http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,21726272-1702,00.html

One billion displaced by 2050 - warning
From correspondents in London
May 14, 2007

AT least one billion people may have to flee their homes over the next four decades because of conflicts and natural disasters that will worsen with global warming, a relief agency has warned.
In a report, British-based Christian Aid said countries worldwide, especially the poorest, were facing the greatest forced migration ever - one that would dwarf those displaced by World War II.

In what at the time amounted to "the largest population displacement in modern history", 66 million people were displaced across Europe by May 1945,as well as the many millions more in China, it said.

Today there were an estimated 163 million people worldwide displaced by factors like conflict, drought and flooding as well as economic development projects like dams, logging and grain plantations, it said.

"We believe that forced migration is now the most urgent threat facing poor people in the developing world,'' said John Davison, author of Human Tide: the real migration crisis.

While the figure was already "staggeringly high", the report warned that "in future, climate change will push it even higher.

"We estimate that over the years between now and 2050, a total of one billion people will be displaced from their homes,'' the 52-page report said.

The figures include 645 million who will migrate because of development projects, and 250 million because of phenomena linked to global warming like floods, droughts and famine, it said.

It said the conflict in western Sudan's Darfur region, which has displaced more than two million people, was not just driven by political forces but also by competition for increasingly scarce water and land to graze animals.

"Security experts fear that this new migration will fuel existing conflicts and generate new ones in the areas of the world - the poorest - where resources are most scarce,'' said a statement accompanying the report.

"A world of many more Darfurs is the increasingly likely nightmare,'' it said.

The problem is all the more alarming as those displaced in their own countries have no rights under international law and no official voice, it said.

Cause for concern

The report also cited case studies in Colombia, Mali and Burma as major causes for concern.

With millions having fled a civil war between paramilitary groups and guerrillas in the last 20 years, Colombians were now seeing land taken by paramilitaries-turned businessmen setting up palm oil and other plantations.

In Burma, ethnic minority groups like the Karen had suffered decades of violence, displacement and persecution only to see the military rulers now use the freed space for dams, logging and palm oil plantations.

Climate change would drive the growth of grain-producing plantations as rich countries would raise demand for bio-fuels over crude oil in a bid to reduce carbon emissions into the atmosphere.

"In Mali, the threat from climate change is more immediate,'' it said.

Crop yields had fallen sharply with erratic and declining rainfall levels, forcing farmers to move to feed their families.

Christian Aid, which was created to help refugees from World War II, published the report to mark the 50th door-to-door fundraising in Britain.

guess the world needs to stop using fossil fuels already...

So the middle-east can get a nice bankrupcy?

to slow global warming?

HAYHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!

It's global warming.

I don't believe this for a second, if John Howard says global warming is not a problem, then I believe him, after all what sort of leader would lie to his people.

If Al Gore is concerned about Global Warming, then I am too.

We're obviously all gonna die from global warming.

Seriously, has anything this group has said in the last forty years changed one bit?

What happened to New York being underwater in 1988?

Christian Aid said this?

traveling is good

Maybe its finally time you stopped posting here

I believe this claim. We are already seeing climate change driven conflicts, one could argue Darfur is an example.

What does this say about AGW? That it's too late. Perhaps we should be focusing on things, and I know I have been posting this for years, like building desalinization plants and sea walls and other technology that will help slow the degradation of the environment where the world's poorest people live now. The combination of Whabbi Islam, poverty, and no fresh water supplies will not produce a more peaceful Africa and Middle East.

fuckin' el nino.

Of course it is...look at what happened in Rwanda. Ethnic killings had very little to do with what actually occurred.

Are you joking here or not?

No...but global warming wasn't the sole factor either...

The idea that the killings were because of ethnic tensions was not very attuned to the reality of the situation - which was a combination of overpopulation, unemployment, severe mismanagement of farmland, and drought largely caused by climate change...there are a few reports by human rights groups that also contend these were largely the problems. "Ethnic killing" was lazily concocted by cynical Rwandan politicians and the media. It wasn't even that well-organized of a genocide unlike Nazi Germany or Cambodia - neighbors and family members were hacking away at each other with homemade machetes because they were basically starving to death.

This is how much time we have left to build a ark and float our ass out of here back to atlantis. Grab your kitties !

Holy Shit.

I've seen it all. Now the Rwandan genocide was caused by global warming.

Wow.

Talk about lost causes.

It's obvious that we're all gonna die due to global warming. It's all global warming really. Cancer is global warming, and heart disease is global warming. If it's a little chilly out, it's global warming. Icecaps melt in one place and it's global warming, but they reform in another area and it's still global warming.

It must be nice having a caviat like global warming to forward political motivations. You can just pull it out as a trump card at any given moment. To include GENOCIDE!!!!

How fucking stupid.

That wasn't quite what I was saying

You've gotta be kidding me. Add in overpopulation (which Rwanda is not), unemployment (which Rwanda was NOT nearly as bad as most), severe mismanagement of farmland (actually, Rwanda is probably the best managed farm land in all of subsaharan Africa), and drought CAUSED BY CLIMATE CHANGE (I really laugh at that part), and you don't have genocide occuring in Rwanda if there is only one ethnic group there.

The ONLY reason there was genocide there was because of ethnic tensions.





You gotta be reading different a different history book...