Prince Charles points to link between climate change and Syrian conflict

Prince Charles has highlighted the link between climate change and the ongoing conflict in Syria in a recent interview.

His comments come in a television interview shown on Monday evening that was recorded before the Paris terror attacks that were claimed by Islamic State militants with links to Syria.

The Prince of Wales said: "We're seeing a classic case of not dealing with the problem because, it sounds awful to say, but some of us were saying 20 something years ago that if we didn't tackle these issues you would see ever greater conflict over scarce resources and ever greater difficulties over drought, and the accumulating effect of climate change, which means that people have to move.

Prince Charles pointed to the Syrian drought of 2006 as one of the factors that sparked unrest in the nation.

"And there's very good evidence indeed that one of the major reasons for this horror in Syria, funnily enough, was a drought that lasted for about five or six years, which meant that huge numbers of people in the end had to leave the land."

The prince went on to add: "It's only in the last few years that the Pentagon have actually started to pay attention to this. It has a huge impact on what is happening.”

Prince Charles’ comments come ahead of the COP21 United Nations climate change conference that will begin on 30th November in Paris.

The prince will deliver a keynote speech at the opening of the COP21 negotiations.

The summit will attempt to reach a new international agreement to help limit global warming to no more than two degrees.

Asked in the interview whether the world could afford to deal with climate change at a time of austerity, the prince said: "The trouble is if we don't, this is the awful thing, if we don't it's going to get so much worse, then life will become very, very complicated indeed, and what we're experiencing now will be as nothing to the problems.

"I mean the difficulties in 2008 with the financial crash - that was a banking crisis.

"But we're now facing a real possibility of nature's bank going bust. If you see it like that, we've been putting so much pressure on the natural systems and all those aspects of nature that we take for granted."