The Foreign Service Journal, October 2021

50 OCTOBER 2021 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL could view maps on air quality, flame coverage and burn dam- age. My family had a car and money to take us to safety. Thou- sands of volunteers collected clothes and toiletries, medicine and pet supplies for families that had lost nearly everything. The government and private sector opened hotel rooms and fairgrounds, providing safe havens for those displaced by the wildfire. This is not the case for the 30.7 million people newly dis- placed as a result of natural disasters in 2020 (see figure 1). Natural disasters in the form of fire, drought, flood, earthquake, mudslides and other weather events affect the availability of clean water, food, livelihood options and shelter, forcing people to leave their homes (see figure 2). In practical terms, this means there will be increased need for humanitarian assistance, development assistance and cli- mate change diplomacy to support governments in promoting recovery, mitigating and adapting to climate change, establish- ing warning systems and developing emergency protocols. It means doing what we can to promote disaster risk reduc- tion (remember: Oct. 13 is International Day for Disaster Risk Reduction). In Guatemala, where I live now, the risks of natural disaster are plentiful. The country is ringed with gorgeous volcanoes, and tropical storms regularly roll in from two coasts, pouring down on communities that constantly manage the extremes the car, stuffing my parents in among our belongings. We headed out of town away from the fire, up the hill and out of the smoke-filled valley. b Climate change is personal, but it is also communal. The year 2020 rivaled 2016 as the world’s hottest recorded year. The Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters recorded 389 climate-related events, resulting in more than 15,000 deaths and 98.4 million affected, according to U.N. Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (undrr. org). Climate change has been proven to make some hazards, such as wildfires, in certain regions more fre- quent and intense. Although not all weather-related disasters are a result of larger trends, the last two decades have seen a dramatic rise in disasters, including events linked to climate change. In rural Oregon, we had an alert system. The public Figure 1. Twenty-five countries and territories with most new displacements in 2020. Figure 2. New displacements in 2020: breakdown for conflict and disasters. INTERNALDISPLACEMENTMONITORINGCENTRE INTERNALDISPLACEMENTMONITORINGCENTRE