Abstract
The acceleration of climate change can have a significant impact on regions and countries with socioeconomic disparities, making them more vulnerable to environmental disasters such as desertification, flooding, rising sea levels, and extreme weather events. These disasters can cause forced migration within or across national borders and result in people being classified as ‘climate migrants’. This paper examines the possibility of environmental disasters causing forced migration in Colombia, Guatemala, and Mexico. These countries are particularly vulnerable to the effects of climate change in Latin America, making them a critical area of study. Our proposal is to build a framework for analyzing these migratory flows, which can be internal or spill over international borders. We recognize the multi-causality of migratory flows, considering that it is difficult to establish direct cause and consequence relationships between environmental disasters or the effects of climate change and forced displacement. In this way, we approach migration as a response to sudden-onset extreme weather events and disasters. The paper analyzes data on internal and external displacement using reports from international organizations and governments, as well as natural disaster data from EM-DAT, ECLAC, and temperature variation data from NASA and Copernicus. Our analysis aims to cross scales, demonstrating that locations affected by disasters and climate change can produce a national movement of internally displaced people that can spill over into migratory flows in the Americas.
Presenters
Victor CabralStudent, PhD Candidate in International Relations, International Relations Institute - Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
Human Impacts and Responsibility
KEYWORDS
Climate migration, Migratory multicausality, Natural disasters, Climate change, Latin America
