Floods, cyclones, earthquakes and other disasters triggered over half a million internal displacements in India in 2023, says Geneva-based Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC).
IDMC’s annual report 'Global Report on Internal Displacement' showed a sharp decline in the number of displaced people in India in 2023 compare to 2022. The report underlines the fact that climate change is making some hazards more frequent and intense and making communities more vulnerable.
There is a sharp decline in internally displaced people in 2023 from 2.5 million internal displacements due to natural disasters in the country in 2022. Internal displacements by natural disasters in 2023 was 528,000.
Moreover, an additional 67000 were displaced due to conflict and violence mostly in Northeast state of Manipur in 2023. However, the number was 1000 in 2022.
Floods and storms continued to uproot people from their homes, often in the same places where displacement tends to be recorded year after year.
The report points out that the reason behind the sharp decline in natural disaster-induced displacement in India is due to developing El Niño conditions for the first time in seven years by mid-2023, bringing drier conditions. It means India witnessed lesser rainfall and subsequently less number of flood-related disasters.
El Nino is a climate pattern that describes the unusual warming of surface waters in the eastern Pacific Ocean. El Nino conditions are synonymous to poor monsoon. India received a 5.6% deficit in southwest monsoon.
The major internal displacement in India was caused by floods and severe tropical cyclone Biporjoy in June 2023.
According to the report, 105,000 people were displaced in Gujarat and Rajasthan after cyclone Biparjoy. However, the flood displacement figure for India was the lowest since data became available in 2008 at 352,000 movements. The largest flood event, which triggered about 91,000 people’s displacement, occurred in the state of Assam in June of 2023 when heavy rains hit 20 districts in the state, causing some rivers to burst their banks. Moreover, soil erosion was deemed to have worsened the floods’ impacts.
Even Delhi’s flood on July 9 brought 153 mm of rain, the highest figure recorded for a single day in 40 years, and triggered the displacement of 27000 people.
According to reports, floods, storms, earthquakes, wildfires trigger most of the displacement. There were 26.4 million displacements in 2023 due to natural disasters such as floods, storms, earthquake, the third-highest annual total in the past ten years.
The report further states that displacement triggered by conflict and violence in Sudan, Palestine and elsewhere touched a new record. It drove the number of internally displaced people (IDPs) around the world to 75.9 million at the end of 2023.
Of the total, 68.3 million were displaced by conflict and violence and 7.7 million by disasters. Almost half, 46 per cent, of all IDPs live in sub-Saharan Africa.