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The recent offensive by regime and allied forces around Aleppo is pushing tens of thousands of new Syrian refugees into Turkey. Some of them have fled their homes for the first time, while others left informal camps close to the northern border before the fighting could reach them.

For most of these refugees, Turkey is only a transit country to Europe. They have lost hope for a quick end to the conflict, and those who supported the rebellion know it would be particularly difficult to return. The European Union can therefore expect a massive new influx of Syrians in the coming months, despite Ankara's promises to keep them in Turkey.

Big Increase In Turkey

As of this month, the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has registered 4.6 million Syrians in neighboring countries, against 3.3 million in January 2015. Even this considerable number underestimates the problem because not all Syrians formally apply for refugee status.

In Jordan, for example, the government's Department of Statistics counted 1,250,000 Syrians in a recent census, nearly double the 623,000 officially registered by UNHCR (see "Jordan Reaches the Refugee Saturation Point").

More important, UNHCR figures indicate that the vast bulk of the increased flow since 2015 is being shouldered by Turkey. The number of registered refugees actually declined in Lebanon (1,070,000 last month, down from 1,146,000 in January 2015), Jordan (623,000, down from 633,000), and Egypt (123,500, down from 138,000), while increasing a little in Iraq (245,000 against 234,000).

These people did not return to Syria, however -- they traveled to Europe via Turkey by road, plane, or boat. As a result, Ankara's claimed number of refugees increased from 1.5 million in January 2015 to 2.5 million last month.

To be sure, Turkey has likely exaggerated this number somewhat in order to get more help from the EU. But other official statistics understate the increase, since many of the refugees who registered in Middle Eastern countries have moved on to Europe so quickly that their original host governments have not yet removed them from their rolls.

The main cause of this accelerated flow is the Russian intervention. In spring 2015, some Syrian refugees had actually begun to return to Idlib after rebel offensives led regime forces to pull out. Yet these same refugees are now fleeing the country once again -- massive bombardments have driven at least 300,000 from their homes in the past four months alone.

Today, most of the refugees in Turkey do not want to stay there. For four years, they patiently remained in southern provinces near the border hoping to return home quickly when conditions permitted it, but the Russian-powered offensive has spurred many to abandon that hope and head for more hospitable countries in Europe (see "Why Now? The Syrian Refugee Flow to Europe," PolicyWatch 2515). Other Syrians have left relatively safe regime-controlled zones back home for economic reasons, heading straight to Europe.

On January 1, Turkey reversed its visa-free entry policy for Syrians, effectively cutting off several legal avenues for refugees to cross the border (e.g., via plane from Beirut or via shipping lines between Tripoli and Mersin). Yet illegal passage remains a readily available option, whether by land or on cargo vessels. And plenty of these boats will no doubt attempt to carry refugees directly to European coasts.

Another Mass Flow To Europe This Spring

Last year, 1.5 million illegal immigrants reached the EU by various routes. More than 850,000 crossed the sea between Turkey and Greece, and another 150,000 arrived in Italy from the Libyan coast. Syrians constituted one-third of these immigrants -- as of December, the total number of Syrian asylum applicants in the EU was 897,000, up from 235,000 in only a year's time. Much of this increase began last spring, peaking at 156,000 in October.

The Washington Institute

Although the Russian intervention is responsible for the sheer size of the latest spike, the numbers also show a seasonal pattern. From June to November 2014, over 10,000 asylum requests were made per month; that average decreased by half in the winter months, then increased in spring 2015 as better weather and calmer seas facilitated passage.

The number dropped by half again last November due to weather conditions and more stringent control measures by Turkish authorities. But when spring returns, it should regain its stride -- likely helped along by a large regime offensive in northwestern Syria.

While the migratory flow to Europe is linked to deteriorating conditions for refugees in Middle Eastern countries, the evolution of the crisis inside Syria is becoming an ever-greater factor. Continued fighting is further damaging the economic situation even in peaceful areas of the country, pushing more Syrians to leave -- particularly those in the private sector, who do not have the guaranteed salaries of state employees.

But the largest group of refugees will be those fleeing new offensives, particularly where aerial bombardment is heaviest. This is why some Russian airstrikes have deliberately destroyed hospitals and other infrastructure -- as a means of urging civilians to flee and thus isolating the rebels.

