LONDON, Oct. 21 (UPI) -- World governments and aid agencies should prepare to help the world's poorest to move away from areas most affected by climate change, a British report says.
The Migration and Global Environmental Change Foresight Report studied the effect flooding, drought and rising sea levels caused by climate change would have on human migration patterns over the next 50 years, the BBC reported Wednesday.
Environmental change would affect the world's poorest the most, and millions would be forced to abandon sterile farmland and migrate to areas less affected by the problem, the report said.
Three-quarters of this migration would be within national borders, it said, predominantly from rural to urban areas.
Unless such migration is properly managed it could lead to widespread humanitarian disasters, the report authors said.
"[These people] will be trapped in dangerous conditions and unable to be moved to safety," the British government's chief scientist, Professor Sir John Beddington, said.
"It is essential that we do all we can to both address environmental change and make sure that people are as resilient as possible," Beddington, who commissioned the report, said.
