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Climate Change Will Displace Tens of Millions in Next Decade: Report

  • A man walks through the dried-up bed of a reservoir in Sanyuan county, Shaanxi province July 30, 2014.

    A man walks through the dried-up bed of a reservoir in Sanyuan county, Shaanxi province July 30, 2014. | Photo: Reuters

Published 2 November 2017
Opinion

The new report by the Environmental Justice Foundation states that climate refugees will far exceed the number of refugees fleeing the conflict zones. 

A new report has warned that, with the rapidly changing climate, Tens of millions of people of people will be displaced in the next decade, creating 'the world’s biggest refugee crisis'

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The new report by the Environmental Justice Foundation, EJF, a UK based advocacy group states that climate refugees will far exceed the number of refugees fleeing the conflict zones. 

Senior military analysts and experts told the EJF study, "If Europe thinks they have a problem with migration today … wait 20 years," Stephen Cheney, retired US military corps brigadier general told the Guardian. 

"See what happens when climate change drives people out of Africa – the Sahel [sub-Saharan area] especially – and we’re talking now not just one or two million, but 10 or 20 [million]. They are not going to South Africa, they are going across the Mediterranean," Cheney added.  

Sir David King, the former chief scientific adviser to the UK government, told the EJF,  

"What we are talking about here is an existential threat to our civilization in the longer term. In the short term, it carries all sorts of risks as well and it requires a human response on a scale that has never been achieved before."

The EJF report exposes the links between climate change, conflict, food poverty, and migration ahead of the UN convention on climate change that will take place in Germany next week. 

The conference in Bonn is seen as the next step for governments to "implement the Paris Climate Change Agreement and accelerate the transformation to sustainable, resilient and climate-safe development."

The report goes on to show how climate change creates environmental migrants who are forced to relocate for a living. The report argues that climate change played a role in the Syrian War, as between 2006 and 2011, the successive droughts in the country caused nearly 1.5 million people to migrate to the country's cities as they had no reliable access to basic amenities like food, jobs, and water. 

"The challenge we face is complex. Climate change is the unpredictable ingredient that, when added to existing social, economic and political tensions, has the potential to ignite violence and conflict with disastrous consequences," EJF's executive director, Steve Trent, said, in a statement. 

"In our rapidly changing world, climate change - and its potential to trigger both violent conflict and mass migration - needs to be considered as an urgent priority."

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