A window into what we are reading at the Wilson Center’s Environmental Change and Security Program

2024 World Migration Report Highlights Climate-Food-Mobility Nexus (International Organization for Migration)

The International Organization for Migration’s flagship World Migration Report 2024 highlights a wide variety of factors contributing to global migration, including conflict, economic or political insecurity, and climate change. Between 2020 and 2022 the number of asylum seekers increased more than 30% to 5.4 million people. The report centers climate change’s impact on food security as a core driver of migration. In 2022, 275 million people faced acute food insecurity, which represents a 146% increase since 2016.

On April 18, 2016, I was on the train with my Friends of Nature (FON) colleagues for a work trip when a shocking piece of news erupted on social media: hundreds of students in Jiangsu Province fell ill after moving into a newly built middle school. Reported symptoms included itchy skin with rashes and lesions, coughing, and a decline in white blood cell count. Students and parents later learned that their beautiful new school was built next to a contaminated site, previously home to three chemical manufacturing facilities, the largest of which had produced pesticides for decades. After these companies closed, a company contracted by the local government to clean up the site failed to properly collect and dispose of toxins in the soil. These toxins leaked into the air and sickened the students.