Poor nations pay price as millions flee 'climate chaos', Oxfam says

(Reuters News, 2 Dec 2019) People are three times more likely to be displaced by cyclones, floods or fires than by conflicts.

Fiercer weather and worsening wildfires drove more than 20 million people a year from their homes over the last decade - a problem set to worsen unless leaders act swiftly to head off surging climate threats, anti-poverty charity Oxfam said on Monday.

Much of the displacement caused by cyclones, floods and fires appeared temporary and in some cases due to better efforts to evacuate people ahead of danger, Oxfam researchers said.

But its "sheer scale" was a surprise, said Tim Gore, Oxfam's climate policy leader, with island nations like Cuba, Dominica and Tuvalu seeing on average close to 5% of their people out of their homes in any given year.

"This is the warming world we have long been warning about. Now we're seeing it play out before our eyes," he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

The Oxfam study, released as two weeks of U.N. climate negotiations start in Madrid, examined the numbers of people displaced inside their home countries by climate-fuelled disasters between 2008 and 2018, based on government and international agency data, as well as media reports.

People were three times more likely to be displaced by cyclones, floods or fires than by conflicts, it found.

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Reuters News, 2 Dec 2019: Poor nations pay price as millions flee 'climate chaos', Oxfam says