COP18 (06/12/12) – Dina Ionesco, Migration Policy Officer at the International Organisation for Migration talks about the increasing awareness that climate change is a driver for migration.

She says it is still hard to put a figure on how many people are migrating people of climate change and says there must be more visibility of the topic.

She says that last year, 15 million people moved because of natural disaster – 89% of which were in Asia. She warns that often when people talk of migration because of climate change it is internal migration, mainly from rural to urban areas. Around 700 million people moved last year internally.

She says that while we cannot be sure if the environmental is the main driver in these moves we know it is one. She also says that climate change’s role is increasing the number of people migrating because it aggravates existing environmental damage and degradation.