Giving Compass' Take:

• Oxfam studied the number of people impacted and displaced by climate-fueled disasters by collecting data from local governments, international agencies, and media reports.

• What are the ways that other countries are stepping in to help displaced communities? Can donors play a role?

• To learn more about disaster relief and recovery, click here.

Climate-fueled disasters such as wildfires, cyclones, and floods were the No. 1 reason that people were forced to flee their homes in the last decade, according to Oxfam, an international confederation of 19 organizations that focus on global poverty. Overall, these events have displaced more than 20 million people around the globe.

The world’s poorest countries, which produce the fewest greenhouse gas emissions, overwhelmingly bore the brunt of the consequences of this extreme weather, said an Oxfam report released Monday. The alliance called for more “urgent and ambitious emissions reductions,” to address the climate refugee crisis.

With the United Nations Climate Change Conference, or COP25, underway this week in Madrid, Oxfam urged the international community to take action on proposed solutions to this cause-and-effect imbalance, such as the creation of a fund to help affected countries cover disaster-related costs.

Oxfam used data from governments, international agencies, and media reports to examine the number of people displaced within their home countries by climate-fueled disasters.

The researchers discovered that between 2008 and 2018:

  • The number of reported extreme weather disasters that displaced people increased five-fold over the decade.
  • People are three times more likely to be displaced by climate-fueled related disasters than by conflicts.
  • Eighty percent of those forced from their homes live in Asia, home to more than a third of the world’s poorest people.
  • Small-island developing states, such as Cuba and Tuvalu, represented seven of the top 10 countries with the highest displacement based on the proportion of their population. Most of those nations are in the Pacific or the Caribbean.
  • People in countries such as Somalia and Guatemala are being displaced by both the climate crisis and conflict.

Read the full article about climate chaos by Yvette Cabrera at Grist.