At 17.5 Million, Overseas Indians Are Largest Community In The World: UN - Pragnya IAS Academy - News Analysis.

At 17.5 Million, Overseas Indians Are Largest Community In The World: UN.

Migrants from Mexico constituted the second largest diaspora - 11.8 million, followed by China - 10.7 million, Russia - 10.5 million, Syria - 8.2 million, Bangladesh - 7.8 million, Pakistan - 6.3 million, Ukraine - 5.9 million, the Philippines - 5.4 million and Afghanistan - 5.1 million.

India was the leading country of origin of international migrants in 2019 with a 17.5 million strong overseas Indian community, according to new estimates released by the United Nations, which said the number of migrants globally reached an estimated 272 million.

The International Migrant Stock 2019, a dataset released by the Population Division of the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs or DESA today, provides the latest estimates of the number of international migrants by age, sex and origin for all countries and areas of the world.
The estimates are based on official national statistics on the foreign-born or the foreign population obtained from population censuses, population registers or nationally representative surveys.
The report said that the top 10 countries of origin account for one-third of all international migrants. In 2019, with 17.5 million persons living abroad, India was the leading country of origin of international migrants.
Migrants from Mexico constituted the second largest diaspora - 11.8 million, followed by China - 10.7 million, Russia - 10.5 million, Syria - 8.2 million, Bangladesh - 7.8 million, Pakistan - 6.3 million, Ukraine - 5.9 million, the Philippines - 5.4 million and Afghanistan - 5.1 million.
India hosted 5.1 million international migrants in 2019, less than the 5.2 million in 2015. International migrants as a share of total population in India was steady at 0.4 per cent from 2010 to 2019.
The country hosted 207,000 refugees, the report said adding that refugees as a share of international migrants in the country was four per cent. Among the international migrants in the country, the female population was 48.8 per cent and the median age of international migrants was 47.1 years. In India, the highest number of international migrants came from Bangladesh, Pakistan and Nepal.
In 2019, regionally, Europe hosted the largest number of international migrants (82 million), followed by Northern America (59 million) and Northern Africa and Western Asia (49 million).
At the country level, about half of all international migrants reside in just 10 countries, with the United States of America hosting the largest number of international migrants (51 million), equal to about 19 per cent of the world's total.
Germany and Saudi Arabia host the second and third largest numbers of migrants (13 million each), followed by Russia (12 million), the United Kingdom (10 million), the United Arab Emirates (9 million), France, Canada and Australia (around 8 million each) and Italy (6 million).
The share of international migrants in total population varies considerably across geographic regions with the highest proportions recorded in Oceania (including Australia and New Zealand) (21.2 per cent) and Northern America (16.0 per cent) and the lowest in Latin America and the Caribbean (1.8 per cent), Central and Southern Asia (1.0 per cent) and Eastern and South-Eastern Asia (0.8 per cent).
A majority of international migrants in sub-Saharan Africa (89 per cent), Eastern and South-Eastern Asia (83 per cent), Latin America and the Caribbean (73 per cent), and Central and Southern Asia (63 per cent) originated from the region in which they reside.
By contrast, most of the international migrants that lived in Northern America (98 per cent), Oceania (88 per cent) and Northern Africa and Western Asia (59 per cent) were born outside their region of residence.
UN Under-Secretary-General for DESA Liu Zhenmin said that "These data are critical for understanding the important role of migrants and migration in the development of both countries of origin and destination.
Facilitating orderly, safe, regular and responsible migration and mobility of people will contribute much to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals.
The report added that forced displacements across international borders continues to rise.
Between 2010 and 2017, the global number of refugees and asylum seekers increased by about 13 million, accounting for close to a quarter of the increase in the number of all international migrants.
Northern Africa and Western Asia hosted around 46 per cent of the global number of refugees and asylum seekers, followed by sub-Saharan Africa (21 per cent).
Turning to the gender composition, women comprise slightly less than half of all international migrants in 2019.
The share of women and girls in the global number of international migrants fell slightly, from 49 per cent in 2000 to 48 per cent in 2019.
The share of migrant women was highest in Northern America (52 per cent) and Europe (51 per cent), and lowest in sub-Saharan Africa (47 per cent) and Northern Africa and Western Asia (36 per cent).
In terms of age, one out of every seven international migrants is below the age of 20 years. (Source: ndtv)


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At 17.5 Million, Overseas Indians Are Largest Community In The World: UN.

