COP29: Will India finally address climate migration?

India is witnessing a myriad of issues caused by extreme weather events such as sweltering heat, droughts and massive flooding. 

Among them, climate-induced migration holds particular significance for the South Asian nation, where a surprising number of people are already facing the threat of displacement with the figures expected to rise exponentially.

In 2020, an estimated 14 million people in India were forced to migrate as a consequence of extreme weather events, according to figures from the country's Internal Displacement Monitoring Center (IDMC).

IDMC's 2022 report states that India is seeing the third highest number of internal displacements due to disasters, after China and the Philippines.

The number of climate-related migrants in India is projected to reach 45 million by 2050, according to Climate Action Network South Asia.

Despite the severe risks of climate migration, India still lacks a policy framework.

"Many human mobilities are taking place that are, in part, due to climate change but are not identified as climate-linked," explained Mathew A. Varghese, professor at the Center for Urban Studies at Mahatma Gandhi University in the state of Kerala.

Climate migration policy in India

Despite being the seventh most climate-vulnerable country in the world, facing the mammoth challenge of climate migration, India does not have concrete policies in place to address the issue.

In 2008, India launched the National Action Plan on Climate Change (NAPCC), which laid down a broad framework to address what India could do to tackle climate change in different sectors.

However, "there's a significant policy vacuum in terms of how the framework aims to manage displacement," Saransh Bajpai, associate program director for climate, economics and finance at India's World Resources Institute, told DW.

"The National Disaster Management Authority, while it acknowledges displacement and mobility, fails to establish concrete financial mechanisms for addressing this [climate migration] challenge. So, there's definitely a policy vacuum."

In 2022, for the first time, Pradyut Bordoloi, a member of Parliament from the climate vulnerable eastern state of Assam, introduced the Climate Migrants (Protection and Rehabilitation) Bill as a private member's bill.

Bordoloi told DW the bill was motivated by the suffering of people in the Brahmaputra River islands who, after losing their homes and livelihoods each rainy season, are forced to relocate. He said that they become vulnerable to discrimination and persecution.

While introducing the bill, Bordoloi had said that the proposed legislation seeks to "establish an appropriate policy framework for the protection and rehabilitation of internally displaced climate migrants and for all matters connected therewith."

The bill also sought to establish a climate migration fund. However it was not passed.

"Local governments or state governments could play a partisan role which is why there should be a federal authority looking after the needs of climate migrants," Bordoloi told DW, adding that, "this authority should have budgetary allocation from the government of India."

COP29: An opportunity for India?

India lacks a policy on climate migration despite being a signatory to the UN's Sendai Framework, which recognizes disaster displacement as a significant issue and major driver of disaster risk.

The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) also recognizes the subject of migration, displacement, and planned relocation, as a crucial climate risk management issue.

COP28, last year's UN climate conference in Dubai, saw the first-ever global stocktake where human mobility was recognized as a major impact of climate change affecting people and communities. The Loss and Damage Fund, operationalized for the first time during the talks, also included displacement and displaced persons in its scope.

India aims to take the lead in building a case for better climate finance opportunities for developing countries at next week's UN climate summit, COP29, which will take place in Azerbaijan's capital city, Baku.

Despite its participation and active role in global forums discussing climate change, India fails to account for internal climate migration which has an enormous economic impact.

"India places itself very firmly in the global negotiation processes and has been very vocal as far as adaptation and loss and damage is concerned," said Bajpa, who noted that India could benefit from philanthropic financing for climate change.

"India should provide something innovative to ... engage with these philanthropies and pull in a no-strings-attached grant contribution," he said, adding that, "then the migration policy should enable creating a trusted financial mechanism in India."

Edited by: Keith Walker