Page - 242 - in Loss and Damage from Climate Change - Concepts, Methods and Policy Options

242 A.Heslinet al. Fig.10.4 New internal displacements per year fromconflict and natural disasters. Data Source InternalDisplacementMonitoringCentre2016 additional challenges of parsing environmentalmotivators from economic, social, and political factors, which influencemigration decisions in tandem (Black et al. 2011).Due to this complexity, aswell as uncertainty in predicting future adaptive capacity, predictionsof futuremovementsofpeople fromclimate changeandenvi- ronmental causesvary from25million to1billion in2050 (IOM2017b). In addition to internationalmovement, populationsmove internally inmassive numbers in the face of environmental factors, including those affected by climate change, such asnatural disasters, environmental degradation, droughts, andfloods. TheInternalDisplacementMonitoringCentreestimates thenumberofnewinternal displacementsperyearatvaluesfarabovethoseestimatesof internationalmigration flowscalculatedbyAbel andSander (2014).As shown inFig. 10.4, thenumber of internaldisplacementsin2016wasover30million.Ofthosedisplacedin2016,nearly 25millionweredisplacedbynaturaldisasters,with largevolumesofdisplacements occurring in Asia, particularly China, India, and Pakistan, illustrated in Fig. 10.5 (IDMC2017). Thecurrent volumeofdisplacements, internal and international, due toenviron- mental stressors is striking.Withclimatechange increasingextremeweatherevents aswell as long-termclimatevariability, the IPCCfindsevidence thatcurrentmigra- tion is partly driven by climate change and projects an increased displacement of people over the 21st century, yet assigns lowconfidence to quantitative projections (IPCC2014).