Disasters Displaced a Record 46 Million People Last Year

Scientific American

13-05-2025

CLIMATEWIRE | Natural disasters and human conflict forced about 66 million people to flee within their own countries last year, and the United States led all nations with 11 million of these internal displacements, new research finds.
That's a record for the United States. And last year broke a global record, too, as 2024 saw the largest number of disaster-related internal displacements since experts began tracking the issue in 2008. About 46 million people worldwide had to relocate domestically last year because of natural disasters; another 20 million had to flee because of conflict or violence.
Those are the latest statistics from the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre, an international nongovernmental organization that keeps tabs on the number of people forced to flee within their countries each year because of natural disasters, extreme weather, conflict and violence.
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IMDC publishes the previous year's findings in an annual report each spring; its latest analysis was released Tuesday.
The 46 million people forced to relocate domestically because of natural disasters last year represents a big jump from 2023, which saw 26 million people internally displaced because of events such as storms, floods, wildfires and droughts. In the United States, natural disasters were the sole reason 11 million residents had to relocate domestically.
Cyclones triggered more than half of disaster-related movements worldwide last year. That includes Hurricanes Helene and Milton, which both caused tens of billions of dollars of damage in the United States. Floods accounted for another 42 percent of the disaster displacements, with events occurring on every continent last year.
At least 8.3 million disaster-related movements occurred in the form of preemptive evacuations, the report found. Evacuations were reported in 53 of the 163 countries and territories reporting weather and disaster displacements in 2024. Many of these occurred in the United States; Hurricane Milton alone triggered around 6 million evacuations in Florida.
Climate change is causing extreme weather events to intensify globally. At the same time, the report notes, other human factors are worsening the impact of these disasters, including inadequate infrastructure and urban expansion in disaster-prone areas.
Low- and middle-income countries, on the whole, continue to be disproportionately affected by disaster displacements. And vulnerable communities within these countries tend to experience the worst outcomes.
For instance, catastrophic flooding in the Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul last spring killed more than 180 people and triggered at least 775,000 displacements. Most occurred in the state capital of Porto Alegre, according to the IDMC report, and disproportionately affected Black and Indigenous communities.
At the same time, conflict zones are increasingly overlapping with areas hit hard by natural disasters, many made worse by climate change. According to the report, the number of countries reporting both disaster and conflict displacements has tripled since 2009.
The rise of these compounding crises points to the need for better preparation and resilience efforts, the report suggests.
'Resolving displacement requires both immediate efforts to help people who have lost everything and investments to address underlying vulnerabilities, so people don't become displaced in the first place,' said IDMC Director Alexandra Bilak in a statement.
More than 20 million people across 49 countries were internally displaced by conflict and violence last year, the report found. All but four of these countries reported disaster displacements as well.
More than 5 million conflict displacements occurred in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the most of any country worldwide. Heavy rainfall also triggered intense floods in the DRC last year, and many roads became blocked by water or by armed groups. The combination of these issues prevented aid organizations from assisting hundreds of thousands of displaced people, the report found.
The report also notes that while some people are able to return home after disasters or conflict subside, many remain displaced for years. Around 65.8 million people were newly displaced in 2024 by both conflict and disasters. But millions of others already were living in displacement at the start of the year.
At the end of 2024, about 83.4 million people were living in displacement worldwide. The vast majority, around 73.5 million, had been forced to move because of conflict — a 10 percent increase over the previous year.
Still, disaster-related displacement is rising even faster. About 9.8 million people worldwide were living in displacement from disasters at the end of 2024 — a 29 percent increase over 2023.