Climate change 'will make millions homeless'

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.

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.
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"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."

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