By Ajibola Abayomi
Concern has been raised over the imminent consequences of the environmental changes predicted to trigger climatic migration in Africa and in other regions of the world from 2030 according to the scientific signs recorded by the World Bank in 2021.
The report said climate change could drive 216 million people to migrate within their own countries by 2030.
Fadhel Kaboub, an Associate Professor of Economics, Denison University and the President, Global Institute for Sustainable Prosperity articulated the concern while delivering a paper titled Climate Migration on Thursday at the day-2 of the Journalists International Forum For Migration (JIFORM) Intercontinental Summit at the Medgar Evers College (MEC), City University New York City in Brooklyn, USA.
The Professor urged the African leaders to unite and prepare to counter the effect of the 2030 climatic reactions due to global emissions that would affect largely the North African nations of Tunisia, Libya, Egypt and Algeria while other Southern African nations were not ruled out.
Other likely regions to be affected are sub-Saharan Africa, East Asia, West Asia, North Africa, Eastern America and Eastern Europe.
He expressed concern about the nonchalant attitude of African leaders to global warming on climatic change saying the effect would lead to unimaginable inflation.
“Are we prepared for this? There would be pressure on infrastructure, food, housing and other necessities when this happens. Of course Africa should demand reparation and justice from the countries that are in the global north. Africa is part of the global south that is bedeviled with low degree of monetary sovereignty, high external debt, low productive capacity and are suffering from a neocolonial extractive economic system.”
He called for negotiation with the counties like the US, Canada, UK and the Global North that are largely responsible for climate change to use their monetary sovereignty, high productive capacity and benefits from a neocolonial extractive economic system to mitigate the pending effect.
“The global north takes over 2 trillion dollars from the global south annually. It is unfair for the low income economies that are not responsible for climate change to be the ones at the receiving end. 10 years ago the global south was promised $100 billion for the Green Climate Fund annually but today has on $10 billion.”
“Africa especially must rise to improve her production chain and seek reparation to repair damages being done on the the continent. The correction can be done through technical exchanges, strategic policies, resources transfer and strong political will to end the financial migration from Africa” Kaboub advised.