in the one nine hundred sixty s. a small section of forest was cleared to make way for a new road. the problem frost originally beneath the trees began eroding. that first the hole was just a few meters deep. the stupid me on average the make a crater is between forty and sixty meters deep and in some places it's one hundred meters deep it's one point five kilometers long and about one kilometer wide right now but it's hard to determine exactly how wide it is because it's expanding so quickly because these kinds of catastrophic events could become increasingly common he persists and not just in residential areas but anywhere in the wilderness

wherever there are pipelines and natural gas facilities our entire infrastructure could be impacted. there's a quote that. most of the cities in siberia and in russia's far east could be affected about twenty five million people in all. how big would the impact be if all the world's permafrost were to melt and so far there isn't enough cross regional research to answer that but there are findings regarding the polar region from a global terrestrial network for permafrost in one thousand nine hundred six the problem frost melted to a depth of forty five centimeters in the summer by twenty seventeen it melted to a depth of eighty seven centimeters a nearly one hundred percent increase over just twenty years. this poses a danger to both people and infrastructure. natural gas and oil pipelines are particularly affect. greenpeace has estimated that leaks in pipelines caused by

foreign soil are leading to about one percent of oil being lost that oil some five million tons of it each year seeps into the ground. the residents of the arctic city of chere ski in the far north east of russia are bearing witness to this rapid transformation. temperatures are rising in exorbitant. asphalt on the streets is beginning to buckle. and several buildings are showing signs that the solid ground on which they once stood has begun to sink. the city of chere ski on the kalinda river is also home to nikita zeem off. even though temperatures drop here to minus sixty degrees celsius in the winter the erosion of the permafrost soil appears unstoppable. this is especially apparent at

the former water treatment plant. like all the buildings here it stands on pillars. the earth began to sink here just two years ago now the crater is already ten meters deep. you. have been doing a darn good we're on so what it was here a week ago there was something those two points with you in the air and now we came there already down and there is a huge nice going underneath there for the way this is this ice has been there all of it and eventually all that folk yoko up otho this for us it's going to go in and it's going to seem to me there's a big maybe tens of something in the survey when the whole data the league of cities in the before and now with climate getting warm up there for the growth of

getting warm and we've got to be like that so all the infrastructure in the next few decades will probably be caught up. elsewhere the heat of the sun is relentless this is cameroon and central africa. here in the stream bed of the mile below river signs of despair are everywhere. and that. the north of cameroon receives two months of rainfall a year at most in august and september during the rest of the year people must walk far to find water or dig deep and. older people who live here say that water used to flow abundantly through the myope river into the logan river and eventually discharging into lake chad. but those days are

gone. into what kind of power works for the current charity organization in the region his job is to ward off the looming humanitarian catastrophes. access to drinking water is an enormous problem for people and animals here in the far north of cameroon. often visits villages near the prevention capital of my room. today he's in home to many herders. has been a social worker for many years and knows the signs of an impending humanitarian catastrophe. in the summer of twenty eighteen the region was on the brink. of motherhood i feel. a little well i mean women used to fetch my own but now it's so

bad the entire family has to help. now when young people want to build a house they have no water when we want to work there is no water a young man wants to be a farmer or work in sales and there's no water yeah. yeah so it's already begun young men are leaving they're going to the big cities to john day and . people are starting to leave. we no longer know how we will be able to manage. the drought is especially hard on people who must find water not just for their families but also for their livestock. the guy golf who believes he is about sixty years old and has always tended his herds. now it's so dry that he and his son john paul are running out of options. this animal feed was harvested the

previous year by now it's completely dried out and there isn't much left. if the next month doesn't bring rain the family fear the worst. if their livestock die they will be left with nothing. i've been down this spring is six kilometers away we have to fetch water twice a day just to have barely enough for our cattle the goats and my family. over the past ten fifteen years the situation has grown much worse that's why young people aren't able to stay in their villages they're forced to leave to go to the cities there's no future for them here.