The Syrian army cannot attempt to retake an area if noncombatants are present en masse; such operations would cause heavy civilian losses that could exacerbate international condemnation and further alienate the population. An effective counterinsurgency policy therefore requires encircling such areas and waiting for civilians to leave (see PolicyWatch 2554, "The Battle of Aleppo Is the Center of the Syrian Chessboard").

One Million Refugees To The EU In 2016?

Over the coming year, more than two million people could be displaced by fighting in northwestern Syria -- specifically the rebel-held portions of Idlib province and western Aleppo province, and the Islamic State's territories in eastern Aleppo province. The drastic increase in Turkey's refugee numbers since September is a major indicator of where many of these refugees will head.

Therefore, unless a major geopolitical shift changes the prevailing situation inside Syria, Europe has to prepare itself to welcome as many as a million new refugees in 2016. This estimate is extrapolated from several factors: the location of the populations most under threat from new regime offensives, their most likely routes of escape, the past migration patterns seen under similar conditions, and the recent trend of refugees leaving Turkey for the EU.

The Washington Institute

Part of the reason for this increase is that refugees who have already made it to Europe tend to serve as bridgeheads for others still in Syria or neighboring countries, providing information and money to family members and friends seeking to join them. Many are also able to exercise family reunification rights that could provide visas to hundreds of thousands of people.

Short of addressing the roots of the problem in Syria, the EU is largely helpless to stop this mass migration once it is under way. Some European countries are taking unilateral actions -- for example, Serbia, Hungary, and Slovenia have erected barriers on their borders. Yet these measures are ineffective at the moment (e.g., refugees can bypass the barriers by going through the Czech Republic and Poland), and they risk shattering the Schengen Area.

Massively increasing refugee-related funding to Syria's neighbors will not halt the flow to Europe either. The EU's welfare system is too strong a magnet for poor migrants, as is the promise of safety and, perhaps, a passport.

Europe's Paradoxical Policy

Interestingly, European countries have authorized very few Syrian immigration requests from foreign consulates, yet have legalized almost all refugees who managed to reach their shores through other means. In doing so, Europe is actually encouraging illegal immigration.

If refugees who arrived by such means had no chance of being legalized, they would be less likely to attempt the journey. The EU should therefore consider reserving residency permits for those who apply from neighboring countries.

Unofficially, the subsidies that the EU grants to adjacent nonmember states under the European Neighborhood Policy are conditioned on effective border control and a commitment to take back illegal immigrants.

This may explain why the Syrian refugee flow across the Strait of Gibraltar is so low (around 5,000 in 2015) -- unlike Turkey, whose EU accession process has been roiled by controversy for years, Morocco is more dependent on European trade and therefore quite serious about its various legal obligations to the union.

In the end, the best way to prevent mass refugee flows into Europe is to address the roots of the problem in Syria, assuming it is not already too late. Turkey is refusing new refugees even if they are in an awful situation on the other side of the border, partly to avoid helping the Russian counterinsurgency strategy.

Western countries could adopt a similar policy, but only if they are willing to alleviate the resultant humanitarian crisis. Such considerations bring the idea of implementing a safe haven to protect civilians in northern and southern Syria back to the forefront of the debate.
Fabrice Balanche, an associate professor and research director at the University of Lyon 2, is a visiting fellow at The Washington Institute.

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The worst of the Syrian refugee crisis is coming for Europe

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The recent offensive by regime and allied forces around Aleppo is pushing tens of thousands of new Syrian refugees into Turkey. Some of them have fled their homes for the first time, while others left informal camps close to the northern border before the fighting could reach them.

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5 facts about the global Somali diaspora _ Pew Research Center

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United Nations Development Programme (UNDP)

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Mediterranean Sea: North Africa to Europe

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Mediterranean Sea: North Africa to Europe

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Death toll surges as migrants try to reach Europe

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There's been a surge in the numbers of people drowning in the Mediterranean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean as migrants from Africa try to reach Europe. Activist groups are blaming European Union policies for their deaths and have been critical of its border agency, Frontex, for its cooperation with the Libyan coastguard.

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(Manila) - Migrant domestic workers in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) are beaten, exploited, and trapped in forced labor situations, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today. The UAE government, about to take up an influential new role in the International Labour Organization (ILO), has failed to adequately protect female domestic workers - many of them from the Philippines - from abuse by employers and recruiters.

