Drought in Syria, for instance, has been described as a root cause of
the conflict there, a conflict that has killed more than 400,000
people, according to some estimates, and displaced more than 11
million. Researchers from NASA and the University of Arizona have
determined that drought was very likely the worst in a millennium. Massive crop failures and livestock losses moved farmers into stressed
cities, where popular protests met with brutal violence from the Assad
regime and the tide of refugees from that chaos swamped Europe. Nigeria, Sudan, and Central America are other areas where violence
and flight are driven by scarce resources. So the second order of
national security risk is the societal damage that cascades from the
natural damage caused by climate change.
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refugees