Oxfam predicts millions more victims of climate change

Hundreds of millions of people will become victims of climate change-related disasters over the next six years, Oxfam said Tuesday, urging governments to change the way they respond to such events. The British-based aid and development charity estimated the number of people affected by climatic disasters would rise by 54 percent to 375 million people a year on average by 2015, based on data on similar disasters since 1980. In a new report, it warned that humanitarian aid spending and the way it was allocated was far from prepared to meet the challenge. "The response is often fickle"too little, too late and not good enough," said Oxfam chief executive Barbara Stocking. "The system can barely cope with the current levels of disasters and could be overwhelmed by a substantial increase in numbers of people affected. There must be a fundamental reform of the system." The report, "The Right to Survive," says governments can take action to mitigate the effect of climatic disasters, citing investment by Bangladesh in cyclone protection measures which has reduced the death toll from storms. "While there has been a steady increase in climate-related events, it is poverty and political indifference that make a storm a disaster," Stocking said. Oxfam is also launching a new campaign urging rich countries to cut their greenhouse gas emissions by at least 40 percent on 1990 levels by 2020 to tackle the source of global warming. Oxfam analysed data from the Center for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters (CRED) at Louvain University in Belgium, which covered more than 6,500 climate-related disasters since 1980 and the numbers of people affected. It defines people "affected" by a disaster as those suffering physical injury or illness, those made homeless or who required immediate assistance.