The 79-page report, "' I Already Bought You': Abuse and Exploitation of Female Migrant Domestic Workers in the United Arab Emirates", documents how the UAE's visa sponsorship system, known as kafala, and the lack of labor law protections leave migrant domestic workers exposed to abuse. Domestic workers, most from Asia and Africa, cannot move to a new job before their contracts end without the employer's consent, trapping many in abusive conditions. Labor-sending countries don't fully protect the workers against deceptive recruitment practices or provide adequate assistance to abused nationals abroad.

"The UAE's sponsorship system chains domestic workers to their employers and then leaves them isolated and at risk of abuse behind the closed doors of private homes," said Rothna Begum, Middle East women's rights researcher at Human Rights Watch. "With no labor law protections for domestic workers, employers can, and many do, overwork, underpay, and abuse these women."

Human Rights Watch interviewed 99 female domestic workers in the UAE, as well as recruitment agencies, lawyers, and others. Human Rights Watch sent letters to 15 UAE ministries and bodies in January, April, and August to seek information, request meetings, and present its findings but received no response. The UAE government did have a short meeting with Human Rights Watch representatives in September but did not address any domestic worker issues.

Domestic workers told Human Rights Watch about not being paid, not having rest periods or time off, being confined in the employer's homes, and of excessive workloads, with working days of up to 21 hours. They described being deprived of food and reported psychological, physical, and sexual abuse. Many said their employers treated them like animals, or as if they were dirty and physical contact with them would be contaminating. In some cases the abuses amounted to forced labor or trafficking.

"My boss started hitting me after two weeks of being there," one worker said. "She hit me with her fist to my chest. She scraped her fingernails to my neck, and slapped my face. I was bruised on my neck. She sometimes pulled out tufts of my hair." The worker said she remained there, hoping to be paid, but never was.

At least 146,000 female migrant domestic workers - possibly many more - from countries such as the Philippines, Indonesia, India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, and Ethiopia work in the UAE. However, some embassies or consulates in the UAE do not have shelters or adequate staffing to deal with abused domestic workers.

In June 2014, the UAE authorities revised the standard domestic worker labor contract to require a weekly day off and 8 hours of rest in any 24-hour period. However, the contract does not address other issues such as limits on working hours and is weaker than labor law protections for other workers that are enforceable by judicial authorities. An unpublished draft law on domestic workers has been pending since 2012, but according to media reports, its contents would still fall short of protections for other workers. The UAE authorities have reformed some aspects of the kafala system in recent years, but not for domestic workers.

While UAE authorities have prosecuted some employers for murder or extreme physical abuse, workers who seek redress must overcome a host of legal and practical obstacles, particularly in pursuing court remedies for contract breaches or less extreme abuse. Many workers face "absconding" charges, an administrative offense, for leaving an employer without consent before the contract ends. While some workers said police officers treated them well, others said police encouraged them to return to abusive employers. In some cases, employers filed trumped-up theft charges against workers who fled. Some said court delays made them give up any hope of getting unpaid wages.

Many workers said they faced further abuse if they turned to their recruitment agencies for help. Some said agents forced them to return to abusive employers, made them work for new families against their will, confined them to their agency residence and deprived them of food, or beat them when they sought help.

"Many domestic workers who leave abusive employers face a stone wall," Begum said. "They can be prosecuted for running away, while their abusers have little to fear."

In recent years, severe abuses have led some labor-sending countries to place temporary bans on migration to the UAE for domestic work. Several, such as the Philippines, do not allow their nationals to travel to the UAE as domestic workers unless their UAE employers and recruitment agencies agree to minimum salaries and conditions. In June, after the UAE authorities issued the revised contract, they called on embassies to stop verifying contract guarantees before issuing visas for domestic workers. The Philippines, which is required under its domestic policy to verify contract terms, found that the new contract did not provide sufficient protection. It suspended its verification of visa applications for domestic work, though it didn't characterize its action as a ban.

"Where some countries stop their domestic workers from migrating to the UAE, other countries fill the gap, in a race to the bottom that jeopardizes workers," Begum said. "Countries need to band together to demand reforms in the UAE, and bolster their own protection measures."

In June, ILO members elected the UAE to its governing board. The UAE will participate in a session starting October 30 that will focus on a range of labor issues, including forced labor.

