Rising sea levels could
force 75 mn people from Bangladesh and 50 mn from India s coastal
areas to interior towns
Mumbai: A rise in global temperatures due to greenhouse gas emissions
could leave India facing a rush of 125 million people migrating into or
within the country.
A study commissioned by Greenpeace India, a not-for-profit
organization, on climate change discloses that rising sea levels could
force about 75 million people from low-lying Bangladesh and another 50
million from India’s densely populated coastal regions to migrate to
interior towns and cities. This may generate severe tensions and
instability in the context of already dwindling urban resources.
See:
vulnerable areas (PDF)
The report, titled Climate Migrants in South Asia: Estimates and
Solutions, was released on Tuesday, some months ahead of the national
action plan on climate change, scheduled for June 2008.
Sudhir Chella Rajan, professor of humanities and social sciences at the
Indian Institute of Technology Madras, independently prepared the
report, based on existing data provided by Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change (IPCC), a global body that evaluates the risk of climate
change caused by human activity.
“A major aspect of climate change is sea level rise and nobody is
talking about it. India is vulnerable to rising sea levels due to a
variety of reasons. India has the longest coastline, so people living
in the low-elevation coastal zones in India will be as affected as the
people in Bangladesh, which is a low-lying area. This will mean
displacement and migration and cause socio-economic upheaval,” said
Rajan.
Coastal cities could face damage worth trillions of dollars because
their physical and social capital will be lost to rising seas, he added.
The report also suggests that global warming will affect the monsoon
patterns in India, causing a significant damage to the “health of
India’s agricultural sector”, which plays a dominant role in the
country’s economy.
Besides, “substantial reductions in water availability are possible for
large parts of north India, roughly 80% of whose water resource needs
are met primarily by Himalayan snow-pack melt during the dry summer
months. With retreating glaciers in the Himalayas and subsequent loss
of fossil water, the water supply to the region will likely cease
abruptly”.
India’s glaciers are melting fast and IPCC had warned in 2007 that if
steps were not taken to check this, there was a likelihood of water
shortage in rivers and flooding of coastal regions.
In a 14 March report, Mint quoted from journal Science that melting ice
from Himalayan glaciers and other global ice sheets has contributed
more to the rise in the global sea level over the past 80 years than
was previously estimated.
Rajan feels that the country’s policy is inadequate to deal with
climate change, although India has set a target of halving greenhouse
gas emissions by 2050. “The government should get its act together and
should look at long-term strategic policies rather than relying on some
projects here and there to offset emissions.” Meanwhile, Greenpeace
under their “Blue Alert” campaign is lobbying with elected members of
Parliament from the coastal regions of Kochi, Goa, Chennai, Kolkata and
Orissa to raise questions on government policies.
http://www.livemint.com/2008/03/26005909/Climate-change-India-may-see.html
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