Climate change 'will make millions homeless'
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By Paul Eccleston
Last Updated: 1:38am BST 14/05/2007

Climate change will take the number of refugees worldwide to a billion
by 2050, according to a report.

Global warming and its consequences will exacerbate a global crisis in
which 155 million people have been displaced by wars, natural disasters
and development projects, the study by Christian Aid warns.

A dried-up riverbed near Yingtan, central China's Jiangxi province.
China is likely to be hit by more floods, typhoons and drought this year
than at any time in the past decade because of global climate change

Published to mark Christian Aid Week 2007, the report claims the numbers
of displaced people will dwarf the refugee crisis which followed the
Second World War.

The report, Human Tide: The Real Migration Crisis, says unless urgent
action is taken, the added problems brought by environmental changes
will spiral out of control.

John Davison, the report's lead author, said: " We believe that forced
migration is now the most urgent threat facing poor people in the
developing world.

"The impact of climate change is the great, frightening unknown in this
equation. Only now is serious academic attention being devoted to
calculating the scale of this new human tide.

"Even existing estimates, more than a decade old, predict that hundreds
of millions of people will be forced from their homes by floods, drought
and famine sparked by climate change."

"Movement on this scale has the potential to destabilise whole regions
where increasingly desperate populations compete for dwindling food and
water," the report states. Let Darfur stand as the starkest of warnings
about what the future could bring."

The report cites men, women and children being forced from their homes
by war, persecution, natural disasters and increasingly, to make room
for development projects such as dams and roads.

The report quotes the Chief of the Defence Staff, Sir Jock Stirrup, who
last year warned: "Climate change and growing competition for scarce
resources are together likely to increase the incidence of humanitarian
crises. The spread of desert regions, a scarcity of water, coastal
erosion, declining arable land, damage to infrastructure from extreme
weather: all this could undermine security."

The special advisor to the UN Emergency Relief Co-ordinator, Dennis
McNamara, said: "Tens of millions of the poorest people in the poorest
parts of the world are uprooted and lack basic assistance and
protection. Their numbers can destabilise whole regions and may be an
obstacle to building peace." Jens-Hagen Eschenbaecher, from the Internal
Displacement Monitoring Centre in Geneva, said: "Internally displaced
people are among the most vulnerable victims of conflict."