Climate migration is about to explode. Cities will bear the brunt.

Climate migration is about to explode. Cities will bear the brunt. With planning, some mayors see an opportunity to flip a crisis into an opportunity. Dave Levitan Grid News

SHARM EL-SHEIKH, EGYPT — Over the next 30 years, climate change is likely to uproot hundreds of millions of people around the world from their homes.

Regardless of where they started, most of these climate refugees will end up in a city — drawn by the promise of more resources or a fresh start. “Most of this movement is actually internal to countries,” said Vittoria Zanuso, the executive director of a group called the Mayors Migration Council (MMC), in an interview here during the United Nations climate talks known as COP27. “It’s short-distance, and it’s rural to urban, which means that in one way or another, these people will move to, from or through cities.”

This will pose enormous challenges for urban areas across the world. Beyond the political and economic challenges of absorbing waves of refugees, cities are themselves likely to be dealing with climate impacts like heat waves, droughts or stronger storms. But Zanuso and the MMC want to see it as an opportunity to improve peoples’ lives and raise their standard of living by providing cities the funding needed to make that happen. “Our mayors really think that while climate is a crisis, migration doesn’t need to be,” she said.

...