More Refugees Flee From Environmental Disasters Than Warfare

25 million refugees fled from drought, floods, deforestation and degraded land
last year outnumbering people displaced by war, for the first time, according to
the International Red Cross.Its 1999 World Disasters Report, an annual survey of
humanitarian trends, says last year’s “natural disasters” were the worst on record, creating 58 percent of the world’s refugees.

“Everyone is aware of the environmental problems of global warming and deforestation on one hand and the social problems of increasing poverty and growing shanty
towns on the other,” says Astrid Heiberg, president. “But when these two factors collide, you have a new scale of catastrophe.” The cost of weather related disasters in 1998 exceeded the cost of all such disasters during the 1980s.

International Federal of Red Cross
FROM The Gallon Environment Letter