Climate change could triple migration to Europe by 2100
Annual migration to Europe could triple by the end of the century due to climate change, according to a study from New York’s Columbia University. The study’s author, Wolfram Schlenker, stated that even if efforts to curtail global warming succeeded, asylum applications could still rise by 25% by 2100. The research, which focused only on the impact of climate change on migration, excluding other economic and political factors, analysed asylum applications to European Union states from 103 countries between 2000 and 2014. Countries with average temperatures of 20C produced higher number of applications. 

T he devastating effects of climate change may drive up the number of migrants seeking asylum in Europe if current trends continue, a new study has shown.

By the end of the century the number of migrants attempting to settle in Europe annually will triple, based on current climate trends alone, according to the research.

Wolfram Schlenker, author of the report, which was published in the journal Science on Thursday, said that we will see “increasing numbers of desperate people fleeing their home countries”.

He predicts that, even if international efforts to curb global warming are successful, the number of asylum applications may rise by as much as a quarter before 2100.

Mr Schlenker said his predictions are based only on climate changes’ impact on migration, and is independent of other economic and political factors.

Asylum applications could increase on average by 28 per cent, which is an additional 660,000, according to the study.

The effects of climate change is predicted to bring more extreme weather including floods, droughts and heatwaves as well as more intense storms and rising sea levels.

The new study, led by scientists at Columbia University in New York, was predominantly funded by the EU’s Joint Research Centre. The US Department of Energy also contributed.

The authors examined asylum applications in the EU from 103 countries between 2000 and 2014, during this time, applications averaged at more than 350,000 a year.

They compared the applications with information on environmental factors, adjusting the data for factors such as conflict and political turmoil.

Scientists spotted a trend correlating weather and changes in the number of asylum applications.

Countries with average temperatures around 20C showed a higher number of applications, while there were fewer asylum seekers from places with cooler temperatures.

The data showed that the more temperatures in a country’s key agricultural regions rose above 20C in the growing season, the more people left for another country.

They founded increases in the number of migrants from hot places such as Iraq and Pakistan when temperatures increased.

Bob Ward, policy and communications director at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the London School of Economics (LSE) said the study should be taken seriously by policymakers.

Speaking to the Guardian, he added that forecasting models often fail to take climate factors into account.

He told the newspaper: “This study shows how Europe will be impacted by one of the most serious impacts of climate change. Hundreds of millions, perhaps billions, of people will be exposed to coastal sea level rise and shifts in extreme weather that will cause mass migrations away from the most vulnerable locations.

“We know from human history that such migrations often lead to conflict and war, with devastating consequences. The huge potential costs of migration-related conflict are usually omitted from economic models of climate change impacts in the future.”

