Navigating Climate Change: Extenuating Strategies to Combat Climate Migration Threats

This paper aims to test the validity of the hypothesis that climate change in the coming years is likely to induce massive migration to and from South Asia, both within and across the borders. This paper analyses impacts of interaction of various adverse climatic events such as glacial melt, sea level rise, floods, cyclones, erosion etc, with various social, political and economic factors such as poverty, unemployment etc. on the trends of life patterns in South Asia which is among the most populous regions of the world. It further attempts to evaluate the status of climate change refugees and protections availed by them at the international level specially the inefficiency of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and International Organization for Migration (IMO) frameworks and the Geneva Convention 1951, in taking into consideration the plight of climate change refugees. It is a modest attempt on part of the authors to demonstrate with the help of case studies, some of the likely consequences and threats to security which are likely to follow climate change migration It further proceeds with suggesting some plausible solutions to the problems of climate change which in itself are a new discipline which has emerged recently and suggests alleviation, resilience and adjustment strategies such as, mitigation, resilience and adaptation. The authors have also put forth many steps and measures that can be taken both at the global and national level in order to reduce and minimize the risks caused by climate change.