UNB :
Around 17% of Bangladesh will be submerged by rising sea-levels by 2050, depriving 20 million people of their homes.
UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet came up with the information at the 48th session of the Human Rights Council Tuesday, citing areport.
The Maldives, with over 80% of its land area less than one metre above sea-level, is already experiencing severe harms which will only get worse as sea-levels rise, she said.
Also, across much of Southeast Asia, including Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam, forecasts indicate that by 2050 daily high tides could flood areas where over 48 million people now live, while annual flooding would on average affect the homes of over 79 million people.
Displacement due to environmental disaster is a particularly serious phenomenon in Asia, where the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre has reported that in 2019, China, Bangladesh, India and the Philippines witnessed more disaster displacement than all other countries combined – amounting to 70% of the global total.
Last month’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change presents a troubling forecast for South Asia in particular.
Al Jazeera adds:
Climate change could push more than 200 million people to leave their homes by 2050 unless urgent action is taken, the World Bank has warned.
In a landmark report published on Monday, the international financial institution called on states to reduce global emissions and bridge the development gap to avoid the effects of slow-onset climate change such as water scarcity, decreasing crop productivity, and rising sea levels.
“All these issues are fundamentally connected, which is why our support to countries is positioned to deliver on climate and development objectives together while building a more sustainable, safe and resilient future,” Juergen Voegele, vice president of Sustainable Development at the World Bank, said in a statement. Contd on page-11- Col-7
Under the most pessimistic scenario, the World Bank’s Groundswell report predicts more than 216 million people across six world regions could be on the move by 2050, leading to “hotspots of internal climate migration” by 2030 that will continue to spread and intensify by 2050.
Sub-Saharan Africa has been identified as the most vulnerable region due to desertification, fragile coastlines and the population’s dependence on agriculture. Up to 86 million people are projected to move within national borders in the worst-case scenario.
North Africa may see 19 million “climate migrants” moving, equivalent to roughly 9 percent of its population.
In the most climate-friendly scenario, with low emissions and sustainable development, the world could still see 44 million people being forced to leave their homes.
The findings “reaffirm the potency of climate to induce migration within countries”, said Viviane Wei Chen Clement, a senior climate change specialist at the World Bank and one of the report’s authors.
The first part of the Groundswell report, focusing on Sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, and Latin America, was published in 2018. The sequel, which includes projections and analysis of internal climate migration for East Asia and the Pacific, North Africa, and Eastern Europe and Central Asia, was published on Monday.
The report did not look at the short-term impacts of climate change, such as the effects of extreme weather events, and did not examine climate migration across borders.
“Globally, we know that three out of four people that move stay within countries,” Kanta Kumari Rigaud, a lead environmental specialist at the World Bank and co-author of the report, said.
Among the actions recommended were achieving net-zero emissions by mid-century and investing in green development in line with the Paris agreement.
