living in floods. In Bangladesh, approximately 2,000 people arrive in Dacar every day as they migrate from other cities to the coast, which is increasingly affected by storms and rising sea levels. Dhaka South City Corporation has developed a city-funded shelter for migrants to facilitate the transition to city life.
The issue of climate migration has been recognized worldwide in recent months. In February, U.S. President Joe Biden issued an executive order to conduct an analysis of the impact of climate breakdown on migration, including “opportunities for protection and acceleration” and “opportunities to respond to migrations directly or indirectly caused by places.” from climate change ”. In response, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti and more than a dozen other U.S. mayors sent a joint letter to the administration to include it in the development of this agenda.
In January, a French court ruled that a Bangladeshi man with asthma could not be deported due to high levels of air pollution in his home country, and a year earlier that month, the UN Human Rights Commission ruled that countries could not deport people for asylum-related threats. At a recent meeting of the UN Security Council to discuss the climate crisis, UN Secretary-General António Guterres called for in-depth cooperation on migration models to address the impact of rising food insecurity and tensions.
However, although all of these are positive steps, climate-friendly policy frameworks have few accountability mechanisms. This means that those who respond in the first line (the mayor) are left without the legal, economic or political support they need to prepare, reduce, adapt and care for their communities.
In many cities, lack of access to finance and resources has increased as a result of the pandemic. It is projected that local governments could lose 15-25% of revenue this year alone. Local governments are doing much less and have greater capacity to increase their revenues and greater support from national governments and the international community. Cities also need greater access to local data to inform their planning and response efforts.
More recently, “Cities, Climate and Migration” C40 Cities and the Mayors Migration Council (MMC) have demonstrated that mayors have the ability to act locally on climate and migration, what cities need for national and international actors to do this work more effectively.
Cities are ready to meet the challenges and take advantage of the opportunities associated with climate and migration. However, mayors cannot change the business as usual. We urge national governments and international organizations to join us in recognizing the role of mayors in this space, to provide them with a seat at the decision-making table, and to unlock the financial support they need to implement smart and inclusive practices that improve quality of life. between migrants and displaced persons, as well as the communities that receive them.
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the attitude of Al Jazeera’s editorial.
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