The Sunken City of Earth – 1/10th of the World’s Population Are Being Forced To Move – And You Might Be Next

The Sunken City of Earth – 1/10th of the World’s Population Are Being Forced To Move – And You Might Be Next

Imagine waking up one day knowing that your hometown will disappear beneath the ocean – not in fifty years or a century, but within your lifetime. For millions of people living on vulnerable coastlines and islands, that concept isn’t fiction any more. Already, it’s influencing where they can build homes, raise families, and plan out their futures. Often described as an environmental crisis, climate change is increasingly becoming a humanitarian issue. Rising sea levels, longer droughts, stronger storms, heat waves, flooding, and more are all making places all over the world progressively harder – and in many cases, impossible – to live in. As disasters increase in frequency and subsistence disappears, millions of people are being forced to leave their homes. Researchers expect this trend to accelerate throughout the next century without significant emission reductions or investments in climate adaptation. Climate change is not merely an environmental issue. It is now causing millions of people worldwide to face a humanitarian crisis.

Increasingly, climate change is shifting millions of people’s future prospects, particularly related to where they can live in the future. Although rising global temperatures and shifting patterns are generally associated with melting glaciers, shrinking biodiversity, and worsening weather conditions, one of the most significant and disregarded consequences may be the physical movement and displacement of people as they adapt to these changes. Environmental change has always influenced migration, whether due to higher heat, changing landscapes, or other natural causes. However, climate change is increasing both the frequency and severity of dangerous events, such as hurricanes, tornadoes, wildfires, and more. This is making displacement more common – and harder to recover from. Scientists generally distinguish between two major types of climate impacts: sudden-onset and slow-onset effects.

Sudden-onset disasters may refer to hurricanes, floods, wildfires, storm surges, and cyclones. These events are called “sudden-onset” disasters because of their ability to demolish homes and other infrastructure within hours, forcing families into temporary shelters or relocation. In the past, people commonly returned to their original homes. However, as disasters become more frequent and harder to recover from, rebuilding can become economically impossible, leading to permanent migration.

On the other hand, slow-onset impacts occur over longer periods of time. While intuitively these impacts may seem less consequential than sudden-onset disasters, slow-onset impacts are in fact even more disruptive, as they gradually erode people’s ability to remain where they live until there is no other possible alternative other than movement. These impacts include rapid sea-level rise, desertification, saltwater intrusion into freshwater supplies, declining agricultural productivity, glacier retreat, and chronic drought. Unlike a single storm, these changes unfold over years or decades, reducing food production, increasing water scarcity, and undermining local economies until relocation becomes the only remaining option. While these changes may seem to occur over a long period of time, they are occurring much more rapidly than most people realize.

For instance, Jakarta, Indonesia’s capital, faces an existential threat due to rapidly rising sea levels caused by climate change. Massive parts of Jakarta are expected to be submerged by just 2050, meaning countless infrastructure, homes, and families are being forced to relocate to higher areas of land. Due to this impending crisis, the Indonesian government has been forced into a massive relocation effort to build a brand new capital city higher inland.

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Another example is a relocation effort in the indigenous village of Newtok, Alaska. Permafrost thaw, river erosion, and repeated flooding has made the original settlement increasingly unsafe to live in. Because of these challenges, the residents of Newtok have begun relocating to a new community, Mertarvik. This example illustrates how climate change has made entire cities and settlements become uninhabitable, even in well-established countries such as Indonesia or the USA.

One of the biggest reasons people move due to climate change is agriculture. All over the world, hundreds of millions of people depend on farming, fishing, and successful yields to generate a positive economic income. Changes in rainfall patterns, increased temperatures, and more frequent droughts reduce crop yields and make food production harder to sustainably grow consistently. Local farmers experiencing repeated harvest failures will often lose income and food security at once. This can force countless people to relocate in search of employment and stable economic incomes. Climate migration is driven less by a single disaster than by the gradual loss of economic opportunity over an extended period of time.

Climate change is also altering the very weather patterns that countless communities depend on. Climate change is shifting rainfall patterns, weather events, and even the seasons themselves. Communities which depended on consistent rainfall may find that the weather has shifted, causing rainfall to fall irregularly, or even not at all. Additionally, global warming is causing what water does fall to evaporate faster than expected, meaning freshwater supplies shrink much quicker than normal. Certain areas may experience severe floods, while other regions may experience intense droughts in the same month. At the same time, less freshwater supplies means agriculture, sanitation, industrial operations and basic daily needs are negatively impacted and limited. This new competition over scarce water fuels civil tensions, worsens political or economic volatility, and drives human migration.

The Colorado River. Credit: coloradorafting.net 

For instance, the Colorado River is a large river running from La Poudre Pass in the rocky mountains, extending all the way to the California Gulch in New Mexico. This river, spanning 1,450 miles long, is one of the largest rivers in the USA. 7 states and over 40 million people depend on the resources from this river. As climate change causes this river’s freshwater supply to rapidly degrade, intense debate and competition over the river’s resources have broken out across the states dependent on it.

Another threat occurs from rapid sea-level rise. On the human timescale, the impacts of sea-level rise are effectively permanent. As melting glacial ice combines with expanding, warmer ocean water, they trigger more frequent coastal flooding, severe erosion, and agricultural saltwater contamination. Vulnerable deltas and small island nations face the highest risk of disruption.

An example lies within the Pacific, on one of the world’s lowest-lying island nations: Tuvalu. Tuvalu faces an immediate threat from sea-level rise, coastal erosion, and saltwater contamination into freshwater supplies and agricultural land. Because of this threat, the government has been forced to develop adaptation plans and international agreements to provide future migration pathways for the future. Tuvalu is an example of one of the long-term side effects of climate change on entire countries’ existence.

Today, most climate-related migration occurs within national borders, making this issue hard to track across countries. After disasters, families typically relocate to nearby towns or cities where they have relatives, employment opportunities, or other benefits. The World Bank’s Groundswell report estimates that without ambitious climate action and resilient development, over 216 million people across six world regions could become internal climate migrants by just 2050 – less than 25 years away. Additionally, the report states that rapid emissions reductions and investments in adaptation could reduce this projected migration by as much as 80%.

Climate change rarely acts alone. Migration decisions are almost always influenced by poverty, employment options, governance, education, infrastructure, and family networks. Climate change simply acts as a risk multiplier. For example, climate change may cause prolonged drought, reducing agricultural income and increasing unemployment and food insecurity. This can cause political instability or conflict, which in turn forces additional displacement. This makes climate migration difficult to measure effectively.

However, global displacement is not unavoidable! Climate adaptation strategies can significantly reduce migration pressures. Building flood defenses, restoring wetlands and mangroves, developing drought-resistant crops, improving irrigation efficiency, strengthening early-warning systems, and constructing climate-resilient housing can all help slow displacement. Governments can also implement relocation programs ahead of time, allowing more reliable solutions to be put in place before the disaster actually occurs. In the end, climate migration is not inevitable – just ignored. The correct policy choices today will determine how many people are displaced in the next few years.