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People carrying their belongings wade through flooded roads to safe places on the outskirts in West Bengal, India - Source: Reuters -
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Floods, storms, drought and other climate-related natural
disasters drove 20 million people from their homes last year,
nearly four times as many as were displaced by conflicts, a new UN
report said.
The study tried to quantify for the first time the number of people
forced to flee their homes because of climate change.
Global warming is increasing the frequency and intensity of storms
and otherwise altering weather patterns, so disasters are now "an
extremely significant driver of forced displacement globally", it
said.
The study said a total of 36 million people were driven from their
homes by rapid-onset natural disasters in 2008. China's Sichuan
earthquake accounted for 15 million of these, but climate-related
disasters displaced 90% of the rest.
The report said many more people were probably being forced from
their homes by slower-onset crises like droughts.
The report was compiled jointly by the UN Office for the
Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs and the Internal Displacement
Monitoring Centre (IDMC), a body which normally tracks displacement
caused by conflict.
The aim was "to see whether it was possible to put numbers to the
problem and come up with a methodology that will enable us to do
that over time", said IDMC head Kate Halff.
The answer was a qualified "yes", though Halff warned that the
monitoring effort so far "doesn't give us any idea of what time
period these people have been displaced or what their needs are. At
this stage it's just about a number."
Migrate or flee?
Accurately tracking displacement resulting from slower-onset crises
like rising sea levels is also expected to prove difficult, largely
because it is hard to judge when voluntary movement from a problem
zone becomes forced fleeing, she said.
Determining what role climate change may have played in a natural
disaster will also undoubtedly remain controversial.
Still, "an increase in the number of people temporarily displaced
will be an inevitable consequence of more frequent and intense
extreme weather events affecting more people globally," the report
said.
Last year, more than five million people were displaced by flooding
in India, attributed in part to changes in that country's monsoon
cycle.
In the Philippines, nearly two million people were forced from
their homes by severe storms. China and Myanmar also saw
large-scale displacements due to storms.
Asia accounted for over 90% of disaster-related displacements last
year, which the report said "may simply be because Asia is the most
disaster-prone region".
By comparison, 4.6 million people were internally displaced last
year by conflict, according to Halff's centre.
Altogether 42 million people were living as refugees or internally
displaced persons last year because of fighting, she
said.
