Displaced by Natural Disasters

A family, victim of the 2005 earthquake in Pakistan, took shelter in a tent city near the town of Bessian. [Photo: UN/Evan Schneider]

Natural disasters have struck with unprecedented strength in recent years, causing large-scale destruction and immense suffering around the world. As many as 50 million people are estimated to be displaced in any given year due to tsunamis, earthquakes, landslides, flooding and natural disasters.

And the future looks even grimmer. It is now established that climate change is increasing the intensity and frequency of extreme weather events. The number of large scale disasters which commonly cause massive displacement of populations in the affected areas, have quadrupled over the past twenty years according to Oxfam , ruining countless lives and straining the resilience of nations around the world.

The 2004 tsunami that swept through a dozen countries in Asia and Africa left 186,983 people dead and 42,883 missing. More than 2 million people were displaced.

May 2008 witnessed two of the largest natural disasters in recent decades. Cyclone Nargis hit the Irrawaddy Delta in southern Myanmar on 2 May, severely affecting 2,4 million people, including  800 000 people who were displaced. A few days later in Sichuan, western China, a major earthquake devastated the area, displacing almost 15 million people.

Even in the U.S., over a million people were immediately forced from their homes and communities by Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Today, tens of thousands of people from the Gulf Coast remain displaced across the country.

More commonly, it is those in the poorest countries who are affected, often displaced year after year by annual weather events that impact disaster prone countries in Asia, Latin America, and Southern Africa. Already weakened by poverty, HIV/Aids and/or insecurity, communities in countries such as Madagascar, Mozambique and Haiti have been hit by successive cyclones and major storms in just a matter of a few months or even weeks.  As the impact of climate change continues to grow, millions will be displaced by slow-onset disasters and a desperate search for water and food.

 

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