Natural disasters displacing millions: U.N. study

LONDON (Reuters) – Floods, storms, drought and other climate-related natural disasters drove 20 million people from their homes last year, nearly four times as many as were displaced by conflicts, a new U.N. report said Tuesday. The study tried to quantify for the first time the number of people forced to flee their homes because of climate change. Global warming is increasing the frequency and intensity of storms and otherwise altering weather patterns, so disasters are now “an extremely significant driver of forced displacement globally,” it said. The study said a total of 36 million people were driven from their homes by rapid-onset natural disasters in 2008. China’s Sichuan earthquake accounted for 15 million of these, but climate-related disasters displaced 90 percent of the rest. The report said many more people were probably being forced from their homes by slower-onset crises like droughts. The report was compiled jointly by the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs and the Internal Displacement Monitoring Center (IDMC), a body which normally tracks displacement caused by conflict. …