A report released in May by the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre and the Norwegian Refugee Council shows that 32.4 million people were forced to flee their homes last year by disasters such as floods, storms and earthquakes. Asia and west and central Africa bore the brunt, but 1.3 million were also displaced in rich countries, with the US particularly affected.
About 98% of all displacement last year was related to climate- and weather-related events, with flood disasters in India and Nigeria accounting for 41% of global displacement. In India, monsoon floods displaced 6.9 million, and in Nigeria 6.1 million people were newly displaced.
Over the past five years 81% of global displacement has occurred in Asia, but last year Africa had a record high for the region of 8.2 million people newly displaced. This was more than four times more than in any of the previous four years.
[Reprinted from Climate and Capitalism.]