Natural disasters are increasing. The world’s poorest are left to fend for themselves.

More than 100 disasters — many of which were climate- and weather-related — have affected more than 50 million people around the world since March, when the World Health Organization declared the coronavirus outbreak a pandemic. And though the money needed to protect against these disasters in the countries at risk exists, it’s not getting to those who need it most.

Those are the key findings of a new report from the Geneva-based International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) released Tuesday. In it, the authors make clear that while global attention has been focused on the coronavirus pandemic — for good reason — the climate crisis and the resulting disasters facing communities around the world are just as catastrophic…

‘This was worse than Eta’: Hurricane Iota brings repeat destruction to Honduras

Nery Benitez was working shifts as a baggage handler at San Pedro Sula’s airport when it got flooded by Hurricane Eta. This week it was inundated again as Hurricane Iota struck.

“I had gone seven months without work and three days after I got called back this flooding happened,” the 50-year-old said. “We have family and children. How are we going to feed them?”

Just two weeks after Hurricane Eta brought widespread flooding and forced hundreds of thousands of people from their homes, Honduras was battered by a second hurricane, leaving a level of destruction in its wake that rivals the worst natural disasters in the region’s history.

The unprecedented double blow comes on top of the Covid-19 pandemic, which had already depleted government resources and left many people unemployed in one of the poorest countries in Latin America…