Mozambique, Malawi and Zimbabwe are experiencing a humanitarian catastrophe as cyclone Idai is destroyed. According to the World Meteorological Organization, Idai can be the worst tropical cyclone ever known in the Southern Hemisphere. Mozambican President Filipe Nyusi believes that about 1,000 people have died in his country alone from the earthquake. The United Nations World Food Programme has stated that this is “a very large humanitarian emergency that is getting worse every hour.”

The first news was shocking. The glass city, with 500,000 inhabitants, in Mozambique, has been destroyed by 90% by the floods. The first rescuers who have arrived in the most affected areas have found people climbing above trees and roofs, waiting to be rescued, while the waters were rising more and more. The social media circulating in Zimbabwe showed people drowned in the flooded streets and countless submerged houses were floating in the aerial images of Mozambique. Throughout the region, one of the poorest in the world, the disaster has affected nearly three million people.

Cyclone Idai is not a natural disaster: climate change, secular colonialism and continuing international injustices have worsened the storm.

Floods in Mozambique are linked to climate change in at least three areas. On the one hand, a warmer atmosphere supports more water vapor, which makes rains more intense. Idai was the territory where it rained almost all year for a few days. Secondly, the region has suffered a severe drought in recent years, in line with the desiccation that weather forecasts for this area, hardening the soil and causing water disorder. Thirdly, the sea level is at a higher foot than a century ago, which makes the flooding of the coast more inshore.

To make matters worse, the supply of food due to the years of drought was very low, particularly affecting children: the work of children and forced marriages have multiplied in these years. With hundreds of thousands of hectares of land and submerged agricultural land, there is little hope that the region will resume its rapid implementation.

Those of us who live in rich countries find it hard to imagine such a disaster, because our society is built, in part, to protect us from the extreme weather. It is the case of Idai Zikyama who shows a new humanitarian crisis, an injustice that lies in climate change.

Colonialism has ordered the use of Mozambique during its four centuries of life for the supply of slaves, mines and plant-type crops. The country became independent of Portugal in 1975, following a long 10-year revolutionary war. Immediately, he suffered a devastating civil war of 15 years. But the legacy of war remains. In the UN Human Development Index, which measures life expectancy, education and economic development, Mozambique is located in 189 countries, the last of the countries at risk of hurricane.

After British colonization, Zimbabwe and Malawi have suffered for years dictatorships and lack of stability. The three countries are among the poorest in the world.

And climate change will make it even harder for them to move forward. At the Paris climate summit in 2015, Mozambique’s then-Prime Minister Carlos Agostinho do Rosario spoke to world leaders of his country’s flood risk: “These time spikes influence our government to channel national priorities, especially food security, and this is critical to reducing poverty.”

For decades, the people of the South of the planet have called for climate compensation: the passing of great fortunes so that the poorest countries can adapt to climate change.

In the negotiations on the Treaty of Paris we saw some hopeful signs. The rich countries committed to allocating $100 billion annually to 2020 to mitigate the effects of the climate. We have a year left for that date and so far only 10% of the funds mentioned have been collected. Before leaving his presidency, Obama pledged EE.UU, responsible for a quarter of the greenhouse gases that humans have historically dumped into the atmosphere, to contribute $3 billion, $9.41 per American. Today, Trump wants to dismantle that whole pact.

The rich countries must be able to take responsibility for the incredible suffering we are generating. As we have seen with Cyclone Idai, those who suffer the most today are the ones who bear the least responsibility at the root of the problem.

And if we remember the day after Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico, we can say that Idai's humanitarian catastrophe has only just begun. The international community has a responsibility to help Mozambique and other areas of the region immediately with food, water, shelter and pharmacy, right now.

And it can't stay there. On the front lines of climate change, we owe the people who are at the end of the day to break the cycle of extreme poverty that has been perpetuated with our help.

Cyclone Idai must warn us that in many parts of the world people have not been allowed to ignore climate change. The destruction it brings is already here.

Eric Holthaus is a meteorologist who writes in the middle Grist about climate science, politics and solutions. He has also published Wall Street Journal, Slate... This article was originally published in Grist: "Cyclone Idai Lays Bare the Fundamental Injustice of Climate Change"