CANBERRA, June 13 (Xinhua) -- More than 2 million Australians live in areas with a high-risk of exposure to the effects of climate change, a report has found.
The latest annual Global Peace Index, released by the Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP), revealed that 2.4 million Australians are among the estimated 971 million people worldwide who live in areas with high or very high risk of being affected by climate hazards.
Those hazards include cyclones, floods, bushfires, rising sea levels and desertification.
Steve Killelea, the founder and chief executive of the IEP, told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) on Wednesday that the top nine countries facing the highest risk were all in Asia, with the Philippines at the top of the list.
"Pacific Islands are going to be massively impacted by rising sea levels," he said.
In Australia the major climate hazards identified by the report were rising sea levels, drought and desertification in the south and east and hurricanes and cyclones in the north.
According to the report, 60 percent of displacements around the world in 2017 were because of climate-related disasters and 40 percent because of armed conflict.
"When you start to get massive effects from climate change you start to get large flows of refugees," Killelea said.
The ABC reported in February that Australian farmers have begun migrating south to the island state of Tasmania in search of favorable conditions.
