'Hope for the best, plan for the worst', is the mantra of emergency planners everywhere. But, for 125 million people living in the low lying areas of South Asia, when it comes to climate change there is no plan that will adequately address the worst consequences.
Village leader of seven villages in the Orrisa, five of which have been washed away by the rising sea.
Blue
Alert, Climate Migrants in South Asia, a new Greenpeace report
warns that left unchecked climate change could lead to global
temperature increases of between 4-5°C, unleashing a barrage of
impacts that will drive mass migration in India, Pakistan and
Bangladesh.
It is not as simple as rising sea levels flooding coastal areas,
although that alone would be devastating. The report warns that
impacts will include: "inundation itself, flood and storm damage,
erosion, saltwater intrusion, rising water tables and impeded
drainage and wetland loss. These will together reduce the ability
of these regions to provide their inhabitants access to land
itself, in some cases, and to many others their means of
cultivation, water resources and fodder, causing severe hardship in
terms of livelihood and habitat loss."
In a region already home to the largest number of people living
in poverty, such impacts will take a horrendous human toll. The
reports author, Dr. Chella Rajan, Professor of Humanities and
Social Sciences at IIT Madras, concludes that "India should seek
policy options that are proactive in terms of developing
international strategies to reduce the risk of destructive climate
change. We cannot wait for the inevitable to happen and hope to
adapt to it."
Greenpeace, simultaneously launched the
'Blue Alert' campaign in five of the most vulnerable coastal
cities in India: Kolkata, Mumbai, Chennai, Kochi and Goa. The
campaign aims to catalyse people in the coastal danger zones,
empowering them with information that they can raise with their
elected representatives.
"The Indian government has wrongly forsaken mitigation for
adaptation and the forthcoming session of Parliament must debate
this wisdom which has serious long term consequences," said Divya
Raghunandan, Greenpeace India Campaign Director. "We have an
opportunity to be world leaders in developing clean technologies.
We have the human capital to do this and our government must create
the necessary environment for it. There is an added opportunity in
laying claim to access mitigation related clean technologies from
the developed world. This is where the focus should be when the
government announces its National Climate Action Plan in June", she
said.
Decisive action needed
Globally more than 1 billion people live in low-lying areas that
could be affected by sea level rise. Much of the productive land
used to produce food is also in coastal areas at risk from rising
sea levels.
The solutions to prevent catastrophic climate change impacts and
avoid hundreds of millions of people from being displaced already
exist. What's needed is a revolution in the way we generate energy
and an end to global deforestation.
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