With migration at a high level worldwide, rural areas feel the greatest burden related to forced displacement, whether in loss of population or influx of newcomers, said the head of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization on Monday. Food security, along with climate change and armed conflict, is a main driver of human migration.
“Rural people have fewer opportunities and resources to adapt to a changing climate and repeated exposure to climate events increases the risk of poverty” so there is pressure to migrate, said FAO director general Qu Dongyu at an international conference on migration. Eighty percent of the world’s displaced people are in regions where food is in short supply and there is risk of natural disaster or global warming.
Roughly one in 30 people is an international migrant; most of the world’s population lives in the country where they were born, according to the World Migration Report (WMR), published every two years. The proportion of migrants in the world has been relatively steady at a bit above 3 percent since 2005, said the UN International Organization for Migration, the publisher of the report.
“The current global estimate is that there were around 281 million international migrants in the world in 2020, which equates to 3.6 per cent of the global population,” said the WMR. The United States was the top destination for migrants. India, Mexico, Russia and China were the leading countries for emigres.
The estimates of international migrants include migrant workers, said the FAO in a 2016 report. “Around 40 percent of international remittances are sent to rural areas, reflecting the rural origins of a large share of migrants.”
The FAO has spent money on projects to ensure that migration is a choice rather than a necessity and to ensure local production of food, said Qu. “Effective and sustainable support to smallholder farmers will be vital to ensure that they are part of the solution and to localize supply chains.”
Migration can be a “potential positive force for the green transition” toward climate-smart technologies, said the FAO leader. “New pathways for resilience should also look at creating enable conditions to harness the potential of migration in areas of origin, transit and destination.”
Of the 281 million international migrants, 87 million live in Europe and 86 million are in Asia, said the WMR. Almost 59 million resided in North America. Some 50.6 million were in the United States and constituted 15 percent of the population.
