The coming refugee crisis: when home leaves us | Vicki Arroyo

Louisiana's sinking Isle de Jean Charles shows the urgent need for measures to combat climate change

As seas rise, as floods and droughts become more extreme, as crops fail and as storms intensify, the world will increasingly face a new challenge - climate refugees.

In the US, witness the recent plan by the federal government to resettle a Native American tribe before their Isle de Jean Charles home in Louisiana vanishes underwater - an example that hits close to home. I have deep family roots in south Louisiana: my mother, sister and brother-in-law, aunt and uncle were refugees from a weather disaster exacerbated by climate change, losing their homes in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina in 2005. A year before, a heart condition killed my father in the aftermath of a stressful evacuation from Hurricane Ivan.