EFFECTS OF CLIMATE CHANGE AND MIGRATION ON MUNICIPALITIES. WHY CITIES MUST PREPARE FOR CLIMATE MIGRATION
- 03.12.2023
- Author:Dursun Yıldız
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EFFECTS OF CLIMATE CHANGE AND MIGRATION ON MUNICIPALITIES.
WHY CITIES MUST PREPARE FOR CLIMATE MIGRATION
Dursun Yıldız
Civil Engineer
Hydropolitics Expert
Hydropolitics Associatiın-Türkiye
ABSTRACT
As in many fields, climate change has direct and indirect effects on cities and municipal administrations. There are international cooperation programs to reduce the risks of Climate Change effects on growing cities.
The urban areas are still very vulnerable to climate change effects and should be prepared for the additional climate immigrants' pressures on municipality services. For this reason, adaptation and mitigation studies are carried out.
For climatic reasons, there is a major increase in migrations towards big cities mostly within the country. Projections made by different organizations showed that the trends will continue. For this reason, it is important to take into account the additional effect of climate immigrants as well as the effects of the change in environmental conditions.
This study aims to increase awareness by analyzing the pressure that irregular migration movements are still experiencing as migration to big cities within the country and which may occur as external displacements in the future. We focused on mass migration pressure, especially on sustainable water management in the majority of the growing cities.
In this study, the statistical data of the UN International Migration Organization, the effect of climate change data, demographic properties data, hydropolitics relationships between countries, and water resources potential data in the examined regions were obtained and analyzed. In the study, it was determined that some countries in some regions , such as the Sub-Saharan African countries, have the potential to create internal and external mass migrations under the increasing effects of climate change. Amy Pope said in a statement that African countries are among the most affected countries by climate change, and in 2022, 7.5 million people in Africa were displaced by natural disasters. In addition, it was estimated that 50 million environmental immigrants would be formed by 2060 in the study conducted by the UN Environment Program. Many of these immigrants will be moved toward the growing cities that mostly suffer or likely to suffer from water shortages. It has been found that this will increase the sectoral water allocation problems as well as water shortage and water security problems in these cities.
A key challenge is that local municipalities lack administrative capacity and adequate resources to integrate internal and external displaced population. Water is generally an inadequate resources for growing cities
The population of many large cities rapidly increases and the water potential in their regions becomes insufficient to meet the increasing water demand. In these growing cities, the additional water needs created mainly by internal migration, are met by inter-water transfers as in the case of Türkiye. However, as climate change effect increases sustainable water supply from neighboring river basins will also be at risk. This water security risk will increase further with the accumulation of domestic or international climate immigrants to these cities and cause social tensions and conflicts. Therefore especially in growing cities municipality administrations should carry out studies that take into account all these emerging risks In this context, especially in countries under the effects of climate change and on migration routes, new urban development framework plans should be developed or revised by taking into account the effects of climate immigrants.
Keywords: Climate change,Climate migration,Growing cities,Water crises.
This study was presented in Antalya International Science Forum (ANISF 2023 "Climate Change, Environmental Crisis, and Migration" 30 November 2023
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