PARIS — Are we all potential climate migrants? Natural disasters triggered 26.4 million new internal displacements across 148 countries and territories in 2023, the third highest figure in a decade, according to the Internal Displacement Monitoring Center’s 2024 Global Report. An additional 7.7 million people remained internally displaced from previous disasters by the end of 2023.
In Europe, Turkey's 2023 earthquake caused most displacements. For 2024, spring floods in central Europe, northern France, and Spain's Valencia region could significantly impact movement figures. Globally, floods lead displacement causes, followed by storms and earthquakes.
Sea-level rise (SLR) forces thousands to flee permanently. Scientists estimate this phenomenon, worsened by human activities, could displace 72-187 million people this century, with no region on the globe being spared. And while houses hit by storms and earthquakes are often rebuilt, coastal erosion implies a permanent leave, a life totally submerged.
To prevent casualties and manage population movements, climate change adaptation policies now include relocating citizens — whether they are based in small villages or in large capitals.
A 2022 study on climate displacement identified cases of relocation in 78 countries: 40% in Asia, 38% in the Americas, 10% in Africa, 9% in the Pacific, and only a few in Europe and the Middle East.
We look at some of these cases of relocation as a result of climate change.
Jakarta, the largest-scale relocation to date
Home to about 10 million people, Indonesian capital Jakarta has been described as the world’s most rapidly sinking city. Not only is it prone to the fast sea-level rise of the Java Sea, which could submerge one-third of it by 2050, but it also suffers from regular earthquakes, air and groundwater pollution as well as frequent and devastating floods.
In an effort to unclog the city and start fresh, the administrative part of Jakarta will be transferred 1,200 miles away to the island of Borneo. In 2019, President Joko Widodo imagined the construction, from scratch, of a new capital for 1.9 million residents, through a $30 billion plan. Described as a “sustainable forest city”, the new metropolis called Ibu Kota Nusantara (IKN) or simply Nusantara, was partially inaugurated in August 2024.
Officials vow to put the environment at the heart of the development of IKN and aim for it to be carbon-neutral by 2045. But the environmentalists say the city's construction is causing massive deforestation, threatening the habitat of endangered species such as orangutans, and putting at risk the habitat of Indigenous communities, whose homes could be expropriated. This, in turn, would cause internal displacement.
Miquelon, the doomed North American village
Located in the French overseas collectivity of Saint Pierre and Miquelon, next to the Canadian island of Newfoundland, the village of Miquelon and its 600 inhabitants are threatened by sea-level rise. Most of the houses have been built less than 6.5 ft above sea level and could find water reaching their threshold in the coming years.
As early as 2014, then-French President François Hollande prohibited any new construction. The decision was first heavily criticized by the locals. But when two consecutive storms hit this isthmus in 2018 and when, in 2022, the village was only miraculously spared by storm Fiona, the need to relocate became more pressing for the authorities, and the residents opened up to the idea.
This is not the first Greek village to undergo such a move, and most likely won't be the last.
A new, higher site, around one mile from the current village, was picked and the state announced it would buy the houses of anyone willing to move. Architects are now working on recreating Miquelon in a more sustainable way. Since the relocation, unique in France, won’t happen overnight, adaptation measures have been put in place in the meantime — such as the use of artificial riprap (a type of armored shoreline) and the creation of refuges in case of a new natural catastrophe.
Metamorfosi, the Greek village that lost everything
On Sept. 4, 2023, storm Daniel struck the central Thessaly region, Greece's agricultural heartland. It was the country's most intense in damages and costs since records began in 1930. For three days in a row, severe rainfalls led to flooding which turned the whole area into an inland sea.
A meeting point of four rivers and tributaries, Metamorfosi sits on the lowest point of the Thessaly plain. The village, dating to at least the 13th century, had been submerged several times in history but storm Daniel almost made it disappear under water, killing a man and his mother in their home. The residents, mostly farmers, had to wait several weeks before returning to their inhabitable houses, ravaged by water and mud.
