By Andrew Hammond
World Population Day, which fell on July 11, has long been a moment to celebrate human progress, but came this year at a grim milestone with a massive 100 million people now internally displaced for the first time ever, post Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
Driven by violence, persecution and human rights abuses, the massive 100 million figure of people forced to flee their homes is around 1 person in every 78 across the world. That's larger than the population of many countries.
The data comes from a new report from the U.N.'s refugee agency, the UNHCR Global Trends Report. While the data has worsened each year for a decade, 2022 has set new records, not least with the Ukraine war which is one of the latest forced displacements in Europe since World War II.
More than 7 million Ukrainians have been displaced within the country, and more than 6 million refugees have fled Ukraine. This builds from existing tensions that escalated, driving further displacement in nations from Burkina Faso to Myanmar.
Taken overall, UNHCR says the latest forced displacement figure includes 26.6 million refugees, 50.9 million internally displaced people, 4.4 million asylum seekers, and 4.1 million Venezuelans displaced abroad
Ukraine aside, the report says more than two-thirds of the number of refugees displaced abroad came from just five countries: Syria (6.8 million), Venezuela (4.6 million), Afghanistan (2.7 million), South Sudan (2.4 million) and Myanmar (1.2 million). Turkey hosts the largest refugee population in 2021 with nearly 3.8 million people residing in the nation.
Going forward, it is possible that environmental-related crises will make this displacement calamity ever worse. This, in the context of the anticipated continued growth of the world's population ― today around 7.7 billion ― to potentially 10 billion in three decades, with more than half of this growth expected to be concentrated in only nine countries, mainly in the developing world.
Growing populations are driving the mega trend of urbanization through migration. In 1800, less than 3 percent of the population lived in cities, yet by the end of 2008, this had risen to more than 50 percent, and there were 26 mega-cities (cities of 10 million or more inhabitants).
That proportion is expected to increase from around 55 percent as of 2018 to 68 percent by 2050 which, combined with the overall growth of the world's population, could add another 2.5 billion people to urban areas by mid-century.
Today, Tokyo is the world's largest city, followed by giant settlements in emerging markets, including New Delhi, Shanghai, Mexico City and Sao Paulo. Cairo, Mumbai, Beijing and Dhaka. By 2030, the world is projected to have 43 of these mega cities.
Governments are increasingly preparing for the risks these massive urban areas pose. Key questions being addressed include whether it will be possible to continually meet the everyday needs of food, water and health, and also deal with the growing vulnerability of large urban areas to environmental stresses exacerbated by the effects of climate change.
There is already cause for significant concern, as shown by the intense heatwaves in much of the world in recent years. One reason such heat waves can be so devastating is that the public and authorities are often unprepared for dealing with such extreme weather conditions.
As mega-cities continue to proliferate and grow, demands will thus increase as supplies of food, water and resources for industries and infrastructure require energy for transportation. The associated increased carbon emissions are contributing to global warming.
The larger the urban area, the greater the damage that natural hazards can inflict; and increasingly it may be impossible to protect life and property even if there is a good warning system. As major hurricanes have shown, despite the known dangers from combined hazards such as winds and floods, there is now sometimes insufficient time to evacuate some cities safely.
So there is a pressing need for cities to develop emergency refuge areas, which in some cases may already exist. Emergency energy supplies for communities, which are essential for medical emergencies, need to improve in future too.
Because of the failures to deal with some recent hazards impacting mega-cities, governments are planning for multiple challenges and developing strategies for managing the range of environmental factors which could emerge.
This will better enable data showing how people experience both rapidly occurring hazards such as tornadoes, and slower, but still deadly, phenomena such as loss of crops from rising sea levels and salt penetration.
The good news here is that mega-cities have a global organization for information exchange and collaboration called C40 Cities.
The future agenda here includes enhanced inter-city cooperation on policies for dealing with environmental hazards and putting more pressure on national governments to assist, especially with finance and data, and strategic priorities.
