Oxfam report: the wealthy profit twice from climate disasters while the poor lose homes

As climate change drives severe natural disasters around the world, the world's rich are earning huge profits from them too, Oxfam International has alleged in a new report titled 'Disaster Divide'.

The report says the wealthiest 0.1 per cent of the world's population - around 8 million people - produce more carbon emissions than the combined total of the poorest 44 per cent, about 3.5 billion people.

It is poorer communities and people in developing countries who lose their homes and livelihoods to the heatwaves, floods and droughts these emissions fuel, the report notes.

According to the report, billionaires make a first round of profits by investing in the fuels and industries that drive emissions, then a second round by investing in the companies that carry out reconstruction and disaster recovery work afterwards. Oxfam has urged governments to tax extreme wealth more heavily and to direct far more finance toward communities bearing the costs of a crisis they did the least to create.