http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/fromthefield/218275/117913187139.htm
World facing worst migration crisis
Reuters Alert Net. 14 May 2007. Source: Christian Aid - UK
At least 1 billion people will be forced from their homes between now and 2050 as the effects of climate change deepen an already burgeoning global migration crisis, predicts a new report by Christian Aid.
Download the report below: Download the report (full graphic version) (2mb PDF- this file may take time to download)
http://www.christianaid.org.uk/indepth/ ... n_tide.pdf
Download the report (low graphic version) (748kb PDF)
http://www.christianaid.org.uk/indepth/ ... tide3_.pdf
These future migrants will swell the ranks of the 155 million people already displaced by conflict, disaster and large-scale development projects. The vast majority will be from the world's poorest countries. Urgent action by the world community is needed if the worst effects of this crisis are to be averted, says Human tide: the real migration crisis.
'We believe that forced migration is now the most urgent threat facing poor people in the developing world,' says John Davison, the report's lead author.
Published to mark Christian Aid Week 2007, the report warns that the world is now facing its largest ever movement of people forced from their homes. The predicted numbers of displaced people could dwarf even those left as refugees following the Second World War.
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.
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Mali lies in the Sahel belt of semi-arid land that straddles sub-Saharan Africa and is one of the areas vulnerable to global warming. Already farmers here are finding it impossible to live off the land in the way they have done for centuries. Erratic and declining levels of rainfall mean dramatically reduced crop yields - and people have to move in order to earn the money to feed their families.
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>>Video: the human tide
http://www.christianaid.org.uk/news/med ... 0514p.htm#