Greenhouse gas emissions, acidification of our oceans, and destruction of coral reefs are impacting the availability of fish and other foods for populations. In addition, people are being displaced from their homes due to the glaciers’ shrinking and the sea level increase caused by rising temperatures. The UN agency said food scarcity, inflation, and the climate crisis add to hardship.
Change in critical climactic conditions exacerbates poverty and can cause conflict and instability. The Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC) reported that, globally, in 2021, there were 23.7 million new cases of people being displaced internally due to natural calamities (not including those displaced due to conflict or violence). Studies have shown that trafficking has increased in the aftermath of natural disasters such as cyclones, flooding, earthquakes, and tsunamis — which are likely to become more intense due to the effects of climate change. These people are often powerless, cannot lobby for protection, and are “often in the back of the line for governmental attention.”
For example, in Assam, North-eastern India, women, and girls face child slavery or forced marriage to make ends meet after annual floods. There are concerns regarding the quality of drinking water and the potential for increased waterborne illnesses for large populations due to contamination from soil erosion and agriculture runoff from increased flooding. Warm winters are expected to increase populations of pests, particularly disease-carrying mosquitoes, which not only change infectious disease risks for communities but will lead to increased use of potentially harmful pesticides. Food insecurity and malnutrition may be exacerbated due to agricultural runoff, chemical waste exposure, and waterborne pathogens infecting local plant, meat, and fish processing plants. Climate change’s mental health effects may weigh heavily in these places, resulting in a secondary health crisis.
The livelihoods of farmers, who depend on agriculture for their life, are also severely affected by extreme heat waves and droughts. Droughts devastate households engaged in agriculture as they reduce yields necessary for subsistence and sometimes entrench farmers in debt traps.
In India, successive droughts have forced people to migrate – usually to nearby cities – in search of work. Community-based organizations report traffickers who tend to recruit during tough times: before the harvest or during periods of drought. Large numbers of victims of trafficking are exploited in brick kilns, fishing boats, manufacturing, and the sex sector, in domestic work, as well as on construction sites. Often, men are trafficked to work in brick kilns while women are coerced into prostitution; incidents of children being sold by impoverished families to work in the construction sector have also been reported.
This mobility has been primarily internal and increasingly an urban phenomenon, with many displaced and migrating to urban areas. Although most people displaced or relocating due to climate impacts stay within their countries of origin, the accelerating trend of global displacement related to climate impacts also increases cross-border movements, mainly where climate change interacts with conflict and violence.
Exacerbated by systematic resource extraction by international agricultural conglomerates and a lack of economic and infrastructure investment by the government in rural areas like North Lakhimpur. For instance, it was found that most people affected by the flood have been resettled and relocated over six to seven times from their original location. Since they do not have any land holdings for agricultural activities, which were their primary occupation, they are now forced to other occupations putting them in a more vulnerable situation.
Policy and programming efforts made today and in the coming years will impact estimates of people moving due to climate-related factors. These actions must be taken so that no one is left behind — especially not those fleeing the consequences of climate change. However, tens of millions of people are likely to be displaced over the next two to three decades due in large measure to climate change impacts.
Responses to human trafficking should consider the contribution of climate change in creating conditions conducive to trafficking. Any steps taken to enhance economic and social well-being to mitigate the risk multipliers of trafficking should hence be sustainable and recognize climate impacts. Data collection and research on trafficking trends should also include assessing environmental conditions and climate impacts on livelihoods, mainly if this is a primary driver of trafficking or smuggling.
Currently, no international legal framework exists to address the impacts of climate change or associated environmental disasters, such as extreme weather events, on migration. And while international organizations like the World Bank and the UN Refugee Agency acknowledge “climate migrant” as an official designation for those whose migratory patterns are influenced by environmental changes, they have stopped short of using the term “climate refugee.” As a result, there are no explicit legal or judicial protections for those fleeing environmental disasters, and asylum does not apply.
The goal is to ensure that migration is done in a secure, organized, and consistent manner, and this should apply to those displaced due to climate change, as stated in the UN Global Compact for Migration. In addition, countries should also integrate strategies and measures in their climate policies, such as “Nationally Determined Contributions” (NDC), in line with the Paris Climate Agreement, to establish safe and accessible migration routes while providing exceptional safeguards against forced labor and exploitation caused by climate change.
A key objective of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development is to rigorously execute Target 8.7, which requires prompt and efficient measures to eradicate forced labor, terminate contemporary slavery and human trafficking, and ensure the elimination and prohibition of the most egregious forms of child labor, such as the recruitment and deployment of child soldiers, and to put a halt to all forms of child labor by 2025.