Climate change could cause 216 million to migrate

WASHINGTON: Reduced agricultural production, water scarcity, rising sea levels and other adverse effects of climate change could cause up to 216 million people to migrate within their own countries by 2050, the World Bank warned on Monday.

The Washington-based development lender had released a report in 2018 covering climate change’s effects on migration in South Asia, Latin America and sub-Saharan Africa, and projected 143 million people could move in those regions by 2050.

The latest report includes three new regions -- Eastern Europe and Central Asia, North Africa and East Asia and the Pacific -- to provide a "global estimate" of the scale of potential migration, said Juergen Voegele, the World Bank’s vice president for sustainable development.