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Millions could be displaced
26/03/2008 10:47 - (SA)
Tamajit Pain
Kolkata - Rising seas and water
shortages will displace about 125 million people living along
the coasts of India and Bangladesh by the turn of the century,
Greenpeace said on Tuesday.
In a study on rapidly warming South Asia, the global
environment group said climate change would also trigger
erratic monsoons and break down agricultural systems in the
vast and densely populated Gangetic delta.
India, whose economy has grown by 8-9% annually in
recent years, was one of the world's top polluters and
contributed around four percent of global greenhouse-gas emissions as its consumption of fossil fuels grew.
"We cannot wait for the inevitable to happen and hope to
adapt to it," Vinuta Gopal, the group's climate and energy campaigner in India said, releasing the report on the
ecologically sensitive region, also one of the poorest in the world.
Policies must reduce risk
"We need policies that reduce the risk of destructive
climate change and move towards economic development through
decarbonisation," Gopal said.
The UN Development Programme also warned in its latest report that climate change would hit the world's poorest
countries, increasing risks of disease, destruction of
traditional livelihoods and triggering massive displacement.
Together, India, Bangladesh and Pakistan had nearly 130
million people living along coastal areas less than 10m
above sea level, the Greenpeace report said.
"We are already seeing the effects," said Sudhir Chella
Rajan, the author of the report and a professor at the Indian
Institute of Technology.
He said the effect of rising temperatures was already
apparent in the recurrent floods in coastal Bangladesh.
The number of people displaced by global warming could
dwarf the nearly 10 million refugees and almost 25 million
internally displaced people already fleeing wars and
oppression.
Christian Aid has predicted there would be one billion
people displaced by climate change globally by 2050.
India, Bangladesh and Pakistan have a total population of
about 1.4 billion people.
- Reuters
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