Disasters increase the remittances of overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) to their families to help them cope, but it does not ensure their resilience, according to a new World Bank report.
In the report “Groundswell—Preparing for Internal Climate Migration,” the World Bank said when their families encounter environmental and economic shocks, OFWs tend to send more remittances to make up for any income lost due to these shocks.
The remittances, the bank added, are often used for basic needs, such as food, as well as education, health care and housing.
“About 60 percent of exogenous declines in income are replaced by remittance inflows from migrants overseas. Remittances can help improve prospects for disaster recovery and, to some extent, preparedness and adaptation; the contribution to resilience is less clear,” the World Bank said.
Most of the OFWs sending remittances, the bank said, are women. This follows the trend in many Asian countries, where increases in female emigrants have been recorded as far back as 1960.
The World Bank added this is largely because of shifts in labor demands globally which led to “new migration pulls for women.”
“The increase in dual-income households and aging populations in destination countries, for example, has fueled a rise in demand for care-giving services, for which women are most often sought,” the World Bank said.
Globally, the bank added the worsening impacts of climate change is also changing the way people live, particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia and Latin America.
The bank estimates there could be over 140 million people who will be internally displaced people in these regions by 2050. The Washington-based lender said this could create a new human crisis.
However, the bank said if global efforts to cut greenhouse-gas emissions and robust development planning at the country level prosper, it could reduce the number of internally displaced people by as much as 80 percent, or over 100 million people.
World Bank CEO Kristalina Georgieva said the new research provides a wake-up call to countries and development
institutions.
“We have a small window now, before the effects of climate change deepen, to prepare the ground for this new reality,” Georgieva said. “Steps cities take to cope with the upward trend of arrivals from rural areas and to improve opportunities for education, training and jobs will pay long-term dividends. It’s also important to help people make good decisions about whether to stay where they are or move to new locations where they are less vulnerable.”
The bank also said that cutting global greenhouse-gas emissions is imperative to reduce climate pressure on people and livelihoods, and to reduce the overall scale of climate migration.
It added that countries should transform development planning to factor in the entire cycle of climate migration (before, during and after migration) and increase investments in data and analysis to improve understanding of internal climate migration trends and trajectories at the country level.