When Climate Moves Millions: Rethinking Global Migration Policy

By Ishika Ranjan

In 2025, climate displacement is no longer just a future concern—it’s happening now, and at scale. Millions of people have already been forced to move because of rising seas, harsher droughts, and more violent storms. Yet, most migration policies still don’t know what to do with them.

A Slow Disaster in Motion

Between 2020 and 2023, an average of 32.6 million people were displaced each year due to weather-related disasters (Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre [IDMC], 2025). That’s not a typo—it’s one of the highest rates ever recorded. And yet, these people rarely make headlines. They often move short distances, within their own countries, or to already stretched urban areas. Very few make it across borders. And even fewer are recognized as having a right to move.

Most international legal frameworks—like the 1951 Refugee Convention—weren’t built with climate in mind. They focus on persecution, not the slow erosion of farmland, not the village that floods every year, and certainly not the silent suffering of those who stay behind.

Who’s Affected—and Who Isn’t Prepared

Right now, an estimated 90 million of the world’s 123 million displaced people live in places that face high or extreme climate risk (UNHCR, 2024b; Reuters, 2024). Think coastal Bangladesh, island nations like Tuvalu, or parts of the Sahel where rainfall patterns have broken down.

In Colombia’s La Guajira, Indigenous Wayuu communities are watching droughts dry up their crops, again and again (AP News, 2025). Some families leave, some come back. Others try to adapt. None of them are protected by international refugee law.

Policy Isn’t Keeping Up

Most governments treat climate migration as a side issue—something to be dealt with later, or better yet, elsewhere.

In the United States, for instance, there are few concrete protections for climate-displaced people. Proposals like the Climate Displaced Persons Act have stalled in Congress (The Verge, 2024). Elsewhere, many wealthy countries prefer to fund adaptation programs abroad rather than rethink their own visa systems.

This mismatch—between movement already happening and laws stuck in the past—is shaping a slow, quiet crisis. People are moving, but the rules don’t know how to follow.

A Missed Opportunity

Here’s the paradox: well-managed migration can be a solution, not just a problem. People on the move can build new lives, support economies, and reduce pressure in overburdened areas. But that only happens if there are legal, safe pathways.

From an economic standpoint, the current situation is a failure. It blocks mobility to places where people could be more productive. It fuels informal economies and drives migration underground.

From a policy perspective, it’s reactive instead of forward-looking. Climate models already show which regions are at risk—but few governments have prepared for what that means in human terms.

What Could Change

The gap between reality and response isn’t unbridgeable. A few steps could go a long way:

• Climate-linked visas: Countries could pilot targeted migration schemes based on climate vulnerability. For example, people in sinking coastal zones could access simplified resettlement or work visas in better-equipped countries.
  
  

• Redefining protection: While overhauling the refugee system may be unrealistic, new categories of humanitarian protection could fill the gap—something between refugee and economic migrant.
  
  

• Planning ahead for internal movement: Countries likely to face large-scale internal displacement need strategies now—not just emergency relief, but long-term urban planning, job creation, and housing policy.
  
  

Looking Ahead

Climate migration isn’t about the future anymore—it’s about today. And yet, laws, policies, and even public conversation haven’t caught up. If current trends hold, up to 1.2 billion people could be displaced by climate stress by 2050 (Zurich Resilience, 2022).

The question isn’t whether people will move—but how, and whether they’ll be met with opportunity or neglect. Getting this right won’t be easy. But failing to plan is, increasingly, a choice with enormous consequences.

References

AP News. (2025, March 4). Indigenous migrants in northern Colombia battle worsening droughts and floods. AP News. https://www.apnews.com

Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre. (2025). Global Report on Internal Displacement 2025. https://www.internal-displacement.org

International Organization for Migration. (2025). Data update: Who are climate migrants? DTM Insights. https://dtm.iom.int

Reuters. (2024, November 12). Actor Theo James urges more support for refugees hit by climate crisis. Reuters. https://www.reuters.com

The Verge. (2024, November 3). US immigration policy has a huge blind spot: climate change. The Verge. https://www.theverge.com

United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. (2024b). Figures at a glance. https://www.unhcr.org

Zurich Resilience. (2022). There could be 1.2 billion climate refugees by 2050. Zurich. https://www.zurich.com

Ishika Ranjan is a final-year undergraduate at Ashoka University, majoring in Economics and Public Policy. Her work focuses on gender, migration, and education in India’s informal sector. She has conducted field research with migrant families under Project UDAAN and has interned with national organisations including NITI Aayog and the Centre for Social and Behavioural Change. Ishika has presented her research at national conferences and published op-eds on social norms and educational access. She is currently interning at the Observer Research Foundation’s Centre for New Economic Diplomacy.