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Nature worsens poverty
"Everyone is aware of the environmental problems of global warming and deforestation on the one hand, and the social
problems of increasing poverty and growing shanty towns on the other.
»But when these two factors collide, you have a new scale of catastrophe.«
Dr Heiberg says the number of people needing help from the federation's member societies because of floods and earthquakes
had grown in six years from under 500,000 to more than 5.5 million.
The report says that falling soil fertility, drought, flooding and deforestation drove 25 million people from their homes last year.
Many of these environmental refugees joined already fragile urban squatter communities.
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