Cabinet approves $400 million currency swap arrangement for SAARC nations - Pragnya IAS Academy - News Analysis.

Cabinet approves $400 million currency swap arrangement for SAARC nations.

Highlights:
• The facility, Standby Swap, will help India provide a faster response to requests from SAARC member countries
• The RBI will negotiate operational details bilaterally with central banks of SAARC countries
The Union Cabinet on Wednesday approved amendments to the framework on currency swap arrangement for SAARC member countries by incorporating a stand-by facility of $400 million.

The facility would enable India to provide a prompt response to the current request from SAARC member countries for availing the swap amount exceeding the current limit prescribed under the SAARC Swap Framework.
The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) will negotiate operational details bilaterally with central banks of SAARC countries availing the Standby Swap, an official statement said.
"The Union Cabinet, chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi has given ex-post facto approval for amendment to the 'Framework on Currency Swap Arrangement for SAARC Member Countries' to incorporate a 'Standby Swap' amounting to $400 million operated within the overall size of the facility of $2 billion," the statement added.
Besides India, other members of SAARC grouping include Afghanistan, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Nepal and Maldives. (Source:Livemint)


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Cabinet approves $400 million currency swap arrangement for SAARC nations.

How Earth's Future Could Soon Recreate a Lost World of 50 Million Years Ago - Pragnya IAS Academy - News Analysis.

How Earth's Future Could Soon Recreate a Lost World of 50 Million Years Ago.

Humans have pulled too hard on our planet's strings, and now we're at a point where the global climate itself is unravelling.

A new study suggests that if nothing is done to reduce our carbon emissions, we could essentially reverse 50 million years of long-term cooling in just a few generations.
The consequences could send us spiralling back in time by at least 3 million years. By 2030, the study predicts that Earth's climate may resemble the mid-Pliocene - the last great warm period before now, when the world was 1.8 degrees Celsius warmer (3.2 degrees Fahrenheit).
From that precarious spot, we could retreat even further. By 2150, the study suggests our climate could most resemble the ice-free Eocene of some 50 million years past, when there were extremely high carbon dioxide levels and global temperatures were roughly 13 degrees Celsius warmer (23.4 degrees Fahrenheit).
This is a time when crocodiles swam in the swampy forests of the Arctic Circle and palm trees dropped coconuts in Alaska.
"If we think about the future in terms of the past, where we are going is uncharted territory for human society," says lead author Kevin Burke, a paleoecologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
"We are moving toward very dramatic changes over an extremely rapid time frame, reversing a planetary cooling trend in a matter of centuries."
Today, the accelerated rate of climate change is faster than anything the planet has ever experienced before. Now, we are so far off the road map that one of the only ways to figure out where we are going is to retrace the ancient steps the world took long, long ago.
Combing through Earth's climate history, the new study sought to identify a time that is similar to current climate projections.
To do this, the researchers picked out six climate benchmarks from throughout Earth's geologic history, dating as far back as the early Eocene to as recently as the early 20th century.
The team then compared these geological periods with two different climate scenarios, calculated using the best available data from the fifth assessment report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
The first scenario is the worst case possible - a future in which humans do not mitigate greenhouse gas emissions at all - and the second scenario is one in which we do manage to moderately reduce emissions (a feat that will be difficult to achieve, given our current activity).
"Based on observational data, we are tracking on the high end of the emissions scenarios, but it's too soon to tell," says Burke.
Using no less than three different climate models, the researchers tested both of these scenarios, and then compared them to each of the geologic periods picked out.
The results are kind of like a 'choose your own adventure' book with only two options: we can either do nothing and end up with a climate that resembles the Eocene, or we can try and reduce our emissions and halt our climate at Pliocene conditions.
Under both of these scenarios and across each of the models, the results for the short term are about the same. By at least 2040, Earth's climate will most closely resemble the mid-Pliocene, and this is well beyond the "safe operating space" of the Holocene that we were shooting for.
At this point, no matter which way we slice it, it seems highly likely that our children and grandchildren will live to see a world where temperatures will rise, precipitation will increase, ice caps will melt, and the poles will become temperate.
During the Pliocene, the climate was arid and the High Arctic was home to forests in which camels and other animals roamed. Who knows what will happen to biological life and human society when the climate reverts to that state within just a few centuries?

