Antonio Guterres, the UN high commissioner for refugees, said climate change could uproot people by provoking conflicts over increasingly scarce resources.
"Climate change is today one of the main drivers of forced displacement," Guterras was quoted as saying, "both directly through impact on environment – not allowing people to live any more in the areas where they were traditionally living – and as a trigger of extreme poverty and conflict."
Climate change, the global economic slowdown, conflict and persecution were fuelling each other, he said, making it increasingly hard to categorise fleeing populations.
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