Global warming to fuel migration, terrorism: report

Global warming-induced food and water shortages may cause mass migration, competition for resources and state failure, providing fertile ground for conflict and terrorism, analysts warned yesterday.

In a report entitled: "Climate Change, A Risk Assessment", a global team of scientists, policy analysts and financial and military risk experts painted a grim picture of mankind's future on a much warmer planet.

As rising temperatures and sea levels shrink areas of productive land, humans will have reasons aplenty for warring with one another, they wrote -- especially in already turbulent parts of the Middle East and Africa.

Even with average global warming of 0.8 degrees Celsius from the Industrial Revolution to date, the world was facing "significant problems".

"It seems likely that high degrees of climate change would pose enormous risks to national and international security," said the report.

"Extreme water stress, and competition for productive land, could both become sources of conflict."

Soon, today's refugee problems may seen trifling compared to the numbers of fugitives fleeing climate change-related food and water scarcity and conflict.

"Migration from some regions may become more a necessity than a choice, and could take place on a historically unprecedented scale," wrote the team.

"The capacity of the international community for humanitarian assistance, already at full stretch, could easily be overwhelmed."