As the United States marks the first anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, today, Tuesday 29 August 2006, a major new report from a coalition of the UK's biggest environment and development groups reveals the untold story of the impact that extreme weather, exacerbated by climate change, is having on the whole of Latin America and the Caribbean. It also highlights the hard work and ingenuity that poor, local communities are using to cope.

Hurricane Katrina dominated news headlines around the world a year ago, but, as the report documents, other hurricanes and extreme events in the region have gone largely unreported. Almost indistinguishable in name, Hurricane Catarina, the first hurricane ever to hit Brazil, struck the southern coast in March 2004 and left 33,000 people homeless. Hurricane Wilma struck Cuba in October 2005 leading to the evacuation of 640,000 people. Extreme weather has always been a problem for people in Latin America and the Caribbean. But, as new evidence set out in the report shows, climate change is set to turn an already rough ride into an impossible one.

Read more from FoE at:
http://www.foe.co.uk/resource/press_releases/hurricane_katrina_dwarfed_29082006.html

 
Damage from hurricanes is soaring off the charts, bankrupting insurance companies and depriving property owners of insurance in high-risk areas:
http://www.earth-policy.org/Updates/2006/Update58.htm