What would you do in an extreme storm?
Imagine you live with your partner and children on an island in the South Pacific. A category 5 tropical cyclone is coming. What do you do next?
Time is running out. Our changing climate is creating an unprecedented need for emergency shelter around the world.
Even if global heating is stabilised at 1.5C increase, we will still see more extreme storms, more devastating floods and scorching droughts (IPCC report). All of these will force millions more people from their homes. It will make more places in our world unliveable.
Every day, people are losing their homes to climate-related extreme weather events and conflict. That’s why we’re calling for people all across the UK to help people living with the effects of the climate crisis.
Read on to learn more and see how you can support families who are losing their homes today.
If extreme weather events continue to increase at current rates, we could lose 167 million homes by 2040. That’s the equivalent of all our homes in the UK wiped out six times.
In 2020, 30 million people were displaced by climate disasters like floods and tropical storms (IDMC’s GRID 2020). That’s more than one person forced to flee every second.
The average wildfire season is three and a half months longer than it was a few decades ago (NRC 2015). The average number of category 4 and 5 hurricanes has doubled in the last 35 years (NSF 2015)
A human driven climate crisis is just one of the reasons why disasters are not natural.
Extreme weather like storms, drought, and flooding, occur because of natural processes on Earth. It is how these events affect people, or the environment, that has the potential to make them a disaster. Human factors that influence whether it becomes a disaster include where people live, what types of home they have, political instability, and the lack of proactive measures to protect vulnerable communities. And climate change is making these weather events worse.
It’s important to understand why disasters aren’t ‘natural’ and how misleading and damaging the term can be.
We provide emergency shelter and tools for families who have lost their home to disaster. This enables them to rebuild their lives.
Supporting communities who have lost their homes to extreme weather events has been a significant part of our work for over 20 years.
As the climate crisis continues to destroy homes and livelihoods, we are working to reach some of the world’s most vulnerable people. People who are bearing the brunt of the increase in extreme weather and the ravages of conflict.
Imagine you live with your partner and children on an island in the South Pacific. A category 5 tropical cyclone is coming. What do you do next?
Climate change is a humanitarian crisis. Find out key stats about climate change, how it affects disasters and people, and what we’re doing about it.
Read why we no longer use the term ‘natural disasters’, the definition of a disaster, and how we have come to change our language.
Read how John and his family protected themselves from the menacing cyclone and how ShelterBox helped.
Small, everyday changes to our daily life can have a positive impact on the fight against climate change. Here are 7 simple ways to be more sustainable.
Find out what #CracktheCrises is and how ShelterBox is involved.