As discussed throughout this website, the ecologically detrimental affect of climate change will jeopardise food and water security, health, livelihoods and infrastructure. History demonstrates that people move when they cannot sustain themselves as according to the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies in their World Disasters Report 2001, the year 2000 more people were forced to leave their homes because of environmental disasters than war. Approximately 25 million people could currently be classified as environmental refugees, amounting to 58% of the world's total refugee population. This figure is subject to some uncertainty as there is no fixed definition of an environmental refugee and or official record keeping on environmental displacement kept by the United Nations. For instance, in China, the government estimates that some 30 million people are already being displaced by the impacts of climate change. Some authorities have set the figure higher, at 72 million.

These estimates clearly indicate that significant numbers of people are already being displaced by climate change, and that the number will continue to grow in coming decades. According to Norman Myers of Oxford University, at a conservative estimate, climate change will increase the number of environmental refugees six-fold over the next fifty years to 150 million.[1] This equates to 1.5 percent of the predicted global population in 2050 of 10 billion. Importantly, Norman Myers studied more than 2,000 sources of information to come to this estimate, and has since increased his figure to 250 million.

Myers projections assume no action is taken to slow global warming. He suggests that displacement will result froma variety of factors, and will occur in the following regions by 2050:

REGION	PEOPLE (million)
China	30
India	30
Bangladesh	15
Egypt	14
Other delta areas and coastal zones	10
Island states	1
Agriculturally dislocated areas	50
Total	150

Myers is seen as a key source regarding climate induced displacement, and other researchers are increasingly agreeing with his figures, with some suggesting even larger numbers. Such examples of climate refugee projections include:

• Richard Nicholls of Flood Hazard Research Centre, Middlesex University, suggested in 2004 that between 50 and 200 million people could be displaced by climate change by 2080;
• The International Organisation for Migration estimated that eventually one billion people could be 'environmentally displaced from their original habitat'[2]
• The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the international science body that regularly produces assessment reports on climate change, suggested 150 million environmental refugees would exist by 2050. In this projection, the impacts of climate change, including coastal flooding, shoreline erosion and agricultural degradation were the major causes of displacement.