“‘More than 120 million people from India and Bangladesh alone will become homeless by the end of this century,’ [a Greenpeace report on climate change] says. It estimates that 75 million people from Bangladesh will lose their homes. It predicts that about 45 million people in India will also become ‘climate migrants’… ‘Most of these people will be forced to leave their homes because of the sea-level rise and drought associated with shrinking water supplies and monsoon variability. The bulk… will come from Bangladesh as most of the parts of that country will be inundated,’ Dr. Sudhir Chella Rajan, a climate expert and author of the study, told the BBC.”

 http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/73…

South Asia in climate change crisis.
By Amitabha Bhattasali
March 25, 2008, BBC News, Calcutta
.

The Indian coastline is ‘extremely vulnerable’

A Greenpeace report on climate change says that if greenhouse gas emissions grow at their present rate, South Asia could face a major human crisis.

“More than 120 million people from India and Bangladesh alone will become homeless by the end of this century,” the report says.

It estimates that 75 million people from Bangladesh will lose their homes.

It predicts that about 45 million people in India will also become “climate migrants”.

Intense cyclones:

The report says that the number of people who could be affected by climate change is almost 10 times greater than the number of people who migrated during and after the partition of India in 1947.

Around 130 million people now live in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh in what are called low elevation coastal zones, which comprise coastal regions that are less than 10m above average sea level.

“There is already plenty of evidence to suggest that the average global temperature rise we have already experienced is associated with substantial changes in weather patterns over recent decades,” the Greenpeace report says.

“Droughts have become more common since the 1970s. The frequency of intense tropical cyclones has also increased and there has been widespread retreat of mountain glaciers.”

It is argued that India’s weather is becoming less predictable

The study says that “if global temperatures rise by about 4-5C in the course of the century - as they are projected to - the South Asian region could face a wave of migrants displaced by the impact of climate change”.

“Most of these people will be forced to leave their homes because of the sea-level rise and drought associated with shrinking water supplies and monsoon variability. The bulk of them will come from Bangladesh as most of the parts of that country will be inundated,” Dr Sudhir Chella Rajan, a climate expert and author of the study, told the BBC.

“And Bangladesh is already experiencing the migration,” says an activist from Bangladesh, Mohon Kumar Mondol.

“Though Bangladesh is hardly responsible for the global warming and climate change, the Bangladeshi people are paying the price for it - they have never heard of these terms but are suffering from them.”

The report says the Indian coastline is also extremely vulnerable.

Greenpeace has long campaigned in India

Several large cities within the low elevation coastal zone like Bombay (Mumbai) and Madras will go under the sea if the present growth rate of greenhouse emissions continue.

The report says that while huge investment is being made along the coast line of India, most of these projects are in the danger zone.

“This isn’t going to happen gradually. What we are going to see is a series of coastal surges, you will see inundation, salt water intrusion - which will cause lots of harm and devastate a lot of these infrastructures,” said Dr Rajan.

According to the Greenpeace report, major population movement from the coastal cities to other large urban centres like Delhi, Bangalore and Ahmedabad will take place.

“These cities will have serious resource constraints of their own by the middle of the century, but will have to be prepared to accommodate enormous numbers of migrants from the coasts.”

When receiving the Nobel Price, Al Gore Hit On The US anc China As the Major Culprits - We thought to bring up that old BBC material also.

Gore climate plea to US and China.
By Richard Black
Environment correspondent, BBC News website

Al Gore’s acceptance speech was a powerful piece of rhetoric
Former US Vice-President Al Gore has urged the world’s two biggest emitters of greenhouse gases, the US and China, to work together on climate change.

Receiving the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo, Mr Gore referred to climate change as a “planetary emergency”.

He said he hoped for a positive outcome from the UN climate talks in Bali.

The chairman of Mr Gore’s co-laureate, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, said climate change threatened human security.

“Societies have a long record of adapting to the impacts of weather and climate,” said Rajendra Pachauri, the Indian engineer who has chaired the IPCC since 2002.

“But climate change poses novel risks often outside the range of experience.”

 ”In every land the truth, once known, has the power to set us free”
Al Gore

Climate goes to the movies

The IPCC’s fourth major assessment of climate science, impacts and economics, released over the course of 2007, forecasts increases in droughts, declining crop yields, and scarcity of fresh water over large areas of the planet.

Dr Pachauri paid tribute to the thousands of scientists whose work had contributed to the IPCC assessments, notably its inaugural chairman Bert Bolin, who was unable to attend the ceremony as a result of ill-health.

Rhetorical power

As befits the cinematographic auteur of An Inconvenient Truth, Mr Gore’s speech was a rhetorical tour de force.

“We, the human race, are confronting a planetary emergency - a threat to the survival of our civilisation that is gathering ominous and destructive potential even as we gather here,” he said.

“The Earth has a fever, and the fever is rising. The experts have told us it is not a passing affliction that will heal by itself.

Why the IPCC and Gore won
“We are what is wrong, and we must make it right.”

The former vice-president painted a gloomy picture of the climate impacts that might lie ahead. But he was more upbeat in his assessment that carbon emissions could be tackled.

“In every land the truth, once known, has the power to set us free,” he said.

Essential steps, he said, included the universal ratification of the Kyoto Protocol - a reference to the US which is now alone among industrialised countries in its rejection of the 1997 treaty - a moratorium on conventional coal-fired power stations, widespread taxation of carbon, and the mobilisation of entrepreneurial initiative worldwide.

His warm words for the efforts that Europe and Japan have made in recent years contrasted with his assessment of “two nations that are now failing to do enough” - China and the US.

“Both countries should stop using the others’ behaviour as an excuse for stalemate and instead develop an agenda for mutual survival in a shared global environment.”

Bali heat

Mr Gore and Dr Pachauri now travel to the UN talks in Bali, which have just entered their second week.

Delegates there have also heard stern messages about the potential impacts of climate change.

No unity yet in Bali
Climate goal ‘unreachable’

On the fringes of the conference, the World Health Organization (WHO) warned that rising temperatures were already taking malaria into regions where it had previously been too cold, such as Bhutan and Nepal.

The negotiators’ main task is to initiate a process that will result in targets for greenhouse emission reductions when the current Kyoto Protocol targets expire in 2012.

A draft text proposes that industrialised countries agree to cut their emissions by 25-40% by 2020. The US is opposed to any notion of binding targets.

Dr Pachauri said that hopes remained alive for the Bali meeting, “unlike the sterile outcomes of previous sessions in recent years”.

The question, he told delegates in Oslo, was whether policymakers would listen to the voice of science and knowledge.

“If they do so at Bali and beyond, then all my colleagues in the IPCC and those thousands toiling for the cause of science would feel doubly honoured at the priviledge I am receiving today on their behalf.”

Richard.Black-INTERNET@bbc.co.uk