Andrew Hammond (andrewkorea@outlook.com) is an associate at LSE IDEAS at the London School of Economics.
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Driven by violence, persecution and human rights abuses, the massive 100 million figure of people forced to flee their homes is around 1 person in every 78 across the world. That's larger than the population of many countries.
The data comes from a new report from the U.N.'s refugee agency, the UNHCR Global Trends Report. While the data has worsened each year for a decade, 2022 has set new records, not least with the Ukraine war which is one of the latest forced displacements in Europe since World War II.
More than 7 million Ukrainians have been displaced within the country, and more than 6 million refugees have fled Ukraine. This builds from existing tensions that escalated, driving further displacement in nations from Burkina Faso to Myanmar.
Taken overall, UNHCR says the latest forced displacement figure includes 26.6 million refugees, 50.9 million internally displaced people, 4.4 million asylum seekers, and 4.1 million Venezuelans displaced abroad
Ukraine aside, the report says more than two-thirds of the number of refugees displaced abroad came from just five countries: Syria (6.8 million), Venezuela (4.6 million), Afghanistan (2.7 million), South Sudan (2.4 million) and Myanmar (1.2 million). Turkey hosts the largest refugee population in 2021 with nearly 3.8 million people residing in the nation.
Going forward, it is possible that environmental-related crises will make this displacement calamity ever worse. This, in the context of the anticipated continued growth of the world's population ― today around 7.7 billion ― to potentially 10 billion in three decades, with more than half of this growth expected to be concentrated in only nine countries, mainly in the developing world.
Growing populations are driving the mega trend of urbanization through migration. In 1800, less than 3 percent of the population lived in cities, yet by the end of 2008, this had risen to more than 50 percent, and there were 26 mega-cities (cities of 10 million or more inhabitants).
That proportion is expected to increase from around 55 percent as of 2018 to 68 percent by 2050 which, combined with the overall growth of the world's population, could add another 2.5 billion people to urban areas by mid-century.
Today, Tokyo is the world's largest city, followed by giant settlements in emerging markets, including New Delhi, Shanghai, Mexico City and Sao Paulo. Cairo, Mumbai, Beijing and Dhaka. By 2030, the world is projected to have 43 of these mega cities.
Governments are increasingly preparing for the risks these massive urban areas pose. Key questions being addressed include whether it will be possible to continually meet the everyday needs of food, water and health, and also deal with the growing vulnerability of large urban areas to environmental stresses exacerbated by the effects of climate change.
There is already cause for significant concern, as shown by the intense heatwaves in much of the world in recent years. One reason such heat waves can be so devastating is that the public and authorities are often unprepared for dealing with such extreme weather conditions.
As mega-cities continue to proliferate and grow, demands will thus increase as supplies of food, water and resources for industries and infrastructure require energy for transportation. The associated increased carbon emissions are contributing to global warming.
The larger the urban area, the greater the damage that natural hazards can inflict; and increasingly it may be impossible to protect life and property even if there is a good warning system. As major hurricanes have shown, despite the known dangers from combined hazards such as winds and floods, there is now sometimes insufficient time to evacuate some cities safely.
So there is a pressing need for cities to develop emergency refuge areas, which in some cases may already exist. Emergency energy supplies for communities, which are essential for medical emergencies, need to improve in future too.
Because of the failures to deal with some recent hazards impacting mega-cities, governments are planning for multiple challenges and developing strategies for managing the range of environmental factors which could emerge.
This will better enable data showing how people experience both rapidly occurring hazards such as tornadoes, and slower, but still deadly, phenomena such as loss of crops from rising sea levels and salt penetration.
The good news here is that mega-cities have a global organization for information exchange and collaboration called C40 Cities.
The future agenda here includes enhanced inter-city cooperation on policies for dealing with environmental hazards and putting more pressure on national governments to assist, especially with finance and data, and strategic priorities.
Andrew Hammond (andrewkorea@outlook.com) is an associate at LSE IDEAS at the London School of Economics.
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