Dry spells account for up to one-tenth of the increase in world migration
Delhi’s labour markets have become populated in recent weeks. These markets of informal workers are a barometer of weather conditions in nearby states, particularly the Bundelkhand region of Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh.
This monsoon season has seen a lot of uncertainty. The increase in the number of informal workers in Delhi’s markets is a sure sign of an impending drought.
“Lack of water.” That is the usual reason people cite for their migration to Delhi in the middle of the agriculture season. Tracking these labour markets and the passenger flow in major railway stations in migration-origin states like Odisha, Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh, one can easily perceive the livelihood crisis.
At the core of this distress migration is always the availability of water. This reactivates our ancestral memory — some 400,000 years ago, a dry spell in East Africa forced our ancestors to migrate out in search of water-rich geography.
As they say, as humans we have been chasing water since then, more than food and shelter as it is that central to us. An Odia’s trail of migration to faraway Kerala can be traced to, or attributed to, a water crisis back at home, resulting in multidimensional livelihood crises.
The collapse of traditional water harvesting systems led to agriculture failures which, in turn, resulted in distress migration from the Bundelkhand region.
While we sought water for settlement in ancient times, the lack of access to it has led to the contemporary out-migration to places that offer both easy access to water and also livelihood options. In ancient times, agriculture and hunting were primary survival occupations while we have added many more over the time.
Will the world witness another such transformational migration due to lack of water? There is impeccable evidence of a severe water crisis. Climate change has aggravated this. Various estimates suggest that 66 per cent of the planet’s land areas are losing water. Populations facing extreme drought might double by the late 21st century.
A recent World Bank report titled Web and Flow: Water, Migration and Development, analysed the “largest dataset on internal migrants” assembled from 64 countries and 189 censuses during 1960-2015.
It argues that water scarcity is a major reason for internal migration in the contemporary world. While the inherent human affiliation to a water body as the capital for settlement and societal evolution remains unchanged, the recent anthropogenic changes have made us more prone to water scarcity than five million years ago.
This massive analysis of data establishes that low rainfall events account for 10-11 per cent of the increase in migration between 1970 and 2000.
“Strikingly, dry shocks have five times the effect on out-migration than wet shocks have — the impact of wet shocks is more muted. This suggests that local adaptive capacity may be significantly constrained in the event of repeated dry shocks,” the report says. The water scarcity-driven waves of migration have been more eminent in developing and poor countries.
There are various reasons for migration, like looking for better economic opportunities, seeking higher education, conflicts and also major disasters.
While dry spells or lack of water ranked just below education as a reason for migration, in many countries, this has become a more decisive driver of migration. Climate change has added to these woes.
In the last three decades, an average 25 per cent of the world’s population suffered abnormal rainfalls annually. Such shocks have immense economic impacts on people, which are reasons for migration anyway.
But increasing dry spells, as predicted in a changed climate scenario, would add on to this, thus fastening out migration. But the World Bank report finds that the poorest in a region would be left behind to fend for themselves in areas ravaged by deficit rainfalls.
It says that 80 per cent of the poorest population would not be able to migrate out even though left with no adequate water as migration involves costs and also certain skills.
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