The climate crisis a factor increasingly driving the migrants who arrive in Italy to leave their homelands, according to the ‘Immigrazione 2022’ report released by the Idos research centre on Monday.

The report, prepared in collaboration with the Confronti study centre and the ‘S. Pio V’ Political Studies Institute, said that the top countries of origin of the migrants who arrived in Italy 2021 were those hit especially hard by climate-linked phenomena such as prolonged drought and extreme flooding.

These included Tunisia, Egypt, Bangladesh, Afghanistan, Syria, Ivory Coast, Eritrea, Guinea, Pakistan and Iran.

The report said these migrants are ‘invisible’ before the law, in the sense that Italy and the European Union do not give climate migrants refugee status.

“Climate injustice and social injustice are merging, and migration is becoming the only adaptation strategy available for those who have no other alternative in order to flee poverty in all its forms,” said Idos President Luca Di Sciullo.

“Preventing conflict is not sufficient to resolve the issue of forced migration.

“It is also necessary to learn to live in a more sustainable way with our planet, turning the current development model on its head and thinking practically about the right to migrate.”

The details of the report seem particularly prescient in light of the news of the NGO-operated search-and-rescue ships set to present Premier Giorgia Meloni’s new government with the first test of its migrant policy, having saved a combined total of 118 people in the southern Mediterranean.

The Ocean Viking, which flies the Norwegian flag and is run by German NGO SOS Mediterranée, has 73 people on board.

The Humanity One, flying the German flag and run by another German NGO, SOS Humanity, is carrying 45.

In both cases the people were rescued in international waters in the Maltese search-and-rescue zone.

While he was interior minister in the first government of ex-premier Giuseppe Conte from 2018 to 2019, Deputy Premier and Infrastructure and Sustainable Mobility Minister Matteo Salvini adopted a tough stance of closing Italy’s ports to NGO-run migrant-rescue vessels.

His new position gives him a say in the running of Italy’s ports.