| Every two seconds, a weather-related disaster forces someone to leave their home. According to the most well-founded and accurate agency on climate change, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change IPCC, greenhouse gas emissions have caused an increase in the severity and frequency of weather extremes. In its 2022 assessment, the UN’s climate panel warned that such environmental disruptions are now pushing more and more people to move from their homes across the world. These climate and weather effects become worse in vulnerable areas that have insufficient means to respond to climate challenges. UNCHR reports that severe climate shocks displaced 24.6 million people worldwide in 2023. The global study in 2023 found that, on average over 2.1 million people a year in Latin America and Caribbean region were forced to move because of disasters. Recently, this region has witnessed an increasing number of environmental disasters such as hurricanes, floods, droughts, tropical storms, heavy rains, and wildfires. In 2020, the region of Honduras, the second-poorest country in Latin America, experienced the most active hurricanes, recording 30 storms, uprooting more than 939,000 people. Some regions are expected to become even drier in the coming decades, which will increase pressure on livelihoods. This climate crisis triggers unusual precipitation patterns including prolonged rain events and monsoon intensification, which worsen flooding, undermining survival and pushing people into forced relocation. Recent events continue to prove the threat. In June 2025, Brazil witnessed severe floods that uprooted families and destroyed sources of income. A UN report shows that 74 % of the Latin American population is exposed to harsh climate shocks. The 2024 food security report ranks LAC as the second most exposed part of the world to the climate crisis, ecological degradation, and natural disasters, after Asia. This exposure threatens food security, health, employment, education, living that ultimately leads to loss of homes, livelihoods and eventually leads to large-scale human movement. Between 2019 and 2023, UNICEF reports that the effects of these climate shocks have been periodically worsened due to deeply rooted structural challenges, including conflicts, economic slowdowns, crises, and inequality. Because of these, high food insecurity affects about 187.6 million people in the region and influences human mobility. To control the devastation world bank has given a road map with initiatives such as climate-smart agriculture, water resource management, protecting habitats and investing in renewable energy. It also recommends decarbonizing urban mobility, investing in urban resilience, restructuring subsidies and taxes, strengthening accountability, legislation and institutional capacity for climate action, and improving disaster risk warning systems. Together these actions provide a framework to tackle challenges related to mitigation and adaptation. UNHCR strategy 2024-2030 sets out four simple but urgent goals to tackle the situation: PROTECT, RESPOND, SOLVE, SUSTAIN. These objectives aim to protect legally the displaced people and then to help them get access to a healthy environment and to solve and address the impacts of the climate crisis to build a sustainable environment for vulnerable communities. Without urgent measures, by 2050 more than 17 million people in the LAC region could be forced to move to escape the devastation of extreme climate and weather events. The world cannot afford to overlook the growing crisis of climate-driven displacements in Latin America and Caribbean. |