Experts say climate change poses a real threat to global peace in the next 10 years

Climate change poses a threat to peace in countries around the world in the coming decade, according to an annual peace index released on Wednesday that factored in the risk from global warming for the first time.

Nearly a billion people live in areas at high risk from global warming and about 40 per cent of them are in countries already struggling with conflict, said the Australia-based Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP).

Climate change causes conflict due to competition over diminishing resources and may also threaten livelihoods and force mass migration, it said.

“Going forward, climate change is going to be a substantial problem,” Steve Killelea, executive chairman of the IEP, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

“We can actually get a much better idea of which countries are most at risk, what are the types of risk and what would be the level of impact before it leads to a break or an implosion within the country.”

In 2019, the world became very slightly more peaceful for the first time in five years, said the IEP, which used data from groups including think tanks, research institutes, governments and universities to compile the index.