Many places are becoming increasingly uninhabitable. and around a quarter of humanity is already dealing with drought and associated food insecurity. By 2070one-fifth of the planet could become too hot for normal human life, causing up to 3.5 billion people to move. Sea level rise alone could displace 410 million people around the world by the year 2100.
We are poised to see the largest and fastest movement of people in human history. New policy frameworks will be needed. In 2025, we will begin to move from reactive to proactive and begin to embrace the imperative of climate-driven relocation.
Unsurprisingly, climate-driven relocation will hit poor and communities of color the hardest. Those with the fewest resources to adapt, those who did the least to cause the climate crisis, will be the hardest hit. think about him 33 million displaced by floods in Pakistan in 2022, with 9.4 million acres of agricultural land damaged or destroyed. Consider how the history of racism in the United States increases climate risks.neighborhoods previously marked in red have 25 percent more households facing a high risk of flooding. But no person or place is immune: think about the heat waves in Europe in 2022 that killed more than 61,000where few people have air conditioning because it was never necessary. At the rate humanity continues to spew greenhouse gases, all of this could just be a dress rehearsal.
To date, most climate migration has occurred within nations, but as regions affected by extreme weather expand, that will have to change. We will need to be vigilant to keep xenophobia at bay, recognizing the cruel injustice at play when nations with lower greenhouse gas emissions, such as the Pacific Islands, are the first to be inundated.
Where will people go? How will this be managed? One thing is certain: ignoring the problem will not make it go away; On the contrary, it will result in chaos. At international, national and local levels, we will begin to develop policies to fill the current legislative and regulatory gap, such as restricting housing construction in high-risk areas. An example is the state of New Jersey. Purchase from around 200 owners. in Woodbridge Township, one of the areas hardest hit by flooding from Hurricane Irene in 2011 and Hurricane Sandy in 2012, to ban new construction and return the land to nature.
Other initiatives and policies will involve preparing lower risk areas to become receiving communities for those who must relocate. In the Pacific, one of the regions with the lowest greenhouse gas emissions in the world, entire nations are in danger of being inundated. The nation of Kiribati has already bought land in Fiji as part of its plan to ultimately relocate people as needed due to sea level rise. In 2023, 18 Pacific island nations endorsed the Pacific Regional Framework on Climate Mobilitywhich outlines several priorities, such as regional collaboration on cross-border relocation to ensure that human rights are respected, developing guidelines in consultation with relocating communities, and coordinating cross-border support for cross-border migrants.
In 2025, at the level of individuals and families, we will see those with the means begin to proactively relocate. Already, 11 percent of Americans have considered moving to avoid the impacts of global warming, and about 75 percent are hesitant to buy homes in areas with high climate risks like wildfires (more than 30 million homes in the lower 48 US states are at risk of wildfires).
We will also continue to see the insurance market play an important role in these changes, as more and more high-risk locations become uninsurable. For example, in 2023, the National Flood Insurance Program changed its pricing structure for the first time since its creation in 1968. As a result, the average cost of flood insurance has increased in many places: in Plaquemines Parish, Louisiana, it skyrocketed by more than 1,000 percent.
In 2025, continued reconstruction in the same places after extreme weather events, common practice to date, will be widely understood as absurd. It’s not that people want to move, abandon the communities and ecosystems they love and call home; is that they must do it. Cultures and diasporas will begin to change to embrace this new reality. Many of them will face a tough question: What does home really mean in the era of climate collapse?