BARCELONA, Sept 20 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – Salamatu, 22, from northern Ghana, has worked as a porter in Accra for seven years after repeated flooding on her family’s farm forced her to seek a living in the capital. But she doesn’t get to keep much of what she earns.

Her boss takes most of the money to cover her accommodation and even pay for the pan she balances on her head to carry goods – and she owed more after accidentally dropping someone else’s things in the market.

“I have been working endlessly and have not been able to repay,” Salamatu told researchers in a new report on the links between climate-related migration and modern slavery by Anti-Slavery International and the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED).

The research includes case studies from West Africa and the coastal Sundarbans region of India and Bangladesh, and shows how more extreme weather and rising seas, which push people to move, are putting vulnerable groups at greater risk of human trafficking and modern slavery.

“Climate and development policy makers and planners urgently need to recognise that millions of people displaced by climate change are being – and will be – exposed to slavery in the coming decades,” Felipe González Morales, U.N. Special Rapporteur on the Human Rights of Migrants, said at the report launch on Monday.

How does climate-linked migration expose people to trafficking and slavery?

Climate change acts as a “stress multiplier” on existing factors such as poverty, inequality and conflict that drive modern slavery, with those uprooted from their homes especially at risk, the report noted.

It describes situations where people affected by climate change impacts – particularly women and girls – find themselves prey to trafficking agents or working merely to pay off escalating debts to employers.

That might include people living in aid camps because their homes were destroyed in a storm, or female family members left behind at home after their male relatives migrate to cities in search of work as the family land becomes infertile.

For example, in the wake of Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines, in 2013, many survivors were coerced into working as prostitutes or labourers, the report noted.

Costly and damaging annual floods in Assam, in north-east India, also have led to women and girls being forced into child slavery or forced marriage to make ends meet.

Other climate change impacts such as drought and water scarcity are displacing people from their homes too, as well as saltier and less productive soils caused by rising sea levels and storm surges in coastal areas, the report said.

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