"World Needs Refugee Re-Think For Climate Victims: U.N."

"The world must invent new ways to protect people driven from their homes by climate change without copying safeguards for those uprooted by wars or persecution, the head of the U.N. refugee agency said on Monday.

"There is a protection gap in the international system that needs to be addressed," United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres told Reuters during a conference in Oslo on climate change and displaced people.

Guterres said that people moving to escape the impacts of floods, droughts or storms needed different types of support from that enshrined in a 1951 U.N. refugee convention for victims of conflicts or political oppression."

Alister Doyle reports for Reuters June 7, 2011.