She stated that artificial intelligence is expected to affect 60% of jobs in advanced economies and 40% of jobs worldwide within the next two years during an event in Zurich.

In an event organised by the Swiss Institute of International Studies, associated with the University of Zurich, Kristalina Georgieva said, “We have very little time to get people ready for it, businesses ready for it. It could bring a tremendous increase in productivity if we manage it well, but it can also lead to more misinformation and, of course, more inequality in our society.”

Kristalina Georgieva mentioned that the world economy has become more susceptible to shocks in recent years, citing the global pandemic in 2020 and the war in Ukraine.

She also anticipated more shocks, especially due to the climate crisis, but noted that the economy has remained remarkably resilient.

“We are not in a global recession,” stated Kristalina Georgieva, who faced heckling from protesters demanding action on climate change and addressing developing world debt.

“Last year there were fears that most economies would slip into recession, that didn’t happen. Inflation that has hit us with a very strong force is on the decline, almost everywhere,” she added.

Swiss National Bank Chairman Thomas Jordan, who also spoke at the event, stated that the battle against inflation in Switzerland has made significant progress.

In April, inflation increased to 1.4 per cent, marking the 11th consecutive month of price rises within the SNB’s target range of 0-2 per cent.

“The outlook for inflation is much better. It looks that for the next few years, inflation could be really in the same range of price stability. But there is a lot of uncertainty,” Thomas Jordan said.

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Bangladesh has sought the funds for its balance of payment and budgetary needs, as well as for efforts to deal with climate change. It is said that Finance Minister A H M Mustafa Kamal wrote to IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva on July 24.

Bangladesh Bank recently announced that the import of luxury products, fruits, non-cereal foods, canned goods, and processed foods would be discouraged as a policy to preserve dollars.

The bank’s foreign exchange reserves decreased from $45.5 billion a year earlier to $39.67 billion as of July 20. This amount is still enough to cover imports for more than five months.

According to central bank data, Bangladesh’s July to May current account deficit was $17.2bn, compared with a deficit of $2.78bn in the year-earlier period. In the first 11 months of the fiscal year that ended on June 30, imports jumped 39% but exports grew only 34%.

Shamsul Alam, junior planning minister, said that authorities were grappling with a crisis because of rising international fuel prices after the Russian attack on Ukraine. “Our balance of payments is in the negative zone. We need to stabilize our exchange rate,” he said.

Alam said the government had rolled out austerity measures in addition to electricity rationing, including import curbs and cuts to development spending.

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But with concerted action – including global efforts to cut greenhouse gas emissions and robust development planning at the country level – this worst-case scenario of over 140mn could be dramatically reduced, by as much as 80%, or more than 100mn people.

The report, Groundswell – Preparing for Internal Climate Migration, is the first and most comprehensive study of its kind to focus on the nexus between slow-onset climate change impacts, internal migration patterns and development in three developing regions of the world: Sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, and Latin America.

It finds that unless urgent climate and development action is taken globally and nationally, these three regions together could be dealing with tens of millions of internal climate migrants by 2050. These are people forced to move from increasingly non-viable areas of their countries due to growing problems like water scarcity, crop failure, sea-level rise and storm surges.

These ‘climate migrants’ would be additional to the millions of people already moving within their countries for economic, social, political or other reasons, the report warns.

World Bank Chief Executive Officer Kristalina Georgieva said the new research provides a wake-up call to countries and development institutions.

“We have a small window now, before the effects of climate change deepen, to prepare the ground for this new reality,” Georgieva said. “Steps cities take to cope with the upward trend of arrivals from rural areas and to improve opportunities for education, training and jobs will pay long-term dividends. It’s also important to help people make good decisions about whether to stay where they are or move to new locations where they are less vulnerable.”

The research team, led by World Bank Lead Environmental Specialist Kanta Kumari Rigaud and including researchers and modelers from CIESIN Columbia University, CUNY Institute of Demographic Research, and the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research – applied a multi-dimensional modeling approach to estimate the potential scale of internal climate migration across the three regions.

They looked at three potential climate change and development scenarios, comparing the most ‘pessimistic’ (high greenhouse gas emissions and unequal development paths), to ‘climate friendly’ and ‘more inclusive development’ scenarios in which climate and national development action increases in line with the challenge. Across each scenario, they applied demographic, socioeconomic and climate impact data at a 14-square kilometer grid-cell level to model likely shifts in population within countries.

This approach identified major ‘hotspots’ of climate in-and out-migration-areas from which people are expected to move and urban, peri-urban and rural areas to which people will try to move to build new lives and livelihoods.

“Without the right planning and support, people migrating from rural areas into cities could be facing new and even more dangerous risks,” said the report’s team lead Kanta Kumari Rigaud. “We could see increased tensions and conflict as a result of pressure on scarce resources. But that doesn’t have to be the future. While internal climate migration is becoming a reality, it won’t be a crisis if we plan for it now.”

The report recommends key actions nationally and globally, including:

• Cutting global greenhouse gas emissions to reduce climate pressure on people and livelihoods, and to reduce the overall scale of climate migration
• Transforming development planning to factor in the entire cycle of climate migration (before, during and after migration)

Investing in data and analysis to improve understanding of internal climate migration trends and trajectories at the country level.

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