Alister Doyle
Droughts, floods and rising seas linked to global warming could spur conflicts in coming decades, experts said on Monday, on the eve of a first United Nations Security Council debate on climate change.
And the poor in tropical regions of Africa and Asia are likely to suffer most, perhaps creating tensions with rich nations in the temperate north which are likely to escape the worst effects of warming widely blamed on use of fossil fuels.
"Global warming increases the potential for conflict," said Janos Bogardi, head of the UN University's Institute for Environment and Human Security in Bonn.
'The most imminent effect is probably desertification and land degradation' "The most imminent effect is probably desertification and land degradation," he told Reuters. His group has projected that climate change might force hundreds of millions of people from their homes in the long term.
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Bogardi said the conflict in the Darfur region of Sudan, where 200 000 people have died, was "probably the most prominent example" of a conflict partly caused by land degradation.
In the longer term, rising seas caused by melting icecaps and glaciers could swamp large tracts of countries such as Bangladesh, forcing millions to migrate and raising the chances of conflicts over shrinking land.
"Climate change has the potential to be a huge security issue," said Paul Rogers, professor of peace studies at Bradford University in England. Still, he said disputes over oil were now more likely to cause war than climate change.
The UN Security Council will discuss climate change on Tuesday for a first time.
Britain, which holds the rotating presidency, is spearheading the debate but has not won strong backing from nations including the United States.
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