Climate refugees — the growing army without a name

BRUSSELS (AFP) – Global warming could create tens of millions of climate refugees, although numbers are hard to predict with accuracy and the definition itself is open to debate, experts say.

“According to some estimates, there are already almost as many environmentally displaced people on the planet as traditional refugees,” said Yvo de Boer, executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).


“As the impacts of climate change strike home, the numbers are likely to rise considerably, possibly as high as 50 million by 2010,” de Boer said on Friday on the sidelines of a meeting in Brussels of the UN’s top climate panel.

“The issue of environmental refugees promises to rank as one of the foremost human crises of our time,” Norman Myers, an Oxford University professor who has long studied environment-driven migration, told AFP.

AFP