Giving Compass' Take:

• Lin Taylor explains how the UN's climate migration pact begins the long process of coping with the dramatic international consequences of rising sea level and other climate-induced hardships. 

• How can funders help countries prepare to deal with an influx of climate refugees? 

• Learn about New Zealand's climate refugee visa program. 

Be it by flood, drought, or hurricane, communities at risk of climate displacement have won vital protection after their plight was for the first time recognized in a global pact on migration, campaigners say.

The United Nations agreed last in July to draw up the migration compact to cope with the millions of migrants moving from country to country. Now campaigners want nations to follow up the new recognition with concrete action.

The deal recognized climate change as a cause for migration, outlining ways for countries and states to cope with communities that are displaced by natural disasters as well as "slow onset events" like drought, desertification, and rising seas.

"On the one hand it's a real breakthrough. On the other hand it's just the beginning of a long and complex process," said Walter Kaelin from the Platform on Disaster Displacement, a group that pushed for climate change to be included in the pact.

More than 140 million people in Africa, Latin America, and South Asia could be forced to migrate by 2050 to escape the worsening impacts of climate change — unless urgent action is taken to curb global warming, the World Bank said in March.

Last year, 18.8 million people around the world were forced from their homes by storms, floods, wildfires, or other natural disasters, says the Internal Displacement Monitoring Center.

Read the full article about climate migration pact by Lin Taylor of the Thomson Reuters Foundation at Global Citizen.