The UAE should reform its kafala system so domestic workers can change employers without their consent and without losing valid immigration status. It should pass the draft law on domestic workers, in line with the ILO Domestic Workers convention, raise public awareness about standards under the new domestic worker contract, and expand shelter and other aid and remedies for abused domestic workers.

Labor-sending countries should increase trained staff at embassies and consulates to help abused workers. They should also increase cooperation with the UAE government to monitor recruitment and contracts, resolve labor disputes, and combat forced labor.

"As it takes its seat on the ILO's governing body, the UAE needs to make labor rights a reality at home, including for migrant domestic workers," Begum said.

Selected Accounts From the Report
The following excerpts provide examples of abuses domestic workers in the UAE described to Human Rights Watch. The names of the domestic workers have been changed to protect their privacy and security.

Shelly A., a Filipina worker, said her employer forced her to work under threat of physical abuse. Her employer paid her only for the first three months, then withheld her salary but made her sign receipts to say she had received her full salary. Her employer also took her passport, confined her to the house, and beat her, telling her, "If you had done work then we won't hit you."

Sabina S., a Filipina worker, said her employer made her work 20 hours a day with no breaks, 7 days a week, for a family of 12. She verbally and physically abused Sabina, took her passport and phone, and confined her in the house. Sabina told Human Rights Watch:

Madam said, "When you finish your contract we will pay." After two years I asked for my money. But madam lost my passport. She said, "You have to wait until passport is claimed [processed]. I will give you money when you are leaving."

Sabina was not paid for the two years and seven months she worked and was still waiting to receive her salary when she spoke to Human Rights Watch.

Tahira S., an Indonesian worker, said her employer locked her inside the woman's home, shouted at, beat her, and broke a bone in her arm. The employer confiscated Tahira's passport, made her work 15 hours each day without rest periods or days off, made her sleep on the floor with no blanket or mattress, gave her food only once a day and withheld it if her work was not deemed satisfactory. The employer promised to pay her only at the end of her contract, but then paid her nothing. Tahira told Human Rights Watch:

My boss started hitting me after two weeks of being there. Even though she hit me every day I wanted to wait for my salary. I thought if I waited three months I could get the money. She hit me with her fist to my chest. She scraped her fingernails to my neck, and slapped my face. I was bruised on my neck. She sometimes pulled out tufts of my hair.

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United Arab Emirates: Trapped, Exploited, Abused

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Migrant domestic workers in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) are beaten, exploited, and trapped in forced labor situations, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today. The UAE government, about to take up an influential new role in the International Labour Organization (ILO), has failed to adequately protect female domestic workers - many of them from the Philippines - from abuse by employers and recruiters.

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When he was a child, James Owuor loved hearing the elders talk about the way life used to be. So it comes as something of a surprise that at 38, he is now the one tasked with the job of describing the Before Times in Kenya's Rift Valley. Before Lake Baringo started to rise, before it flooded and stole everything he knew.

"At the beginning, we just thought it was a bad rainy season, that the water would recede when the dry season came. It didn't," he says ruefully, peering over the edge of his motorized canoe at what used to be houses below the milky brown waters. Over the past decade, an unprecedented increase in annual rainfall-widely attributed to climate change -has raised the lake by 40 ft. (12 m), inundating nearly 22,000 acres and destroying homes, businesses and Roberts Camp, the lakeside resort where Owuor has worked for most of his adult life.

In 2014, he watched the waters overtake the two-story-tall shorefront lodge. The restaurant went next, then the bar. In September, the resort's entrance gate on the road to the nearby town of Kampi Ya Samaki went under. Navigating through the drowned remnants of downtown, Owuor points out the remains of a fish factory's roof. A crocodile paddles past the submerged rooms of the Lake Breeze Restaurant and Bar while a hippo grunts from the nave of a flooded church. Water laps at the third-floor balconies of the luxury Soi Safari Lodge, an 80-room resort that once employed 300 locals.

Read More: Climate Refugees Cannot Be Forced Home, U.N. Panel Says in Landmark Ruling

Eventually, he says, "people will have to leave this place and find somewhere else to live. If they were running a business, that means they probably will not have that business anymore. Life is drastically going to change."

