“The scale of the potential humanitarian challenge presented by climate change in the future is huge,” said John Holmes, the head of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), one of the UN bodies involved in the IASC.
“This is a defining moment to ensure that the challenge is not insurmountable and human suffering is minimised,” added Mr. Holmes, who is also the UN Emergency Relief Coordinator.
More than 20 million people have been displaced by climate-related sudden-onset natural disasters in 2008 alone, according to a new study by OCHA and the Norwegian Refugee Council’s (NRC) Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre.
The total number of people affected by natural disasters has risen sharply over the past 10 years, with an average of 211 million people directly affected each year, nearly five times the number impacted by conflict in the same period.
Extreme and slow-onset climate events – such as floods, storms, droughts, rising sea levels and desertification – are impacting more and more people each year, with the most vulnerable including women and children, those already struggling with poverty, insecurity, hunger, poor health and environmental decline.
Climate change is also expected to dramatically affect patterns of migration and population movement, with many millions to be displaced by prolonged droughts, repeated floods or storms, according to an IASC news release."
