Academics at University College London (UCL) have said there is little basis to justify terms like ‘climate refugee’ after finding that the majority of conflict in Africa and forced migration has been as a result of rapid population growth.

Published in Palgrave Communications, a major new study examining the causes of conflict and human displacement across East Africa over the last 50 years found that climate variations including drought and global temperature had little impact.

“Terms such as climate migrants and climate wars have increasingly been used to describe displacement and conflict, however these terms imply that climate change is the main cause,” said Mark Maslin, a professor of geography and leading expert on past regional and global climate change.

“Our research suggests that socio-political factors are the primary cause while climate change is a threat multiplier,” he said.

Using a database which identifies significant episodes of political violence and unrest in East Africa and details human displacement, researchers examined the information alongside global temperatures throughout the period as well as data regarding factors such as population size and GDP per capita.

Having analysed the data to find out whether climate change affected the risk of displacement and violence in East Africa between 1953 and 2014, the authors of the study concluded that population growth was behind 8o per cent of the conflict seen in the region and was also impacted by political stability and the rate of economic growth.

In addition, modelling suggested that population growth and economic growth from ten years earlier was able to predict 70 per cent of human displacement.

“The question remains as to whether drought would have exacerbated the refugee situation in East Africa had there been slower expansion of population, positive economic growth and more stable political regimes in the region,” said Erin Owain, first author of the study.

Professor Maslin added: “Our research suggests that the fundamental cause of conflict and displacement of large numbers of people is the failure of political systems to support and protect their people.”

During the election campaign last year in France, the now-President Emmanuel Macron declared that the world was entering an age of mass migration which will see massive population transfers to Europe much larger than anything seen before as a result of climate change.

Stating that France is partly to blame for what he called “climate migrations” in its failure to tackle so-called climate change, the “centrist” leader said the nation must “reconcile” with taking in astronomic numbers of third world migrants.

In recent years the globalist media, NGOs and figures including UN chief António Guterres have increasingly made the claim that borders across the globe will crumble in the face of between 150 and 300 million refugees displaced from their homes by global warming by 2050.

This mass movement of “climate refugees” will have resulted from carbon emissions, according to those pushing this prediction, many of whom argue the bulk of migrants should be settled in the West so that rich nations are  “taking responsibility” for their emissions level.

The majority of reports on the issue stress the inevitability of mass migration in the coming decades alongside highlighting the urgency with which carbon emissions must be reduced in order to solve the problem.

However, conservative blogger Steve Sailer has pointed out that the mass migration of people from poor countries to rich is completely incompatible with tackling greenhouse emissions.

Pointing out how the carbon emissions per capita of third world nations are magnitudes lower than those of rich Western nations, he writes: “The logic is very simple: If immigrants from poor countries successfully assimilate to American norms of earning and consuming, they, and their descendants, will emit vastly more carbon than if they stayed home.”