How does climate change affect human migration and what can governments do to prepare for it?

Water scarcity, sea level rise, heat stress and extreme events are debilitating food production and employment in places where humans have fended for themselves successfully for millennia.  In some cases people have managed to adapt while staying in place. In others they have moved, primarily from rural to urban areas within their country of origin.

What magnitude of internal migration may we expect in the best and worst scenarios in the next thirty years? Which areas will experience most emigration and which areas will experience most immigration? What actions may governments take to mitigate migration as a result of climate change?

Find out the answers to these and other questions by joining Piotr Plewa (Duke University) for a conversation with Kanta Kumari and Viviane Clement, World Bank experts on climate change.

Register for the event here.  Please feel free to submit any questions for our panelists in advance of the event to Amanda Frederick.

Link to media release and report: https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2021/09/13/climate-change-could-force-216-million-people-to-migrate-within-their-own-countries-by-2050

If you need a disability-related accommodation, please contact Amanda Frederick (af181@duke.edu) by October 26, 2021.

This event is organized by the Duke University Center for International and Global Studies (DUCIGS), and co-sponsored by the Africa Initiative (AI), the Asian Pacific Studies Institute (APSI), the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies (CLACS), the Center for Slavic, Eurasian and East European Studies (CSEEES), the Duke University Middle East Studies Center (DUMESC), the Duke Center for International Development (DCID), the Duke University Energy Initiative (EI), and the Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions (NIEPS) at Duke.

Speaker Biographies:

Dr. Kanta Kumari Rigaud is a Lead Environmental Specialist and Regional Climate Change Coordinator in the Africa Region of the World Bank Group. She is a leading expert on climate adaptation and resilience and works on climate policy, strategy and knowledge management. She led the development of the World Bank’s Next Generation Africa Climate Business Plan; and is working on programs in Kenya and Uganda and provides advice on multiple other countries on climate action. Her passion and leadership is reflected in the pioneering flagship reports on Groundswell - Preparing for Internal Climate Migration; and the sequel Groundswell – Acting on Internal Climate Migration. Kanta has taken the work further through some deeper dives into the internal climate migration in West Africa and the Lake Victoria Basin countries. Kanta is the co-chair of the Technical Working Group on Environmental Change and Migration in KNOMAD; on the Advisory Board to the EU funded HABITABLE project;  member of the IUCN task force and Working group on Nature-Based Solutions at the Nexus of Environmental Change, Conflict, and Migration. She has a doctorate from the University of East Anglia in the United Kingdom. 

Dr. Viviane Clement is a Senior Climate Change Specialist in the Climate Change Group of the World Bank.  She is an expert on climate change adaptation and resilience and works on climate policy, strategy, and analytics. She recently led the development of the report Groundswell Part 2: Acting on Internal Climate Migration. She has also led initiatives on the development of climate risk management approaches and tools, advised strategies and operations on climate change mainstreaming, and worked on development operations covering integrated ecosystem and natural resource management. She has a doctorate from the George Washington University School of Business.