An even bigger threat looms. The nearby alkaline Lake Bogoria is also rising. Twice as salty as seawater, and home to more than a million flamingos, Lake Bogoria is on the brink of breaching its own natural barriers. If the waters rise up by another 4 m, says Professor Simon M. Onywere, a geologist at Kenyatta University's department of environmental planning, it could flood freshwater Lake Baringo with a deadly spill of alkaline waters. The two lakes used to be 12 miles (20 km) apart. Over the past decade, climate change has nearly halved the distance.

The merging of the two lakes would be devastating, says Paul Chepsoi, an environmentalist and advocate for local Indigenous rights from the area. "It's not just a worst-case scenario. It's an ecological and human disaster." More than 100,000 people depend on Baringo for income, from either fishing or agriculture. A saltwater influx would destroy both industries. "It means that livelihoods will be affected for generations to come," Chepsoi says, standing in the middle of a paved road that once led to the gates of Bogoria's national park. Water laps at his feet. A nearby lakeside lodge, like the park entrance sign behind him, is mostly underwater.

Nothing short of a catastrophic drought-the kind that would also destroy livelihoods-will stop the rising waters. "The people here will have to leave," says Chepsoi. Many, he says, are already being forced to migrate to neighboring towns and cities largely unprepared for the influx. "The pressure of so many new arrivals will overwhelm the services providers," he worries. "They are not prepared with housing, water, health care facilities or police." Migration may be inevitable, but if the destination cannot absorb the new migrants, they may find themselves even worse off.

In some parts of the world, climate change brings drought. In Kenya 's Rift Valley, it has brought torrential, out-of-season rains over the past decade, which, combined with deforestation, have resulted in rising waters in all of the valley's eight lakes. Some have nearly doubled in size, drowning pastureland, farms, homes, schools, churches, clinics and businesses in what Elizabeth Meyerhoff, an American social anthropologist who studies Rift Valley communities, calls a "slow-motion tsunami." By the end of 2020, one of Kenya's wettest years on record, Baringo had risen by several meters, and had claimed 34 sq. mi. of land.

The local ward administrator says that a health clinic, a technical college, five schools, seven churches, 48 shops and 1,250 houses-home to nearly a third of the population-have been destroyed. Thousands in the Rift Valley lakes region have been forced from their homes. They are part of a new, global movement of refugees fleeing not conflict but climate change.
Read More: The Pandemic Remade Every Corner of Society. Now It's the Climate's Turn
"If you just lose your income that is one thing, because you can adapt. You find another job or another field," says Meyerhoff. "But once you lose everything- your home, your school, your clinic, your road, your church-then it's an impossible situation. You become an environmental migrant because you have to find those facilities in some other place." She is no detached observer; her own home for the past 40 years is just a few inches away from being swallowed by Baringo's rising waters. In her notebook, she carries a photo of her teenage children leaping from her garden's cliffside edge into the lake 40 ft. (12 m) below. Now in their 30s, they could sit in the same spot and dabble their feet in the water. They are begging her to pack up and leave; if she does, she will need to get a boat-the road to her house is already underwater.

Some 24 million people-more than three times the number fleeing armed conflict-are displaced each year by ecological disasters such as floods, droughts, hurricanes, heat waves and rising sea levels, according to an October 2020 analysis by the Institute for Economics and Peace, a global think tank headquartered in Sydney. In the next 30 years, some 1.2 billion more people could be displaced if greenhouse-gas emissions continue on an upward trajectory, accelerating global warming and amplifying climate impacts, particularly in rural areas where livelihoods are dependent on the kind of agriculture most affected by changing weather patterns.

For a long time, experts have seen this kind of migration as flowing from the failure of carbon-spewing nations to rein in their emissions, along with the inability of poorer governments to protect their citizens through adequate adaptation measures. But that view is changing: there comes a point where no amount of infrastructure can hold back the sea, bring back the seasonal rains or cool the global climate. At that point, "migration becomes the adaptation strategy," says Vittoria Zanuso, executive director of the Mayors Migration Council (MMC), a global organization that works with cities to develop comprehensive urban-migration programs. For many of these climate migrants, cities and towns will be their final destination.

Wealthy countries are not exempt. A 2018 study, published in the University of Chicago's Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, predicts that climate change will push 1 in 12 Southern and Midwestern residents of the U.S. to move to less affected areas in the Northeast and Northwest over the next 45 years. "It's no longer a question of if climate migration is happening but rather who, how much, where and when," says Alex Randall of the U.K.-based Climate and Migration Coalition. "Up until now, the focus has been on stopping people from migrating in the first place. Now the focus needs to be on how to make them an asset rather than a burden for the places they are going."

