ASTANA – Climate change does not always force people to move from their homes overnight. Sometimes, it slowly takes away the reasons to stay. A farmer working on degraded land. Photo credit: UNDP Uzbekistan For farmers and livestock herders, rising temperatures, prolonged droughts and reduced water supplies can mean declining harvests, shrinking pastureland and lost income.
What begins as an environmental problem can become an economic one, influencing whether families stay or seek opportunities elsewhere. Across Central Asia, such pressures could increasingly shape patterns of migration, even as researchers struggle to determine how much of the movement can be attributed directly to climate change.
Climate-related migration can take many forms. People may leave suddenly after floods or other disasters, or gradually as drought, water scarcity and declining agricultural productivity undermine their livelihoods. Such movements can be temporary or permanent, occurring within national borders or across them.
Climate pressures often overlap with economic and social factors, making it difficult to identify a single reason why people move. In Central Asia, climate change could drive as many as 2.4 million people to move within their own countries by 2050, according to a pessimistic scenario modeled in the World Bank’s 2021 Groundswell report.
Under alternative scenarios involving more inclusive development or lower emissions, the projected number falls to 1.9 million and 1.7 million, respectively. Globally, the report estimates as many as 216 million people may move within their countries by 2050 across six regions.
Climate change could also reshape patterns of migration, making some areas more attractive, while increasing pressure to leave others. The World Bank identified the Ferghana Valley, areas around Tashkent and Dushanbe, and parts of Kazakhstan, including Astana, Karagandy and Kostanai, as potential destinations for internal climate migrants, where changes in water availability and crop productivity could create more favorable livelihood opportunities.
By contrast, parts of southern Kazakhstan, areas surrounding the Ferghana Valley in Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, and the vicinity of Bishkek could become hotspots of climate-related out-migration as water availability and agricultural productivity decline. Nugzar Kokhreidze.
Photo credit: personal archive These projections, however, do not account for the longer-term effects of glacier melt on Central Asia’s rivers, which could alter water availability and migration patterns.