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The report from the Environmental Justice Foundation, based on interviews with senior US military and security experts, concludes that climate change will create far more refugees than having fled the Syrian civil war.
"What we are talking about here is an existential threat to our civilisation in the longer term," US Military Corps Brigadier General Stephen A. Cheney told EJF. "If Europe thinks they have a problem with migration today, wait 20 years and see what happens when climate change drives people out of Africa — the Sahel especially."
The report highlights the situation in the Middle East and Africa, including the worst drought to hit Syria in 900 years. It caused farmers to lose their livestock and livelihoods, which were desperately needed in the context of the war. The report notes that 1 million Syrians were already on the move because of the drought before a single gunshot was fired in the conflict. The report says such events will spread to other parts of the world.
And the hurricanes that have affected the United States this year show richer nations are not immune to the effects of climate change.
Oxfam details some of the displacement that has already happened because of extreme weather events. It found that between 2008 and 2016 an average of 21.8 million people per year were newly internally displaced by sudden-onset extreme weather disasters.
"Increasingly, climate change will also influence flight movements," said Gerd Müller, Germany's minister for economic cooperation and development. "Because where grass can no longer grow ... or where the rising sea level has flooded coastal areas, people will have to find a new home."
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