Cities need migrants in order to grow, but chaotic, undirected migration can be as disruptive as an influx of salt into a freshwater lake. That means preparing towns for a new generation of climate migrants by building up infrastructure and increasing services from sanitation to education and health care-often a pricey undertaking for cash-strapped municipalities. New York City's annual budget per resident is approximately $9,500; Nairobi's is around $74.

Several cities-including Orlando; Dhaka, Bangladesh; and Freetown, Sierra Leone-have launched programs to build climate resilience while making sure new arrivals have opportunities for both safe housing and fair employment. These programs are usually funded by the municipality, but in order for them to expand, more investment is needed. International climate funds should play more of a role, says Randall. "Once you accept that moving is a form of adaptation, we would potentially get to a point where climate-adaptation finance could be spent on helping people move safely, or making sure cities had the necessary infrastructure for coping with rapid growth."

As part of the discussions that led to the Paris Agreement, wealthier nations committed to contribute $100 billion a year to help poorer countries combat climate change through loans, grants, cash and private investments. The Green Climate Fund, as it is known, is the world's largest fund dedicated to addressing climate change, but so far, only 20% of global contributions have gone toward adaptation, with the rest largely going to greenhouse-gas-reduction projects-despite a stated goal of 50-50 allocation. (Donor nations make the final decision on project financing.)

To developing nations that typically bear a lesser responsibility for the climate crisis, it's an egregious oversight. "When it comes to a country like Bangladesh or Kenya, where our emissions are small to start with, telling us to use the money to reduce emissions doesn't make sense," says Saleemul Huq, director of the Dhaka-based International Centre for Climate Change and Development (ICCCAD). "We need the money for adaptation; that should be the priority." Zanuso, of the MMC, estimates that urban-adaptation projects-enabling cities to absorb migrants in a way that helps them and their host communities flourish-receive only 3% to 5% of the adaptation funding that has been made available.

When the rising waters of Lake Nakuru, 85 miles (137 km) south of Lake Baringo, claimed the rural settlement of Mwariki in September, Evelyn Ajuang, a 41-year-old widow with close-cropped dark hair, had nowhere to go. She had just spent her entire life savings building and furnishing a four-bedroom house and had nothing to fall back on. So Ajuang took a single room in a low-income neighborhood in the middle of Nakuru town. She sold her goats and chickens to cover three months' rent-besides, the concrete warren of crammed shacks offered no space for livestock. Now, unable to sell the eggs, milk and vegetables that once provided a steady income, she fears the uncertainty ahead.

Ajuang, like most of us, has only a vague understanding of how rising carbon emissions could trigger the rains that have flooded the Rift Valley lakes, but she knows enough to blame it for destroying her life. "Climate change is why I don't think I will ever return to my home," she says, eyeing the four rooms' worth of furniture stacked to the ceiling of her rented room.

Ajuang has been thrust unprepared, and unsupported, into urban life. Every market day, she goes to the wholesale market across town to buy the vegetables she once grew in her own garden, which she sells for a slight profit in her new neighborhood. But transport is expensive, and competition is high. Most months, she can't even make her $30 rent. So far, 153 families from Mwariki have lost their homes; another 174 farmers have lost their fields. Most are sheltering with family or charity organizations in town. While Kenyan authorities say they are looking into the matter, the former residents of Mwariki say the government has yet to distribute any substantial aid or even broach a resettlement plan, leaving victims in agonizing limbo. At least one has committed suicide, says community organizer David Kahoro; several have suffered heart attacks, and many are facing destitution. But it doesn't have to be this way.

Sub-Saharan Africa is already one of the fastest urbanizing regions, with around 450 million city dwellers. That number is expected to climb to 621 million by 2030, the equivalent of adding two New York Citys to the continent each year. Climate change has been a major driver of this urbanization and is likely to increase the pressure on city infrastructure and resources, says sociologist Marc Helbling of Germany's University of Mannheim. Helbling has tracked 50 years' worth of urbanization trends in 133 countries and found that rising temperatures consistently lead to higher levels of rural-to-urban migration.

