Humanitarians see surge in climate-related disasters

The number of climate-related disasters around the world is growing rapidly, humanitarians warned Friday, urging more efforts to prepare and build resilience to looming changes on a warming planet.

Climate shocks are already driving displacement, causing many to go hungry and are sparking or exacerbating conflicts around the globe, humanitarian workers said, cautioning that the situation is quickly deteriorating.

"With climate change, the shocks and hazards are multiplying," Elhadj As Sy, Secretary-General of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC), told AFP in an interview.

Speaking on the sidelines of a conference in Geneva on the impact of climate change on humanitarian situations around the globe, he cautioned that such "shocks" were "getting more frequent and more severe."
"And if it is a four-degree warmer world ... we're looking beyond one billion more," he said, adding that this "is a very, very strong argument for early and decisive climate action."
"In the 1970s, we used to be dealing with 80 to 100 severe weather-related shocks and hazards" each year, he said, contrasting that to last year, when the number was around 400 - "four times more."
While acknowledging that climate-related shocks would likely keep climbing, Sy emphasised that it was not inevitable that such shocks and hazards should "become a disaster."