Ever Heard of GMACCC?

Move over Sierra Club, here come the generals. It's the Global Military Advisory Council on Climate Change, an organization made up of retired and serving military leaders.

They've got a message. Either the nations of the world start doing something meaningful and effective to arrest climate change, or - it's war. The current chairman of the organization, Major General Munir Munirazzaman, gave an interview to The Independent in the run up to the Marrakesh climate summit.

Climate change is threatening to force millions of people to become refugees and spark major wars that could “completely destabilise” the world, a leading general has warned.

And countries which attempted to deal with the coming crisis by resorting to “narrow nationalistic instincts” – for example, by building walls to keep out refugees – will only make the problem worse, according to Major General Munir Muniruzzaman, chairman of the Global Military Advisory Council On Climate Change (GMACCC).

War is fast becoming our default option.

“In our analysis, we are seeing the risk is now becoming all-pervasive from climate change in the sense that it is touching multiple sectors … many of the sectors are being gravely challenged,” he said.

“In some areas of the world, some of the issues we are touching on are becoming so severe they hold tremendous conflict potential."

He pointed to the recent diplomatic row between bitter regional rivals India and Pakistan, which both have large militaries and nuclear weapons, over water supplies.

“There was a possibility of a break down [of diplomacy] … which could have led to the first major water conflict of the world,” he said.

If we're going to meet the challenges facing mankind, the general says we're going to have to take down walls, erase borders.

"...we have boxed ourselves into the Westphalian system of states. That is in conflict with nature, with the movement of people … we need to find a common ground. We need leaders with vision … we have to have a global solution to the problem, this is a civilisational problem.

“If we want to solve [these problems] with narrow nationalistic instincts, we will be adding more problems, not solving them.”

The Year the Great Migration Begins?

Over the past several years Europe has been struggling to deal with illegal migration out of Africa. Each year, tens of thousands of migrants, many from the sub-Saharan region, have been heading north hoping to reach the shores of Europe and a new life.

For the past month reports have been coming in from all over Africa suggesting that this year is going to be different, much different. Migrants in record numbers are said to have massed in northern Africa, waiting for an opportunity to get out.

Libya is reported to be inundated with two million migrants, at least half of whom hope to make their way to the UK. Now Yemen is pleading for international aid to help with legal and illegal migrants it claims have reached 800,000, many of them who have fled for their lives from wartorn homelands.

Mass migration has been forecast for some time and is expected to continue as wars spread and climate change and desertification make parts of southern African uninhabitable. This is going to present a huge challenge for the European Union countries which are examining their options, few of them very pleasant.