14 DAY TRIAL // Only a few days back, the Internal Displacement Monitoring Center issued a new report documenting how many people were forced to flee their homes because of disasters that took place in 2012 alone.
Long story short, said year witnessed the displacement of 32.4 million people. Of these, a whopping 98% were left with no choice except move to some other locations after a weather or a climate-related disaster had destroyed their homes.
As was to be expected, those living in Asia and Africa were hit the hardest.
“98% of all displacement in 2012 was related to climate- and weather-related events, with flood disasters in India and Nigeria accounting for 41% of global displacement in 2012.”
“In India, monsoon floods displaced 6.9 million, and in Nigeria 6.1 million people were newly displaced. While over the past five years 81% of global displacement has occurred in Asia, in 2012 Africa had a record high for the region of 8.2 million people newly displaced, over four times more than in any of the previous four years,” the report reads.
People living in rather rich countries were also affected. According to Inhabitat, high numbers of displaced people were reported in the United States.
More precisely, it appears that extreme weather events that hit this country forced a whopping 900,000 people to seek refuge someplace else.
The Internal Displacement Monitoring Center's report also makes a case of how climate change and global warming influence the weather manifestations and natural disasters that trigger such population displacements.
As they explain, it could very well happen that, courtesy of the aforementioned phenomena, ever more people will find themselves displaced in the years to come.
“The is also increasing scientific evidence that climate change will become a factor,” the report reads.
Furthermore, “A 2012 Special Report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) found that there is some evidence to support the claim that disasters associated with climate extremes influence population mobility and relocation, affecting host and origin communities.”