MORE than 20 million people have been forced to leave their homes due to climate-fuelled disasters over the last decade, according to a new report.
The figures were published by Oxfam today as the UN Climate Summit in Madrid kicked off.
The talks come just 12 months before world leaders will arrive in Glasgow for the 2020 summit, which will be key in shaping global action to slash emissions over the next decade.
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Oxfam’s Forced from Home briefing revealed people are seven times more likely to be displaced by cyclones, floods and wildfires than they are by earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, and three times more likely than by conflict.
The analysis also shows around 80% of all people displaced in the last decade live in Asia, home to over a third of people who are living in extreme poverty globally.
Jamie Livingstone, head of Oxfam Scotland, called on the Scottish Government to do more.
“The poorest people in the poorest countries are paying the heaviest price,” he said. “Climate change is forcing people around the globe – hungry farmers in Guatemala, pastoralists in Ethiopia and those hit by cyclones in Asia or Southern Africa – to abandon their homes and face up to an uncertain future.
“In the last year we’ve seen people taking to the streets in Glasgow and across the globe to demand urgent climate action. If politicians ignore their pleas, more people will die, more people will go hungry and more people will be forced from their homes.”
He added that governments “can and must make Madrid matter”.
The latest rounds of UN climate talks will see 196 countries, and the European Union, meet in the wake of increasingly dire warnings about the state of the climate.
It comes at the end of a year in which droughts, storms and heatwaves have made the impact of climate change visible.
UN climate chief Patricia Espinosa said: “The world’s small window of opportunity to address climate change is closing rapidly.”
She added the conference must be the “launchpad” for more climate ambition.
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