2026-05-08 · people displaced by disasters (annual avg)
Most displacement is still weather — not yet 'climate refugee' labels
Storms and floods displace millions yearly. Legal climate refugee status barely exists.
Storms and floods drive about 90% of the world's disaster displacement — some 32 million people displaced in an average year. As climate change makes extreme weather more common and intense, ever more people are at risk of being forced from home. Yet legal 'climate refugee' status barely exists.
1 cell = 32 thousand people displaced by disasters (annual avg) (0.1% of disaster displacement) · 1,000 cells
Context
The figures swing with the weather. After a milder monsoon season with fewer cyclones and floods, disaster displacements in South Asia halved to 4.6 million in 2025, according to IDMC's Global Report on Internal Displacement 2026.
The burden is unevenly spread. East Asia and Pacific recorded 19.6 million conflict and disaster displacements, about one-third of the global total and the region's highest since 2010. Sub-Saharan Africa, meanwhile, hosts 31.7 million internally displaced people — nearly 40% of the global total.
Recognition hasn't kept pace. IDMC counted 7.7 million people living in displacement due to disasters at the end of 2023, yet 'climate refugee' status barely exists — and the centre notes that while not all disaster displacement is climate-related, climate change keeps making extreme weather more frequent and intense.
IDMC disaster displacement ~90% weather-related.
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Credit this grid as Inagrid — https://inagrid.com/e/2026-05-08-climate-migrants