young people are moving away because the lack of water is stealing their futures herders are having to leave for the cities because their livestock died of thirst traders grain farmers and hunters people from across northern cameroon are leaving their homes they are climate refugees a sign of things to come. but climate is hardly ever the only reason behind a decision to migrate. is often a factor fear of terror attacks can also play a role. most of the people gathered here fled from the islamist group boko haram in neighboring nigeria. they are now unintentionally contributing to the desperate situation facing local cameroonians. people stand in line for up to eight out. hours to receive a few kilos of food they wait quietly and patiently despite the brutal heat. there

are two hundred sacks of millet and corn for thirty thousand people this help is urgently needed but it's only a drop in the bucket. or you can hear from. the winner. if. there. were devoted to get us into we've already seen several waves of migration. people keep trying to make their way south to find farmland in areas where there is more rain is important many people have left here heading south. so the question. is you did you do it here in the mid may region the rains used to begin in april.

now the rains come in late may. and i've sometimes in early june don't you know almost in the past it rained until october. a lot of the abusee. but last year the rains ended in august and. that's a disaster for us farmers and many. in order to farm properly soil must remain moist for at least four months out of the year experts call this the one hundred twenty day line if rain last less than four months soil will grow arid grain cultivation becomes impossible and livestock die. in the say hill region this line between survival and disaster is moving ever further south toward the equator where there's more rain from one nine hundred

seventy to two thousand and sixteen up to one hundred kilometer wide stretches of land that were once arable have become desert. as a result hundreds of camps have a risen in this a hill region filled with people who have lost their livelihoods temperatures reach forty five degree celsius in the shade and sixty degrees in the full sun. people here live at the edge of despair reliant on food deliveries from ngos. he certain golda and her family live in one of these camps they haven't a food for now and access to a water pump. but when they fled the drought they lost their independence. their fields where they used to plant millet and onions grew arid. lisa her husband and their five children are climate refugees. is she was suffering so much. there's no rain we have no water we don't have enough water

to grow anything. c.t.c. to see a group. of people here heading south. hoping that they'll be able to grow crops there and find something to eat. in southeast asia flooding is driving people from their homes. in africa it's the devastating drought. cameroon is suffering as is neighboring chad. lake chad which lent its name to the entire region is the only natural source of water in the area. researchers from the international organization for migration have come to the region surrounding lake chad to investigate the connection between climate change and the rise of climate migration. mashal remove the low of the un migration organisation has spent years in this

a hill region every encounter and every conversation adds another layer of detail to his preliminary findings. today the real and his team are visiting a camp for displaced people near lake chad. under the shadow of a nearly barren tree he speaks with mohammad ybor him the head of the family. came tells maria low he is a herder the family suffered a terrible ordeal before finally arriving at lake chad it was heat and lack of water that drove him from their home. climate change has a huge impact on us herders if there's no rain no plants grow and without green plants to eat our animals die so we heard or saw our hit very hard by this.

from the chart which outside. downside they all depended on this source you can realize that this lake is unique it's just a fresh water we've seen. so many dependent on this if. it be a serious environment. because we've got the lake chad. we can hardly talk about living. in one thousand nine hundred eighty three lake chad covered an area of twenty five thousand square kilometers. by two thousand and seven it was just twenty five hundred square kilometers more than ninety percent smaller than the lake continues to shrink. if the lake were to completely dry up more than fifteen million people

would probably become climate refugees and this figure does not take into account the rate of population growth. lake chad remains a life source for millions of people but as it continues to shrink water is becoming an ever scarcer and more valuable resource. and so are arable land and the fish in the lake. as lake chad gets smaller competition for these resources will become increasingly bitter. even now fishermen in the region are competing for dwindling stocks of carp nile perch and to latvia. we've climate change there is a look at it it affects their distribution and department of fish and use that in mind it's a fishing industry as well so. it touches on three major levels throughout the ages of people i don't. really farm house it does.

the region surrounding like chad is emblematic of the close connection between climate change and migration. you know when i passed we had a lot of fish good fish we sold them here are over in nigeria but now they have problems with terrorists and here we have no more fish in our lake. from lake chad to indonesia farmers can no longer rely on predictable seasons for planting and harvesting the climate has become a threat there are hurricanes cycling's drought flooding mudslides and wildfires and the melting permafrost could soon exacerbate all of those around the globe.

on the american continent people are fleeing drought in northern brazil in the caribbean and the southern united states it's hurricanes. in africa people are leaving the arabs to hill region some will likely head north to europe. in spain italy and greece people will also flee the rising heat. in asia coastal regions are vanishing under rising oceans people are fleeing to higher ground.