As the annual United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP29) concludes in Baku, Azerbaijan, global commitments to address climate change are once again being confronted with the stark realities on the ground of widespread weather-related displacement.
According to the 2024 Global Report on Internal Displacement, at least 6.6 million people worldwide were displaced by weather-related disasters by the end of 2023.
However, many were displaced multiple times primarily due to floods, storms, droughts and wildfires, resulting in a total of at least 20.3 million forced movements throughout the year.
An additional 1.1 million people were displaced by natural disasters not directly attributed to climate change such as earthquakes and volcanic activity.
“It is expected that the number of people in need of humanitarian assistance will grow exponentially in countries vulnerable to climate change,” the Norwegian Refugee Council’s global lead on climate and environment, Julie Gassien, told Al Jazeera.
“Climate change will contribute to much larger numbers of people being displaced and will lead to more, larger and more intense hazardous events”, she added.
Where did climate change cause the most displacement?
The countries with the highest number of weather-related displacements in 2023 were China (4.6 million) and the Philippines (2.1 million). There, Typhoon Doksuri, one of the most powerful storms of the season, displaced more than a million people and killed dozens.
In Africa, Somalia experienced the continent’s highest number of displacements with 2 million, largely due to the “worst floods in decades” forcing hundreds of thousands to flee their homes.
Weather-related events also increase risks for already vulnerable communities, including those affected by conflict, said Ezekiel Simperingham, global manager for migration and displacement at the International Federation of the Red Cross.
“The compounding impacts affect people’s lives, health and livelihoods,” he told Al Jazeera, noting that these communities also struggle to receive the support they need.
Floods and storms accounted for the vast majority of displacements with 9.8 million and 9.5 million respectively, followed by droughts (491,000) and wildfires (435,000).
Wet mass movements, such as landslides, led to at least 119,000 displacements, while erosion and extreme temperatures caused 7,000 and 4,700 displacements, respectively.
The number of weather-related displacement incidents has risen sharply over the past 16 years, since the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC) began tracking them in 2008.
Floods, in particular, have seen a clear upward trend despite some fluctuations, rising from 272 weather-related incidents in 2015 to a peak of 1,710 incidents in 2023 – an increase of more than six times.
Similarly, storm events, including hurricanes, cyclones and typhoons, have experienced a significant surge, growing more than seven times from 163 recorded incidents in 2015 to 1,186 in 2023.
Combined, floods and storms were responsible for 77 percent of all weather-related incidents globally from 2008 to 2023.
Pushker Kharecha, deputy director of the Climate Science, Awareness, and Solutions programme at Columbia University’s Earth Institute, says human-induced climate change “has certainly played a significant role” in worsening temperature-related extremes.
“It has also worsened floods, droughts, storms and extreme sea levels in most inhabited regions,” Kharecha told Al Jazeera.
He warned that the “worsening of extremes” is expected to persist if we “miraculously achieve the 1.5 degrees Celsius by 2100 temperature target” – which aims to limit global warming to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels by the end of the century to reduce severe climate impacts.
Displacements occurring worldwide
Out of the 359 million weather-related global displacements recorded since 2008, nearly 80 percent were from the Asia and Asia Pacific regions, accounting for about 106 and 171 million respectively.
China, the Philippines, India, Bangladesh and Pakistan were the top five countries with the most recorded internal displacements over the 16-year period, accounting for 67 percent of global displacements.
According to the World Bank, over the past two decades, more than half of South Asia’s population – about 750 million people – have been affected by at least one natural disaster such as floods, droughts or cyclones. The region is projected to experience annual losses averaging $160bn by 2030 if current trends continue.
Overall, countries in the Global South, including large parts of Africa, Asia, Asia Pacific, MENA and Latin America, experienced five times (5.13) more displacements relative to their populations compared with countries in the Global North in 2023.
Columbia University’s Kharecha called this phenomenon one of the major ”global injustices” – where the Global South has contributed the least to the problem but is suffering the most severe impacts, and will continue to bear the brunt of its effects.
According to a New York Times analysis, 23 industrialised nations, overwhelmingly in Western Europe and North America, contributed to 50 percent of all the greenhouse gases that have contributed to global warming, released by fossil fuels and industry over the past 170 years.
Kharecha explained that the Global South already contains the warmest regions on Earth, and hence even the relatively small increase in global temperature affected those regions more than colder regions.
“Also, these countries are the most vulnerable to climate impacts as they generally have the fewest financial and/or technological resources to mitigate the problem,” he added.
Are COP members doing enough to tackle displacement?
Alice Baillit, policy adviser at the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre, says addressing disaster displacement requires addressing “both its root causes, including vulnerabilities created by climate change, as well as the losses and damages it creates”.
“Current pledges [at COP] are woefully inadequate, in part because they do not fully consider the true costs of displacement,” Baillit told Al Jazeera.
Last week, more than 200 former leaders and climate experts in a letter said the UN-led COP summit was “no longer fit for purpose”, and requires a “fundamental overhaul”.
Kharecha at Columbia University also expressed scepticism about what summits like COP can achieve.
“Just look at any graph of CO2 emissions over time. They continue to grow unabated after decades of these meetings,” he said.
“As long as the agreements are not legally binding, ‘commitments’ will keep getting adjusted, and so on. And even if they are legally binding someday, who will enforce them?”
Kharecha called for a “global carbon pricing system that penalises GHG [greenhouse gas] emissions, but fairly – that doesn’t put unfair mitigation burdens on lower/middle-income countries”.
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