Storms could displace 200 million people over next 20 years - charity

Record ID: 1675212

  • Title: Storms could displace 200 million people over next 20 years - charity
  • Date: 1st June 2022
  • Summary: FALMOUTH, ENGLAND, UK (MAY 25, 2022) (Reuters) (SOUNDBITE) (English) SANJ SRIKANTHAN, SHELTERBOX CEO, SAYING: “I think it is already appalling because what we’re seeing is that there aren’t major disasters, which is what we used to call them, but lots of micro-disasters that are occurring all the time. So, for example, the monsoon in South Asia, doesn’t just last for a period, it is a constant 6 months of heavy rains that basically destroy homes before sometimes the monsoon has arrived. Philippines. We know typhoons that usually we can track 72 hours out, we can only see forming in the last 12 or 24 hours right off-shore. So they arrive when people are shopping for Christmas as has happened in 2021, December. They happen with increasing frequency as well, so the issue we are having is that there are huge amounts of the population on Earth, around 70 percent, that live near water or coastal areas and many of those homes are not designed for this kind of weather so it can prove to be a truly overwhelming crisis.”
  • Embargoed: 15th June 2022 10:41
  • Keywords: Shelterbox climate change hurricane season hurricanes
  • Location: FALMOUTH, ENGLAND, UK / GENEVA, SWITZERLAND / UNKNOWN LOCATIONS, PHILIPPINES / SCHULD, IRRESHEIM & MARIAPOSCHING, GERMANY / NORCO, LOUISIANA, USA
  • Reuters ID: LVA008189931052022RP1
  • Aspect Ratio: 16:9
  • Story Text: As the Atlantic hurricane season begins with forecasters predicting above-normal storms for the seventh consecutive year, a disaster relief charity is warning that hundreds of millions of people will be driven from their homes by extreme weather in the next 20 years.
    ShelterBox says on average, during the last five years, 10.9 million people have been displaced annually because of storms, according to figures by the IDMC (Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre), and if that average is sustained in the next two decades, more than 40m homes could be damaged or destroyed, uprooting 200m people.
    “The issue is that the system that we exist in, ShelterBox, to respond to these kind of disasters wasn’t designed for this kind of volume,” the charity’s chief executive Sanj Srikanthan told Reuters.
    “Unless we address the fact that the world is getting warmer and we could do something about it, the fact that we need to build more resilient housing, so people aren’t forced to flee and we need to pre-position aid more effectively, if we don’t do those things we are not going to be able to keep up.”
    The IDMC said extrapolating annual averages can produce misleading figures because measures could be taken to protect people at risk.
    “We would really advise strongly against just putting together numbers in this manner and then coming up with figures that also create this sense of almost doom and despair as if we cannot do anything about this because in fact we can do a lot about it. The existing vulnerability and exposure of people to these types of hazard can be reduced,” the IDMC’s head of programmes, Bina Desai, told Reuters.
    ShelterBox say the growing intensity of storms is making it more difficult to live in many parts of the world.
    “What we’re seeing is that there aren’t major disasters, which is what we used to call them, but lots of micro-disasters that are occurring all the time,” Srikanthan said.
    U.S. forecasters estimate this year will see up to 21 named storms, 10 of which could become hurricanes, with three to six of those developing into major hurricanes during the June 1 to Nov. 30 season.
    Unseasonably high temperatures, warmer-than-average seas that provide energy for tropical cyclones and a La Nina weather pattern that is expected to persist this season all influenced the outlook, forecasters said.
    (Production: Stuart McDill)
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