The findings of the new study reveal that these rapid changes will probably begin at the centre of Earth's continents, spiralling outwards in concentric circles until they engulf the whole planet.
This means that in some areas of the world - for instance, the parts that lie at the centre of those circles - the climate consequences will be especially drastic.
"Madison (Wisconsin) warms up more than Seattle (Washington) does, even though they're at the same latitude," explains co-author John 'Jack' Williams, a researcher in ecological responses to climate change.
"When you read that the world is expected to warm by 3 degrees Celsius this century, in Madison we should expect to roughly double the global average."
But while we can predict some of these extreme climate changes, others will no doubt take us by surprise.
In the worst case scenario, by the stage that our climate once again resembles the mid-Pliocene, the research found that nearly 9 percent of the planet will be experiencing "novel" climates.
This means that in some areas of the world, including eastern and southeastern Asia, northern Australia, and the coastal Americas, humans will be experiencing climate conditions that have no known geological or historical precedent.
"In the roughly 20 to 25 years I have been working in the field, we have gone from expecting climate change to happen, to detecting the effects, and now, we are seeing that it's causing harm," says Williams.
"People are dying, property is being damaged, we're seeing intensified fires and intensified storms that can be attributed to climate change. There is more energy in the climate system, leading to more intense events."
It's difficult to put a positive spin on all of this, but the researchers tried their hardest. After all, life has a way of surviving and pushing through seemingly insurmountable challenges.
"We've seen big things happen in Earth's history – new species evolved, life persists and species survive. But many species will be lost, and we live on this planet," says Williams.
"These are things to be concerned about, so this work points us to how we can use our history and Earth's history to understand changes today and how we can best adapt."


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How Earth's Future Could Soon Recreate a Lost World of 50 Million Years Ago.

Rising temperature to cut living standards of 600 million Indians - Pragnya IAS Academy - News Analysis.

Rising temperature to cut living standards of 600 million Indians.

A third of Indians will be affected by 2050, says World Bank; 7 of 10 most vulnerable spots in Maharashtra.

Six hundred million Indians could see a dip in living standards by 2050 if temperatures continue to rise at their current pace, according to an analysis by the World Bank.

Seven of the 10 severest or most vulnerable ‘hotspots’ in India would be located in Maharashtra; the rest would be in Madhya Pradesh and Chattisgarh. In the absence of major climate mitigation, nearly 148 million Indians will be living in these severe hotspots in 2050, according to the report.
States in the central, northern and northwestern parts of India emerge as the most vulnerable. Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh, which are predicted to experience a decline in living standards of more than 9%, are the top two ‘hotspot’ States in India, followed by Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, and Maharashtra.
India’s average annual temperatures are expected to rise by 1°C to 2°C by 2050, even if preventive measures are taken along the lines of those recommended by the Paris climate change agreement of 2015. If no measures are taken, average temperatures in India are predicted to increase by 1.5°C to 3°C.
Economists at the World Bank correlated these climate projections with household consumption data (a proxy for living standards) in Nepal, Afghanistan, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, and extrapolated it to 2050.
Using publicly available climate models that project how rising temperatures will affect rainfall and seasons, the researchers conclude that if emissions continued at the current pace, India could see a 1.5% decline in its GDP by 2030. However, were some corrective actions to be taken — like India concertedly implementing its National Action Plan on Climate Change and States are implementing their domestic climate change mitigation plans — this could be halted to 1.3%. (Source: The Hindu)


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Rising temperature to cut living standards of 600 million Indians.