Climate change induced migration with special emphasis on the coastal zones in India

Abstract

Climatic factors have played a key role in the movement of the popula-tion historically. Climate can be envisaged as an envelope containing all economic activities and slight changes in climate can trigger the migration of individuals or communities. The frequent hurricanes, heat waves, and droughts have been all trig-gered by the changes in the global climate pattern in the last century. The temperature on a global scale is projected to rise which can have cascading influence on the ecosys-tems and change the habitability of the land. India has a large coastline (7516.6 km) with home to 170 million who are quite susceptible to climatic changes like erosion, sea-level rise, and natural disasters such as cyclones and tropical storms. Bay of Bengal, home to the largest mangrove forest, the Sundarbans witnessed the strongest cyclonic storm recorded in decades on 20th May 2020 which forced millions to evac-uate. Due to coastal erosion during the years 1990-2016, India has lost 236 km of land, jeopardizing the homes and livelihoods of people resulting in migration. West Bengal has witnessed the highest erosion of its coast followed by Kerala, Gujarat, and Odisha as revealed by a study on the Indian shoreline in 2017. The three metro cities namely Kolkata, Mumbai, and Chennai also lie at a high-risk zone in terms of flooding and rise in sea level which might enforce the major population to shift to safer places.