Storms don’t discriminate, people do

After hurricanes Ian and Julia struck the central Americas, many victims in rich and poor countries had few options but to relocate.

But if hurricanes don’t discriminate, people do. How easily you can rebuild your life when your home has been destroyed depends on your wealth, gender, level of education, and the color of your passport.

For maize farmers affected by hurricane El Cubulero in Honduras, options are limited. Without insurance, it is difficult to stay put and rebuild your life and livelihood from scratch. Many are looking to the United States for new opportunities.

Without an easy route to a visa, traveling north often means difficult and dangerous travel, especially for women. Despite early promises of support for the resettlement of climate migrants, Joe Biden has done little to help.

In Florida, more people have access to insurance to help them rebuild. But intensifying storms and projected sea level rise mean insurance companies will increasingly only hit the state’s real estate market with a barge pole. Or at least they won’t without a huge bounty.

So poorer Floridians are also on the move, albeit without the dangers that most Hondurans have to endure.

In the jargon-filled world of UN Climate Change, this is called “loss and damage”. Funding to address this will be a key demand from developing countries at COP27.

The Alliance of Small Island States has refined its demands. Its chief negotiator told Climate Home this week that the group would seek a “response fund” based on regular, voluntary fundraising. Find out how the fund could work here.

But, as South Africa is discovering, relying on the generosity of rich countries often leads to disappointment.

While President Cyril Ramaphosa said last year that the much-heralded $8.5 billion “Just Energy Transition Partnership” would be mostly grants, insiders told Chloe Farand that the grants only amounted to about 3% of the package.

This week’s stories…