Climate change 'likely to cause wars'

By Charles Clover
Daily Telegraph

Climate change is likely to aggravate old conflicts and trigger new tensions that could spill over into war or violence in many parts of the world, a report for the United Nations Environment Programme said.

Areas at risk of greater insecurity include northern and southern Africa, central Asia, India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, China, parts of the Caribbean and Andean and Amazonian regions of Latin America.

The report, by German and Swiss academics, says that the population of North Africa and the Eastern Mediterranean is estimated to grow by 40 per cent by 2025 at the same time as rainfall and agricultural production will be in decline.

Entitled Climate Change as a Security Risk, the report suggests that the climate change-induced causes of conflict are likely to be: degradation of freshwaters; decline in food production; increase in storm and flood disasters and environmentally-induced migration.

(Continued here.)