Cornish charity warns intensifying storms will displace 200 million people
ShelterBox says millions of people will be uprooted over the next 20 years
A Cornish charity is warning that intensifying storms will displace more than 200 million people across the world over the next 20 years.
ShelterBox, based in Truro, has issued the warning just ahead of the Atlantic hurricane season, which last year was the third-most active on record.
The international disaster relief charity says the growing intensity of storms and climate change is making it more difficult to live in many parts of the world and especially for those already in poverty.
On average, over the last five years, 10.9 million people have been displaced annually because of storms, according to figures by the iDMC (Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre).
ShelterBox says if that average is sustained over the next two decades, more than 40 million homes could be damaged or destroyed, uprooting 200 million people. And that is a conservative estimate, given the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) stark warning that tropical storms are set to become more intense.
Extreme weather also happens more often in places where many live in poverty, where communities are poorly equipped to endure its affects. The recent set of reports from the IPCC’s Sixth Assessment Report concluded that the world’s most vulnerable people are disproportionately affected by human-induced climate change.
Alice Jefferson is Head of Emergency Responses at ShelterBox. She told us about one response in the Philippines that sticks in her mind.
She said: "Super typhoon Haiyan wrought havoc on a very wide area and people are not just affected in that emergency period. The impact of losing their homes, losing their crops, losing that ability to go out and fish, that can have such a devastating impact on them and the community for years to come."
Alice added: "So last year alone 11.5 million people lost their homes to storms, if this continues we are predicting more than 200 million people will be uprooted by storms in the next 20 years. To put that into context that is nearly the population of the UK, France, Spain and Italy combined."
ShelterBox has witnessed the cost of the climate crisis first-hand, responding to extreme weather-related disasters around the world for 20 years.
The charity provides emergency shelter and other essential items to people who have lost their homes to conflict and disaster – including those in the path of hurricanes, cyclones, and typhoons.
In the last ten years, it has provided aid to more than 400,000 people impacted by storm-related disasters. Since it was founded at the turn of the century, it has responded to more than 60 hurricane, typhoon, and cyclone related disasters. A third of these responses have been in the Philippines.