Done right, urbanization can foster economic growth. No modern country has ever reached middle-income status without urbanizing first. But uncontrolled, it can result in slums, mismanaged sprawl, poor public health and rising insecurity for residents-a city that is less inclusive, less productive and less sustainable. An influx of climate migrants could drive the development of several African megacities (population 10 million or more) into global powerhouses within the next decade and a half-but it could also create unprecedented mega-slums.
Read More: These Women Are Transforming What Climate Leadership Looks Like. Here's What They Learned From the Pandemic
"If cities don't start planning now for climate migrants, this will certainly increase all the problems that come with uncontrolled urbanization-overpopulation, increased pollution, sanitation challenges-and it means that they won't be able to pre-empt the negative or indirect impact of those migrants," says Linda Adhiambo Oucho, executive director of the Nairobi-based African Migration and Development Policy Centre.

That means doing something that few governments are good at: preparing for a crisis that hasn't yet happened. Urban planning is a slow science, says Oucho. "We don't want to get to a situation where we are talking about what to do about mass displacement when climate refugees are already streaming into the city; we need to start addressing it now while it is still manageable." In part, that means expanding schools, health clinics, sewage systems and transport networks, but it also means making sure that the new arrivals move into safe areas where they won't be exposed to additional climate hazards, like the flooding and storm surges that already threaten the low-income neighborhoods usually found in low-lying areas.

Most important is making sure that rural migrants are able to transition to urban livelihoods. "We don't want to see cattle herders begging on street corners because they don't have the skills to thrive in the city," says Oucho. "The only way climate migrants can become a positive factor in urban growth is if they have the retraining and skills transfer that will allow them to adapt and survive and find new opportunities."

While Kenya is only just starting to see the impacts of climate migration, some countries have had years of experience and can offer a template for urban-adaptation solutions. Bangladesh, with its population of 163 million relatively poor residents residing on a flood-prone delta threatened by rising sea levels, was once the global symbol for climate-change victims. But over the past decade, the nation has embarked on a multipronged adaptation strategy that is now starting to show results. "We are still very vulnerable," says Huq of the ICCCAD, "but that vulnerability isn't the story anymore. It's how we deal with the vulnerability."

The key, says Huq, is long-term thinking. Even as the adult population is taught to adapt by switching to salt-tolerant rice, or to farm shrimp instead of vegetables, younger generations are offered an education that will allow them to eventually flourish in an urban setting. "The second order of adaptation is preparing people to move by their own volition, not being forced to move [by climatic conditions] but being enabled to move and resettle in towns with greater protection."

Huq's center, which focuses on climate change and adaptation in developing countries, also works to divert migration streams away from the Bangladeshi capital, Dhaka, one of the fastest-growing cities in the world, toward secondary cities better prepared to absorb the flows. The center identified some 20 target towns on the basis of their ability both to withstand climatic changes and to offer employment and education opportunities for newcomers. The most overlooked part, he says, is what he calls the "software" that accompanies the "hardware" of infrastructure development: working with civil-society organizations to "help residents understand that there will be climate migrants coming in and that they need to be welcomed and supported so they can settle in and become citizens of that town." Otherwise, he says, conflict between groups could derail progress.

To a certain extent, every place will have to keep its own unique geography in mind. The state of New Jersey, for example, has worked with Rutgers University to map out the areas most likely to flood as sea levels rise in the coming years in order to forestall risky development projects. That kind of thinking should be more widespread, says Randall, particularly when it comes to the poorer urban areas where climate migrants are most likely to settle. "What we are seeing at the moment is people leaving a rural area affected by drought, for example, and moving to a city where they've managed to find work but are living in an informal settlement that is vulnerable to flooding. They may have moved, but they have traded one kind of climate risk for another."

And in some cases, a proactive climate-adaptation policy may mean helping whole communities start all over again. In Louisiana, government officials are spending $48.3 million to relocate several dozen households from the low-lying Isle de Jean Charles to higher ground 40 miles away, as part of the first federally funded, climate-change-induced community resettlement project in the U.S. Construction on the new houses started in May 2020.
-With reporting by Billy Perrigo/London and Sandra Mutuku/Nairobi
Wholesale community relocation is expensive and best used as an option of last resort, but Ajuang, who lost her home to the rising waters of Lake Nakuru, can't help wondering how different her life would have been if the government was able to offer her another property. She doesn't think victims of the floods should get money, but having a safe place to land and the resources to start over would have helped. She worked for years to buy her own house to be self-sufficient in retirement and is desperate to regain that autonomy.

