UN: 90 million displaced people are sheltering on the climate frontlines

Roughly 90 million refugees and other forcibly displaced people are staring down severe climate risks, UNHCR said Friday, just days before the COP31 climate summit kicks off in Turkey. The agency's new report found that three-quarters of all displaced people live in countries heavily exposed to climate-related hazards. Those are places already wrestling with punishing droughts, deadly floods and blistering heat.

Refugees are getting hit twice, according to Anton Leis Garcia, UNHCR's assistant high commissioner for operations. He described people forced to flee conflicts they had no hand in creating, only to land on the frontlines of a climate crisis they contributed least to. Garcia said climate change is dismantling shelters, wiping out livelihoods and wrecking hopes of rebuilding.

The numbers behind the warning are ugly. More than two-thirds of refugees who went home in the first half of this year returned to countries highly vulnerable to climate shocks, UNHCR said. Syria alone has seen nearly four million displaced people come back recently, and shrinking groundwater plus climate shocks are threatening that recovery — including flooding along the Euphrates River last May that damaged homes and pushed thousands out again. Looking ahead, the agency cautioned that by 2050, one in three refugee settlements in sub-Saharan Africa could endure 100 or more days of dangerous heat every year.

Disasters aren't just threatening the displaced — they're creating more of them. UNHCR counted more than 255 million internal displacements from weather-related events worldwide over the past decade, a pace of 70,000 people a day. This year's exceptionally strong El Nino is expected to pour fuel on the fire: forecasts suggest severe flooding tied to the pattern could displace up to three million people across Somalia, Kenya, South Sudan and Uganda by the end of 2026.

The money isn't following the need. Only 10 percent of global climate finance reaches fragile and conflict-affected countries that host large numbers of climate-exposed displaced people, per the agency. At COP31, UNHCR says it will press governments and climate finance institutions to write refugees and other displaced populations into national climate plans and funding mechanisms. Garcia's closing pitch: the people who have already lost so much can't be left behind in global climate action.