Caritas Internationalis has launched a new report that reveals the experiences of people displaced by climate change. Source: Caritas Australia.
The Displaced by a Changing Climate: Caritas Voices Protecting and Supporting People on the Move report forms part of the Caritas “Global Year of Action” on climate change, within the “Together We” campaign which is aimed at promoting integral ecology by simultaneously protecting people and the planet.
Data from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change indicates that over 20 million people have been internally displaced by weather events, which is over double the average number of people internally displaced due to conflict. The report explores the experiences of some of the individuals displaced due to climate change and is a result of collaboration between national Caritas member organisations from around the world.
Ahead of this month’s Dubai COP28 conference, the report aims to show the faces behind the experiences and give a voice to those whose stories are not heard or acknowledged in the international forums where global climate discussions are taking place.
Caritas Internationalis Secretary General Alistair Dutton stressed that there is a “moral responsibility” to ensure that unscrupulous hyper-industrial activity carried out by Western companies does not harm people in developing nations.
“The reality is now that the climate is becoming so much more erratic, so much more extreme, so much harder, that people can no longer recover. They are being driven from their homes,” he said.
“The people who are now facing real and present loss and damage from which they cannot recover have no means to find alternative ways of living.”
Caritas Australia chief executive Kirsty Robertson said the “displacement of people due to climate change is a growing humanitarian disaster, so it was incumbent on Caritas to bring the voices behind the crisis to the attention of politicians – an effort we hope to further with our presence at COP28”.
FULL STORY
Caritas Internationalis launches a report on people displaced by climate change (Caritas Australia)
