Policy analysis: Climate Change and Migration Bangladesh

The key challenge is to develop a policy that facilitates the adaptive capacity of migration rather than inhibiting it. Such an endeavour and subsequent shift in policy where it is sub-optimal is imperative in a warming globe, in which environmental and climatic features and natural hazard patterns are changing. Such changes may imply different forms of migration – whether proactive or reactive, forced or voluntary, free or restrictive. Anticipated and/or planned migration could be an effective adaptation strategy (Foresight 2011). Adaptation is necessitated by changes in climate observed across the world. Long-term changes that scientists have observed in recent years include widespread shifts in rainfall amounts, ocean salinity, wind patterns and extreme weather, including droughts, heavy rain/ snow, heat waves and the intensity of tropical cyclones (IPCC 2007a). Scientists have also noted that the rate of observed sea level rise has increased in the past century, during which the rise was an estimated 0.17 metres (ibid).