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Climate hazards are threatening vulnerable migrants in Indian megacities

Nature Climate Change volume 11, pages 636–638 (2021)Cite this article

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In recent decades, India has witnessed a rapid pace of migration from areas with intensive agriculture to populated megacities, which are faced with increasing threat from climate hazards. Greater attention is needed for vulnerable new migrants who lack necessary resources when designing adaptation and mitigation policies.

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Fig. 1: Pattern of flow of inter-state migration based on the 2011 India Census.

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Acknowledgements

The authors acknowledge the efforts of Census of India (Government of India) for making the migration data publicly available. This work was partly carried out within the bilateral project XEROS (eXtreme EuRopean drOughtS: multimodel synthesis of past, present and future events), funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (grant RA 3235/1-1) and Czech Science Foundation (grant 19-24089J). S.K. acknowledges the Department of Science & Technology (SPLICE-Climate Change Programme) and the Government of India (project reference no. DST/CCP/CoE/140/2018; grant no. 00000000000010013072 (UC ID: 18192442)). A.K. acknowledges support from the European Union Horizon 2020 program, project no. 869550 (DOWN2EARTH).

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Author notes

  1. These authors contributed equally: Vittal Hari, Suman Dharmasthala.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. UFZ-Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research, Leipzig, Germany

    Vittal Hari & Rohini Kumar

  2. Faculty of Environmental Sciences, Czech University of Life Sciences Prague, Prague, Czech Republic

    Suman Dharmasthala

  3. Hydro-Climate Extremes Lab (H-CEL), Faculty of Bioscience Engineering, Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium

    Akash Koppa

  4. Environmental Science and Engineering Department, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, Mumbai, India

    Subhankar Karmakar

  5. Interdisciplinary Program (IDP) in Climate Studies, Indian Institute of Technology, Mumbai, India

    Subhankar Karmakar

Authors
  1. Vittal Hari
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  2. Suman Dharmasthala
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  3. Akash Koppa
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  4. Subhankar Karmakar
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  5. Rohini Kumar
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Contributions

V.H. and S.D. conceptualized and designed the study together with R.K. and S.K. S.D. and V.H. conducted the analysis, with inputs from R.K. and A.K. S.D., V.H. and A.K. drafted the manuscript. All author contributed in editing and reviewing of the manuscript.

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Vittal Hari or Rohini Kumar.

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Hari, V., Dharmasthala, S., Koppa, A. et al. Climate hazards are threatening vulnerable migrants in Indian megacities. Nat. Clim. Chang. 11, 636–638 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-021-01105-7

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