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Climate change could put an end to globalisation by 2040, predicts a report from a group of security experts.
They say that as global warming intensifies, nations will abandon the drive towards ending trade barriers and opening borders.
Instead, they will look inward to conserve scarce resources, and conflicts will flare as refugees flee rising seas and drought.
One of the report's authors, Leon Fuerth of George Washington University in Washington DC, said global co-operation based on a resource-rich world could end as vital commodities became increasingly scarce.
"Some of the consequences could essentially involve the end of globalisation as we have known it ... as different parts of the Earth contract upon themselves to try to conserve what they need to survive," said Dr Fuerth, who was national security adviser to former Vice-President Al Gore.
Rich countries could "go through a 30-year process of kicking people away from the lifeboat" as the world's poor faced the worst environmental consequences, which he said would be "extremely debilitating in moral terms".
- Reuters
