Millions displaced as a result of climate-related disasters, building in hazard-prone areas
“Governments should prioritize measures to strengthen the resilience of people whose displacement risks becoming protracted, or has already become so,” said William Lacy Swing, director general of the International Organization for Migration, which assisted in the data collection for the report. “If communities are strengthened and ready beforehand, with solid infrastructure, early warning systems, and other such measures, displacement can be used as a short term coping strategy, or at best be avoided altogether.”
The report comes at a crucial time this year as various past and future policy processes come together. These include the Sustainable Development Goals which are to be adopted in September, as well as ongoing preparations for the World Humanitarian Summit in 2016. What this report shows is how disaster displacement bridges all these policy processes.
“We can talk about sustainability, climate change and a reformed humanitarian architecture” said Zamudio, “but to ensure that all these policy processes turn into concrete action, we need to pay closer attention to those living on the front lines; in this case the millions of men, women and children currently on the run from disasters worldwide.”
Among the report’s key findings:
- In 2014, more than 19.3 million people became displaced by disasters in 100 countries worldwide
- Since 2008, an average of 26.4 million people have been displaced by disasters each year — equivalent to one person displaced every second
- 17.5 million people were displaced by disasters brought on by weather-related hazards in 2014; 1.7 million were displaced by geophysical hazards
- Since 2008, an average of 22.5 million people have been displaced by climate- or weather-related disasters each year — equivalent to 62,000 people every day
- Asia, home to 60 percent of the world’s population, and with 16.7 million people displaced, accounted for 87 percent of the global total in 2014
- China, India, and the Philippines experienced the highest levels of displacement in absolute terms, both in 2014 and for the 2008 to 2014 period
- In 2014, Europe experienced double its average level of displacement for the past seven years. 190,000 people were displaced in 2014, mostly by flood disasters in the Balkans
- Displacement in Africa was three times lower in 2014 than the average over the last seven years; relative to their population size, however, many African countries such as Sudan, experienced high levels of disaster displacement
- Contrary to common assumptions, displacement following disasters can become protracted and returning home is not always an option; a sample of thirty-four cases accounts for over 715,000 people in such situations; monitoring of protracted displacement situations is scarce, resulting in an important blind spot in our current understanding of disaster displacement
— Read more in Global Estimates 2015: People displaced by disasters (Internal Displacement Monitoring Center, Norwegian Refugee Council, July 2015); and see the full Date Set
