UN High Commissioner for Refugees António Guterres, speaking at the 6-7 June conference, the first international meeting to focus on the issue, called it “the defining challenge of our times”, saying that “there is increasing evidence to suggest that natural disasters are growing in frequency and intensity, and that this is linked to the longer-term process of climate change.”

A report published Monday 6 June by the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC) in Geneva, “Displacement due to natural hazard-induced disasters 2009-2010? provides numbers that back up his remarks.

42.3 million people displaced in 2010

The world saw 36.1 million people displaced in 2008, with the China earthquake alone responsible for 15m, a dip in 2009 to 16.7m and a sharp climb in 2010 to 42.3m.

The report states that “large-scale disasters dominated the global figures and the world’s attention. They caused more than 90 percent of total displacement reported in 2009 and 2010. Over three years from 2008 to 2010, 86 disasters displaced 100,000 or more people, including 18 'mega-disasters’ which each displaced from one million people up to over 15 million in the case of the 2008 Sichuan earthquake and the 2010 floods in China. These mega-disasters, despite being relatively few, strongly influenced the total global estimate for each year and their impacts accounted, in large part, for differences between the years.”

UNHCR’s Guterres noted in his speech in Oslo that a number of trends—population growth, urbanization, water, food, and energy insecurity—will “increasingly interact with each other and create the potential for competition and conflict over scarce natural resources.”

He argues that as a result, “we are also likely to see growing numbers of people being displaced from one community, country and continent to another.”