'Billion homeless by 2050'

Climate change will make more than a billion people homeless by 2050, Christian Aid has warned.

The charity said 155 million people have already been pushed out of their homes by conflict, disaster and large-scale development projects.

The developing world will be particularly badly hit, the charity's report, Human Tide: The Real Migration Crisis, said, with many people left homeless in their own countries and deprived of all their rights.

Christian Aid spokesman John Davison said: "The impact of climate change is the great, frightening unknown in this equation.

"Only now is serious academic attention being devoted to calculating the scale of this new human tide.

"Even existing estimates, more than a decade old, predict that hundreds of millions of people will be forced from their homes by floods, drought and famine sparked by climate change."

He added: "We believe that forced migration is now the most urgent threat facing poor people in the developing world."

Mr Davison said security analysts feared the mass movement of people could spark new conflicts and put further pressure on those already brewing.

Internally displaced people are not recognised under international law and their living conditions are often poor, Christian Aid said.

"A world of many more Darfurs is the increasingly likely nightmare scenario," Mr Davison said.

The report warned that there were many other countries, such as Colombia, Burma and Mali, where internal displacement was having a huge effect.

Mr Davison said: "We hear a lot about people trying to come to Europe and other rich countries. But the real crisis is developing a long way away and remains largely unreported."

The charity called for "urgent action" from the international community.

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