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  Yahoo News 10 Oct 06
Asia-Pacific faces global warming disaster: scientists
by Lawrence Bartlett

PlanetArk 10 Oct 06
Rising Seas Could Leave Millions Homeless in Asia
Story by Michael Perry

SYDNEY - Millions of people could become homeless in the Asia-Pacific region by 2070 due to rising sea levels, with Bangladesh, India, Vietnam, China and Pacific islands most at risk, says Australia's top scientific body.

A climate change report by the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) found global warming in the Asia Pacific region could cause sea levels to rise by up to 16 cm (six inches) by 2030 and up to 50 cm (19 inches) by 2070.

Rising temperatures will also result in increased rainfall during the summer monsoon season in Asia and could cause more intense tropical storms, inundating low-lying coastal villages.

"The coastlines of Asia-Pacific nations are generally highly vulnerable to the effects of climate change, particularly sea-level rise caused by rising global temperatures," said the CSIRO report released on Monday.

"Vast areas of the Asia-Pacific are low lying, particularly the small-island states, as well as the large river deltas found in India and Bangladesh, Southeast Asia and China."

Sea level rise between 30 to 50 cm (11 to 19 inches) would affect more than 100,000 km (62,140 miles) of coast, particularly China's Pearl Delta and Bangladesh's delta, said the report.

"As sea level rise exceeds half a metre, the area affected in the Asia-Pacific region rises to over half a million square kilometres, affecting hundreds of millions of people," it said.

"Large areas of Bangladesh, India, Vietnam are inundated and Kiribati, Fiji and the Maldives are reduced to just a small fraction of their current land area."

ENVIRONMENTAL REFUGEES

The report also said rising sea levels and increased rainfall would spread infectious diseases in the region, leaving millions more at risk of dengue fever and malaria.

It said local and regional economies would be hard hit by chronic food and water insecurity, warning Sri Lanka's GDP could fall by 2.4 percent with less than a two degree Celsius warming.

The report also warned of environmental refugees fleeing their flooded homelands, citing growing migration from some South Pacific island states already suffering rising sea levels.

Some 17,000 islanders applied for New Zealand residence in the last two years, compared with 4,000 in 2003, it said. The low-lying South Pacfic island nation of Micronesia has experienced an annual sea level rise of 21.4 mm since 2001.

The report, commissioned by Australian aid agencies, prompted calls for Canberra to do more to combat climate change and to be more open to environmental refugees.

Australia has not signed the Kyoto Protocol to cut greenhouse gases, which cause global warming, and has rejected requests from Pacific islands to take environmental refugees.

World Vision Australia chief, Reverend Tim Costello, called on Australia to review immigration programmes to consider people displaced by rising sea levels.

"This is enlightened self-interest, because there are going to be so many environmental refugees knocking on our door, flooding here with the sea levels rise as predicted and...the failure of economics and crops because of the rain changes in so many of these countries," Costello told local radio.

Yahoo News 10 Oct 06
Asia-Pacific faces global warming disaster: scientists
by Lawrence Bartlett

SYDNEY (AFP) - Millions of people in the Asia-Pacific region could be forced from their homes and suffer increasing disease, cyclones and floods caused by global warming, scientists have warned.

Climate change will seriously threaten regional human security and national economies this century, according to a report by the Australian government's Commonwealth Scientific and Research Organisation (CSIRO).

"Chronic food and water insecurity and epidemic disease may impede economic development in some nations," the report says. "Degraded landscapes and inundation of populated areas by rising seas may ultimately displace millions of individuals, forcing intra- and inter-state migration."

The report, commissioned by a coalition of environmental, aid, church and development groups, analyses predictions of temperature increases of up to two degrees Celsius by 2030 and up to seven degrees by 2070. Scientists blame global warming on greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide, produced mainly by the burning of fossil fuels including coal and oil, for causing rising temperatures worldwide.

"Rapid growth in large regional economies such as China and India has elevated human prosperity," the report says. "However, unless ultimately decoupled from fossil-fuel use, such growth also threatens to exacerbate the climate challenge."

The CSIRO says that remaining below the generally accepted threshold for "dangerous" climate change of about two degrees Celsius would require global greenhouse gas emissions to be reduced by 30-55 percent below 1990 levels.

"If you don't, if you did nothing, you're likely to blow right past it," Benjamin Preston, key author of the report, told AFP.

Temperatures are likely to rise more quickly in the arid areas of northern Pakistan and India and western China, the report says. But the region will also be affected by a rise in the global sea level of up to 16 centimetres (six inches) by 2030 and by up to 50 centimetres in 2070, along with regional variables.

Preston said two studies contained in the report estimate that a sea-level rise of a metre (39 inches) would displace between 75 million and 150 million people in the Asia-Pacific region.

Most at risk are the low-lying river deltas of Bangladesh, India, Vietnam and China, as well as the small Pacific island states.

Changing patterns of temperature and rainfall would also cause a shift in the distribution of dengue and malaria-carrying mosquitoes, likely exposing millions more people to such diseases by the end of the century.

"Higher temperatures may reduce the risk of cold-weather mortality, but increase heat-related mortality, while increased flooding and intensification of tropical cyclones would increase climate-related injuries and deaths," the report says.

The aid groups that commissioned the report said it was a wake-up call for Australia, one of the world's worst polluters on a per-capita basis.

"Climate change will fundamentally change the way we aid the world's poor," said World Vision Australia chief executive Tim Costello. "It will undermine the value and impact of current aid spending and will lead to far greater calls for assistance from those hurt most."

Environmental and rights activists also called on the government to prepare to accept environmental refugees fleeing small Pacific island states hit by rising sea levels.
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