Wading hip-deep past what used to be her front porch one recent afternoon, she shoos away a pelican stalking fish in her old goat pen. Referring to the hustle that helped her get her own home, she says she would happily do it all over again, given an opportunity. She just needs a dry piece of land to start. "Without somewhere to go, the dreams I had for my future and my life will end just like that."

Contact us at letters@time.com.

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In 1942, President Roosevelt announced the creation of what would become the largest Mexican guest-worker program in U.S. history. Facing labor shortages on the home front during World War II, the United States initiated a series of agreements with Mexico to recruit Mexican men to work on American farms and railroads. The Emergency Farm Labor Program, more familiarly known as the Bracero Program, enabled approximately 2 million Mexicans to enter the United States and work on short-term labor contracts.

The story of the bracero is rooted in hope and determination. It is a testament to the enduring contributions that Mexicans and Mexican Americans have made to American life.

Braceros in Sonoma County

During WWII, Sonoma County faced a desperate labor shortage, with soldiers shipped overseas and Japanese-Americans, who provided a significant portion of agricultural contract labor, interned in camps. Without a new labor supply, large portions of the county's crops would be left to rot in the fields.

Talmadge "Babe" Wood was likely the first Sonoma County rancher to bring in Braceros-125 men contracted to pick hops, pears, prunes, and apples along the Wood family's River Road ranch. Following the mandates of the program, Wood set up a "campground" along Mark West Creek with tents, cots, a community kitchen, a cook, a dedicated well, and a swimming hole in the creek. While most of those first workers would leave after their contract expired, Wood kept on fifteen of the men for year-round work.

The Braceros were legal, as part of an agreement between the U.S and Mexico. Laborers included in the Bracero Program came to the United States under temporary contracts, which were usually for the duration of one picking season, while growers sometimes extended individual agreements for an entire year.

En 1942, el presidente Roosevelt anunció la creación de lo que llegaría a ser el programa más grande de trabajadores mexicanos migrantes en la historia de los Estados Unidos. Al encarar una falta de mano de obra en el ámbito interno durante la Segunda Guerra Mundial, los Estados Unidos iniciaron una serie de acuerdos con México para reclutar mexicanos para trabajar en el campo y las vías de ferroviarias de Estados Unidos. El Programa de Urgencia de Trabajo Agrícola, mejor conocido como el Programa Bracero, permitió que aproximadamente 2 millones de mexicanos entraran a los Estados Unidos a trabajar con contratos de trabajo de estadía corta.

La historia del bracero esta enraizada en la esperanza y determinación. Es un testamento a las contribuciones imperecederas que los mexicanos y méxico-americanos han hecho a la vida americana.

Braceros en el Condado de Sonoma

Durante la Segunda Guerra Mundial, el Condado de Sonoma se enfrentó a una escasez desesperante de fuerza de trabajo, los soldados estaban en el extranjero y los japoneses-americanos, quienes proporcionaban una parte importante del trabajo contractual agrícola, fueron puestos en campos de concentración. Sin nuevas fuentes de mano de obra, grandes porciones de los campos de cultivo estaban condenados a pudrirse.

Talmadge "Babe" Wood fue probablemente el primer ranchero en el condado de Sonoma que trajo Braceros-125 hombres contratados para pizcar lúpulo, peras, ciruelas pasa, y manzanas en el rancho de la familia Wood en River Road. Siguiendo los mandatos del programa, Wood estableció un "campamento" en Mark West Creek con casas de campaña, catres, una cocina comunal, un cocinero, un pozo de agua, y una poza para nadar en el arroyo. Aunque la mayoría de estos trabajadores partieron al expirar su contrato, Wood mantuvo a quince de estos hombres para trabajar durante todo el año.

Los Braceros tenían estadía legal, como parte de un acuerdo entre los Estados Unidos y México. Los trabajadores incluidos en el Programa Bracero vinieron a los Estados Unidos con contratos temporales, que generalmente duraban lo que dura una temporada de pizca; sin embargo, los productores algunas veces extendían acuerdos individuales para el año entero.

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In 1942, President Roosevelt announced the creation of what would become the largest Mexican guest-worker program in U.S. history. Facing labor shortages on the home front during World War II, the United States initiated a series of agreements with Mexico to recruit Mexican men to work on American farms and railroads.