Jakarta, March 4 (BUS): The walls of Seifullah’s house in North Jakarta are lined like tree rings, indicating how high the floodwaters can get each year – more than 4 feet from the damp earthen floor.
When the water rises too high, Saifullah, who uses one name like many Indonesians, sends his family to stay with friends. He guards the house until the water can be drained using a makeshift pump. If the pump stops working, he uses a bucket or waits for the water to recede.
“It’s normal here,” said Saifullah, 73. “But this is our home. Where should we go?”
As the world’s fastest sinking major city, Jakarta shows how climate change is making more places uninhabitable. With an estimated one-third of the city expected to be submerged in the coming decades – due in part to the rising Java Sea – the Indonesian government plans to relocate its capital about 1,240 miles (2,000 km) northeast of Borneo, relocating up to 1.5 million civil servants.
It’s a huge undertaking and part of a mass movement that is expected to accelerate in the coming years, the Associated Press reports.
143 million people are likely to be uprooted over the next 30 years due to rising sea levels, droughts, rising temperatures and other climate disasters, according to a report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change published by the United Nations on Monday.
In Asia, governments are already scrambling to deal with it.
One in three migrants in the world today comes from Asia, which leads the world in the number of people displaced largely by severe weather, storms and floods, according to the report. With rural villages emptied and major cities like Jakarta at risk, scientists predict migration flows and the need for planned relocations will increase.
“Under all levels of global warming, some areas that are currently densely populated will become unsafe or uninhabitable,” the report said.
According to one estimate, as many as 40 million people in South Asia may have to move within the next 30 years due to water shortages, crop failures, storm surges and other disasters.
Rising temperatures are of particular concern, said Chris Field, a Stanford University ecologist who chaired the UN report in previous years.
“There are relatively few places on Earth that are too hot to live in right now,” he said. “But it’s starting to look like in Asia, there may be more of those in the future and we need to think carefully about the implications of that.”
No country specifically offers asylum or other legal protections to people displaced by climate change, although the Biden administration has considered the idea.
Amalie Tawer, who founded Climate Refugees, said people are leaving their homes for a variety of reasons, including violence and poverty, but what is happening in Bangladesh illustrates the role climate change plays as well.
Scientists predict that up to two million people could be displaced in the low-lying country by rising sea levels by 2050. Already, more than 2,000 migrants arrive in its capital, Dhaka, every day, many of them fleeing coastal cities.
“You can see the actual movement of people. You can actually see the increasing disasters,” said Tower.
She said migration flows could slow if countries like the United States and European countries moved now to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to zero. Others say that richer countries that produce more emissions should offer humanitarian visas to people coming from disproportionately affected countries.
Dealing with climate migrants will become a major political issue for sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America over the next few decades, according to a United Nations report. Most people will move from rural areas to cities, especially in Asia where two-thirds of the population can be urban within 30 years.
“They are basically people who are migrating from rural areas and then maybe living in a slum somewhere,” said Abhas Jha, Director of Practices for Climate Change and Disaster Risk Management in South Asia at the World Bank.
Migration should not cause a crisis, said Vittoria Zanoso, executive director of the Mayor Migration Board, a global group of city leaders.
In the northern part of Bangladesh’s capital, Dhaka, for example, officials are building shelters for climate migrants and improving water supplies. Zanusso said they are also working with smaller cities to identify “climate havens” that welcome migrants.
She said the influx of new workforce provides smaller cities with an opportunity for economic growth. It also prevents migrants who might flee villages threatened by rising seas from seeking refuge in a city with scarce water supplies and “switching one climatic risk for another.”
Helping to prepare cities for an influx of migrants will be essential in the coming years, she said: “They are on the front lines.”