Climate-fueled disasters allegedly have forced 20 million people—or one person every two seconds—from their homes every year for the last decade, according to a new global report from Oxfam.
Oxfam is calling on world leaders to reduce emissions as fast as possible.
The report comes as political leaders and climate experts gather in Madrid for a two-week summit to address the world’s growing climate crisis. Oxfam estimates high-income country governments had delivered less than $10 billion in net support for climate adaptation in 2015–16, and remain a long way short of delivering the promised $100 billion a year by 2020 to help poor countries avoid future emissions and adapt.
“People are taking to the streets across the globe to demand urgent climate action. If politicians ignore their pleas, more people will die, more people will go hungry and more people will be forced from their homes,” Chema Vera, acting executive director of Oxfam International, said in a statement.
The United Nations Climate Change Conference COP 25, in Madrid, which kicked off Monday and lasts for two weeks, is expected to attract 29,000 attendees. Political leaders and climate experts will address what organizers describe as the “world’s growing climate crisis.”
According to the report, the issue of financial support for communities that have suffered loss and damage as a result of the extreme weather, including people who have been forced to leave their homes, is expected to take center stage at the U.N. Climate Summit.
The Oxfam report claims overwhelmingly poor countries are most at risk. Eighty percent of those displaced in the last decade live in Asia, which is home to more than one-third of the world’s poorest people. Small island developing states such as Cuba and Tuvalu make up seven of the 10 countries that face the highest risk of internal displacement as a result of extreme weather events and are 150 times more likely to be displaced by extreme weather disasters than communities in Europe.
Countries from Somalia to Guatemala are seeing large numbers of people displaced by both conflict and the climate crisis, according to the Oxfam media briefing.
“As the 2019 UN Climate Summit opens, Oxfam is calling for more urgent and ambitious emissions reductions to minimize the impact of the crisis on people’s lives, and the establishment of a new ‘Loss and Damage’ finance facility to help communities recover and rebuild.”