In December 2023, fearing new destruction from future disasters, the villagers voted in favor of a proposal by the Greek Government to move to build new houses on slightly higher ground in the village of Palamas, 5 miles away, on land granted by the municipality. This is not the first Greek village to undergo such a move, and most likely won't be the last. Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis declared to the press that the government would consider relocating more vulnerable communities.
The Guna people, Latin America’s first climate change refugees
For over 300 years, Indigenous Guna people have lived on 50 islands off Panama’s Caribbean coast in the San Blas archipelago. Among these islands is Gardí Sugdub, 1200-foot-long and 450-foot-wide, and home to around 300 families who have witnessed the accelerating rise of sea levels and suffered worsening tidal floods and storms.
In 2010 the community turned to the Panamanian government for help. The government agreed to fully endorse the community-led planned relocation as climate adaptation, the first in the country and in Latin America. With this move, the government also hopes to tackle the issue of overcrowding on the islands which causes difficulties in accessing water, sanitation and education.
These moves sometimes come with serious threats to Indigenous rights and culture.
In June 2024, hundreds of Guna people received keys to their new homes in the newly-built town called Isber Yala, located on the mainland. It is far from complete, with no running water or light, and more homes will be built to accommodate more families from other islands at risk. According to the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, all 50 Guna islands may need to be vacated by 2100. A study by the Environmental Hydraulics Institute of the Cantabria University in Spain revealed that Panama could lose 2,01% of its surface by 2050, forcing 63 communities — almost 38.000 people — to move.
On a global scale, over 400 communities like the Guna have already completed or are undertaking planned relocation because of natural hazards, including those intensified by climate change. At the same time, these moves sometimes come with serious threats to Indigenous rights and culture.
Newtok, the Alaskan village at the mercy of permafrost thawing
Newtok, in western Alaska, is another example of such community relocations. The Yup’ik village was perched on permafrost at the edge of the Ninglick River. Because of global warming, permafrost started to dangerously thaw and the banks rapidly eroded, eating about 70 feet of land every year and putting the almost 400 inhabitants at extreme risk.
In the early 2000s, plans to fully relocate the village began to emerge. In 2006, the local-state-federal Newtok Planning Group was formed to decide and organize the move. The new site about 9 miles away on the south side of the Ninglick River was agreed upon and called Mertarvik.
The first residents began moving in 2019 and by the end of 2024, all inhabitants had left their former homes behind, permanently. Yup’ik’s Newtok became one of the first Native villages in Alaska to complete a large-scale relocation because of climate change. Others could follow very soon, for the same reasons.
Monrovia, a capital city relocation?
Monrovia, the capital of Liberia, Africa’s oldest republic, is home to 2.2 million people, or more than 33% of the country’s entire population. Located on the Atlantic Ocean coastline, the city has been expanding quickly, with no real urban planning, leading to the proliferation of slums and informal settlements. It is also considered the wettest capital city in the world and prone to rainfall and fluvial floodings as well as coastal erosion.
In 2012, ex-president Ellen Johnson Sirleaf first hinted at moving the capital and constructing it in Yekepa, a town in the northern Nimba County, near the Guinean border. But her proposition went nowhere. In June and July 2023, the country and the whole western and central region of Africa experienced severe rainstorms and flash floods. In Monrovia, over 50,000 residents saw their homes totally destroyed.
A relocation because of climate change would be the first in Africa.
In the wake of the disaster, senators drafted a proposal for the building of a new capital in a yet-to-be decided location. Currently under review by the Liberian Ministry of Works, the solution would provide a safer place for hundreds of thousands inhabitants as well as alleviate the pressure on the poorly-functioning infrastructure of the city.
Changes of capital cities have taken place in the past in Africa, with Dodoma replacing Dar es Salam in Tanzania, for instance. But the reason has always been geostrategic. A relocation because of climate change would be the first on the continent which is counting more and more climate refugees fleeing extreme weather conditions, including severe drought.