Bunker-buying billionaires greatly contributing to climate disasters, report claims

The report claimed the richest 1% is directly contributing to increased climate disasters such as floods, fires, and droughts. Picture: Jim Dyson/Getty

Billionaires are buying islands to build climate-fortified doomsday fortresses while simultaneously causing some of the worst greenhouse gas emissions, according to a report.

Oxfam said the compounds and underground bunkers are equipped with renewable energy, private water and food systems, and high-end security, insulating the world's richest from climate disasters to which their actions have directly contributed.

The charity's Disaster Divide report claims that the investments of the world’s wealthiest 1,000 billionaires produced 486m tonnes of CO2 in 2025, which is akin to the 19th biggest emitter of greenhouse gases in the world if they were a country.

Some 71% of billionaire investments are in high-emitting sectors like oil, gas, and chemicals, it said.

It claimed that the carbon pollution of the richest 1% is directly contributing to increased climate disasters such as floods, fires, droughts, and food crises — with yearly emissions causing an estimated 1.9m excess deaths from heat in the future.

Around 10% of the world’s population could be displaced by the climate crisis by 2050, the report warned.

It said future climate migration “will not be limited” to people living in poverty. 

Large sections of the global middle-income population may also have to relocate as mortgages and property insurance become unaffordable or unavailable, or as jobs and economic opportunities move elsewhere.

Oxfam warned that climate displacement “is becoming a universal condition, experienced very differently depending on where a person sits in the global hierarchy of wealth”.