As Alaskan Village Sinks Into the Sea, GAO Says We Need to Create U.S. Office for Climate Change Refugee Assistance

As Alaskan Village Sinks Into the Sea, GAO Says We Need to Create U.S. Office for Climate Change Refugee Assistance

A BUZZFLASH NEWS ANALYSIS  by Meg White

There are more of them than there are people who contract new cases of malaria each year. There are ten times more of them than people injured in traffic accidents each year.

They are climate change refugees: people forced to flee their homes due to environmental degradation — generally never to return. According to a recent report from the Global Humanitarian midnight sun alaskaForum, a worldwide organization headed by former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, there are hundreds of millions of climate change refugees already, and that number is rising rapidly.

The environmentally displaced aren’t just in Bangladesh, either. U.S. citizens are current being forced to relocate due to climate change, but the lack of federal leadership is emerging as an “impediment” to their plans to reach higher ground, according to a new government report.

In a little-noticed report released Wednesday, the Government Accountability Office suggested Congress create a lead government agency to direct the relief efforts now necessary due to global climate change.

The report (summary here, full text here) notes that because of the lack of recognition of unincorporated Alaskan Native villages as “eligible” by the federal government, the Native American communities there cannot receive affordable housing or relocation assistance from Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Block Grant program.

via As Alaskan Village Sinks Into the Sea, GAO Says We Need to Create U.S. Office for Climate Change Refugee Assistance | BuzzFlash.org.

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