14 DAY TRIAL // UN officials made the announcement on the sidelines of the Climate Conference, currently underway in the city of Poznan, Poland. They added that the estimates only referred to the minimum number of refugees that could be created by rising sea levels, intense droughts and floods, and other severe atmospheric events. Craig Johnstone, the U.N. Deputy High Commissioner for Refugees, said that, currently, not even half of the predicted numbers can be covered by relief agencies. "Our operating assumption is to cover the minimum (...) but we're not anywhere near being able to cover that right now. That means a displacement of something like six million people a year – that's a staggering number," he told Reuters on Monday, at the Conference. "You can expect that as you have droughts, as you have scarcity of resources (...) it will increase tensions and it will increase conflict."
According to the estimates he made public, some 3 million people will be displaced by sudden catastrophic events each year, which means that this is the number that direct UN actions need to address. The other 3 million people will simply be uprooted by such events as rising sea levels and intense droughts, which will make their previous living areas uninhabitable, forcing them to seek a living elsewhere.
"[Global warming] adds a substantial additional burden to humanity. [UNHCR] presence in the world corresponds almost perfectly with the hotspots, so we will be called on to help and we need to be prepared for that," he argued, while adding the fact that the emergency reserves that the UN currently has for such situations will have to be boosted by at least 10 to 20 times their current size.
On the bright side of things, because experts now know exactly where the weather events are more likely to occur, they can better prepare their future interventions based on these pieces of information. The UNHCR says that all agreements that are established this year in Poland, and next year in Copenhagen, need to feature extra funds for the organization, as this will save money for the nations in the long run.