While attention in the United States is focused on the disasters in Puerto Rico and the Caribbean, a crisis across the Atlantic is rapidly becoming one of the worst humanitarian disasters since World War II. In the Lake Chad basin of West Africa, about 17 million people are affected by the emergency, struggling with food insecurity, widespread violence, involuntary displacement, and the consequences of environmental degradation. An estimated 800,000 children suffer from acute malnutrition; and although international donors pledged $672 million in February, the famine and humanitarian misery continues unabated. Suicide bombings and attacks by Boko Haram, which have killed at least 381 civilians since April 2017, have forced many people to leave their homes and farmers to leave their lands, interrupting livelihoods and reducing food supplies.

The devastation in Puerto Rico is shocking: Half of the population, or 3.4 million people, lack drinking water and 95 percent are without electricity even two weeks after Hurricanes Irma and Maria.

Girls and women bear the brunt of climate change impacts. Natural disasters kill more women than men: an estimated 90 percent of those killed in some weather-related disasters were female. The effects of climate change on natural resources can also further exacerbate existing gender inequalities.  Girls may be kept out of school to fetch water, as droughts drive them to walk farther and farther to find it. Seeking to stretch scarce household resources, families may marry off their daughters before the legal age and they may become more vulnerable to human trafficking after natural disasters.

The 1-2-3 punch of hurricanes Irma, Harvey, and Maria has made it devastatingly clear that extreme weather events can and will destroy families, interrupt livelihoods, and tear apart communities, particularly in coastal and low-lying areas of vulnerable regions like the Caribbean and the United States. 

Following a series of recent devastating extreme weather events – mudslides in Sierra Leone, flooding in south Asia, and severe storms hitting the Philippines and the Gulf of Mexico, many have called attention to the role of climate change in these disasters. The string of Atlantic hurricanes that has devastated the Caribbean has prompted fresh calls to make nations and communities more resilient to the effects of climate change, and especially to address “loss and damage” in island nations.

“A monster”… “wreaking havoc”… “ripped through” the Caribbean and part of Florida: I heard these words as Hurricane Irma, the strongest Category 5 Atlantic hurricane on record, decimated the entire island of Barbuda and destroyed the four “most solid” buildings on St. Martin. And as I write this from the relative safety of Barbados, Hurricane Maria is on a similar path, leaving similar destruction in its wake. With winds of more than 160 miles per hour, Maria was the strongest storm to make landfall in Dominica. In a matter of hours, it devastated the country, regained its strength, and continued its onslaught on Puerto Rico and beyond.

“This is not an island issue, this is not a Caribbean issue, this is an issue that is [also] critical for us,” says Roger-Mark De Souza, the Wilson Center’s director of population, environmental security, and resilience in a recent video interview. “For us in the United States we have to continue to recognize that we ourselves are also vulnerable.” De Souza remains hopeful about the possibility of rebuilding and rebounding in the face of devastation, but also presses the importance of generating response mechanisms which address environmental hazards before they manifest into disasters. “That means planning, it means investing in community mobilization mechanisms, it means thinking about ways we provide humanitarian assistance.”