Tag: migration

  • UN migration agency needs $7.9 billion in 2024

    UN migration agency needs $7.9 billion in 2024

    The United Nations migration agency launched its first global annual appeal on Monday, requesting nearly $8 billion for this year alone to manage the growing scale of population displacement.

    The International Organization for Migration said it was seeking a total of $7.9 billion in 2024 to “save lives and protect people on the move, drive solutions to displacement, and facilitate safe pathways for regular migration”.

    “Irregular and forced migration have reached unprecedented levels and the challenges we face are increasingly complex,” IOM chief Amy Pope said in a statement.

    “The evidence is overwhelming that migration, when well-managed, is a major contributor to global prosperity and progress,” said Pope, who last October became the first woman to lead the organisation.

    “We are at a critical moment in time, and we have designed this appeal to help deliver on that promise,” she said.

    “We can and must do better.”

    IOM was founded more than 70 years ago, but only became a UN agency in 2016 as a smaller, parallel operation to the UNHCR, which focuses on refugees.

    It works in emergency situations, advocates for migrants’ rights, and sees humane and orderly migration as a benefit to people on the move and the societies they settle in.

    The agency said Monday that full funding of its appeal would allow it to serve almost 140 million people, including internally displaced people and the local communities that host them.

    It would also help IOM to expand its development work, aimed at helping prevent further displacement, it said.

    Breaking down the appeal, it said a full $3.4 billion of the requested funds would go towards saving lives and protecting those on the move.

    Another $2.7 would be used to work on solutions to displacement, including reducing the risks and impacts of climate change.

    The remainder would help facilitate regular pathways to migration and to help make IOM’s service delivery more effective.

    “This funding will address the large and widening gap between what we have, and what we need in order to do the job right,” Pope said.

    IOM said that its Missing Migrants Project showed that more than 60,000 people had died or disappeared during perilous migration journeys over the past nine years.

    “The consequences of underfunded, piecemeal assistance come at a greater cost, not just in terms of money but in greater danger to migrants through irregular migration, trafficking and smuggling,” it warned.

    Like a number of other UN agencies, IOM is calling for funds to be able to take a more longterm, preventative approach, instead of being forced to always respond in crisis mode.

    The agency said that properly funding its operations would help it streamline and optimise its response, and would effectively reduce the cost of crisis management.

    It also urged countries to recognise the benefits of migration.

    “Migration is a cornerstone of global development and prosperity,” it said, adding that “the 281 million international migrants generate 9.4 percent of global GDP”.

    “Well-managed migration has the potential to advance development outcomes, contribute to climate change adaptation, and promote a safer and more peaceful, sustainable, prosperous and equitable future.”

  • Extreme Rainfall Increases Exponentially With Global Warming: Study

    State-of-the-art climate models drastically underestimate how much extreme rainfall increases under global warming, according to a study published Monday that signals a future of more frequent catastrophic floods unless humanity curbs greenhouse emissions.

    It comes as countries prepare to meet at the COP28 summit in Dubai beginning later this week, amid fears it could soon be impossible to limit long-term warming to the 1.5 degrees Celsius scientists say is necessary to curb the worst effects of human-caused climate change.

    Researchers from the Potsdam Institute of Climate Impact Research (PIK) looked at the intensity and frequency of daily precipitation extremes over land in 21 “next generation” climate models used by a UN body in its global assessments.

    They then compared the changes projected by the models with those observed historically, finding that nearly all climate models significantly underestimated the rates at which increases in precipitation extremes scaled with global temperature rise.

    “Our study confirms that the intensity and frequency of heavy rainfall extremes are increasing exponentially with every increment of global warming,” said Max Kotz, lead author of the paper published in the Journal of Climate.

    The changes track with the Clausius-Clapeyron relation in physics, which established that warmer air holds more water vapor. This finding underpinned the fact that temperature and not wind dominate the global change in extreme rainfall events, according to the authors.

    Stronger increases in rainfall intensity and frequency were found across the tropics and high-latitudes, like in Southeast Asia or Northern Canada, according to the study.

  • Climate Change causing bird populations to deplete in Pakistan

    Climate Change causing bird populations to deplete in Pakistan

    In the tragic saga of climate change in Pakistan, it is not just humans but birds too that are affected.

    While the avian population has nothing to contribute to the phenomenon of climate change, they are paying the price for it with their lives. According to a State of the World’s Birds report, nearly half of all bird species are in decline with more than one in eight at risk of extinction.

    The situation is not any better in Pakistan. Not just the indigenous species are at risk but the ones migrating to the plains of Pakistan are severely decreasing as well. The research by wildlife expert Dr Azhar has come out at a time when the world is fighting with a challenge as magnanimous as global warming. Scientists have warned that if the temperature increases 3.5 degrees above the current one by 2100, almost 600-900 species would be killed off.

    A significant decrease in the number of birds in tropical regions has been noticed, including the endangered northern snowbird. Even the number of common sparrows is plummeting as declared by the International Convention for Conservation of Nature. For instance, a loss of three billion birds in North America alone posing a threat to biodiversity. Simultaneously, sparrows are being put on a ‘Red List’ in Greater London after a loss of 70 per cent of sparrows was recorded between 1994 and 2001.

    The reason it has not been done in Pakistan, as expressed by renowned ornithologist Mahmood Akhtar Cheema, is because nobody has actually attempted to count the number of these birds at present, implying that they are surely less than before. He warned that it is going to be even worse in the future because of the scarcity of food, changes in habitat, earlier egg-laying time, higher rate of disease transmission and frequent season changes.

    It is explicitly clear that birds’ populace is an indicator of the environmental health around us. The staggering decrease is alarming on many levels. It also demands extensive research and policy making to protect biodiversity. The areas may include the changing weather patterns disturbing the timing of migration to egg-laying and sizes and controlling extreme urbanization to provide for their natural habitats.