Climate disruption, conflict, resource scarcity and political instability are driving rising migration, with much larger movements of people likely in coming decades.

The human tsunami is building irresistibly, with one person in every 20 worldwide now seeking to relocate from their home country to another.

In 2026 there are over 420 million people on the move, seeking new homes in places not torn by war, famine, climate disruption, resource scarcity or political, religious and economic savagery.

Migrants now comprise the world’s third largest population, behind that of India and China, but significantly outnumbering the USA, Indonesia, Pakistan and Nigeria.

At its root the building migrant tsunami is fed by overpopulation, but also by the forces accompanying it – scarcity of key resources like water, land or food, conditions progressively more hostile and more toxic to family life, and a plague of bad governments bent on war, repression and autocracy.

Humans and our ancestral species have been natural migrants for going on two million years, as revealed by a trail of prehuman remains stretching from Ethiopia to China and Indonesia – so there is nothing surprising about our endless quest for new opportunities and horizons. It’s what we do naturally when local resources no longer appear sufficient.

But there is something exceptional about this building tsunami of migration, especially if it results from the abandonment of large areas of the Earth or its megacities as they become uninhabitable. It will be the greatest upheaval in all human history.

The movement has two main components – refugees and voluntary migrants. At last count there were a record 124 million refugees and stateless people adrift, up by over 300 per cent since 2000 (38 million). Just above half of these were displaced within their home countries but looking to move. Presently, one person of every 67 on Earth has been forced to flee.

There were also 304........

© Pearls and Irritations