www射-国产免费一级-欧美福利-亚洲成人福利-成人一区在线观看-亚州成人

  Home>News Center>World
         
 

Asia faces living nightmare from climate change
(Agencies)
Updated: 2004-11-25 20:12

SINGAPORE - The weather predictions for Asia in 2050 read like a script from a doomsday movie.

Villagers seen standing on a rock levee as they watch the breaking surf in Hakaranazhi in Kerala in this July 2003 file photo. [Reuters]
Except many climatologists and green groups fear they will come true unless there is a concerted global effort to rein in greenhouse gas emissions.

In the decades to come Asia, home to more than half the world's 6.3 billion people, will lurch from one climate extreme to another, with impoverished farmers battling droughts, floods, disease, food shortages and rising sea levels.

"It's not a pretty picture," said Steve Sawyer, climate policy adviser with Greenpeace in Amsterdam. Global warming and changes to weather patterns are already occurring and there is enough excess carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere to drive climate change for decades to come.

Already, changes are being felt in Asia but worse is likely to come, Sawyer and top climate bodies say, and could lead to mass migration and widespread humanitarian crises.

According to predictions, glaciers will melt faster, some Pacific and Indian Ocean islands will have to evacuate or build sea defences, storms will become more intense and insect and water-borne diseases will move into new areas as the world warms.

All this comes on top of rising populations and spiralling demand for food, water and other resources. Experts say environmental degradation such as deforestation and pollution will likely magnify the impacts of climate change.

In what could be a foretaste of the future, Japan was hit by a record 10 typhoons and tropical storms this year, while two-thirds of Bangladesh, parts of Nepal and large areas of northeastern India were flooded, affecting 50 million people, destroying livelihoods and making tens of thousands ill.

The year before, a winter cold snap and a summer heat wave killed more than 2,000 people in India.

INDIA AT RISK

Sawyer said India, with a population of just over one billion people, is one of the areas most threatened by climate change.

"The threat to the agricultural base for the Indian subcontinent from drought and increased heat waves, the consequences to the burgeoning Indian economy and the very large number of people to feed are potentially very very substantial."

Rising sea levels will also bring misery to millions in Asia, he said, causing sea water to inundate fertile rice-growing areas and fresh-water aquifers, making some areas uninhabitable.

Sawyer said India and Bangladesh will have to draw up permanent relocation plans for millions of people. "I'm afraid that's almost inevitable."

By 2050, China will have built sea defences along part of its low-lying, storm-prone southeastern coast, while the north of the country faced increasing desertification, he said.

According to the U.N.'s World Food Programme, the Gobi Desert in China expanded by 52,400 square kilometres (20,230 sq miles) between 1994 and 1999, creeping closer to the capital Beijing.

Anwar Ali, a leading climatologist in Bangladesh, says about 15 percent of the country would be under water if sea levels rose by a metre in the next century.

Perhaps the biggest threat to Asia in the future will be the shortage of clean water. The WFP says Asia accounts for 60 percent of the world's population but has only 36 percent of the globe's freshwater.

According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), rapid melting of glaciers poses a major threat to the Indian Subcontinent, Southeast Asia and parts of China.

Seven major rivers, including the Ganges, Indus, Brahmaputra and the Mekong, begin in the Himalayas and the glacial meltwater during summer months is crucial to the livelihoods of hundreds of millions of people downstream.

RICH VERSUS POOR

But many of these glaciers are melting quickly and will be unable to act as reservoirs that moderate river flows. This means less water in the dry season and the chance for more extreme floods during the wet season.

Sawyer thinks rich countries, by far the biggest polluters, should look after the millions at risk from climate change or suffer the consequences that could include mass migration or trying to feed millions made homeless by droughts and floods in a world struggling to grow enough food.

Fears of mass migration have already prompted the Pentagon and the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, among others, to study the risk from climate-induced mass migration.

The Pentagon in its 2003 report looked at what might happen if the climate changed abruptly. The result was near anarchy.

"As global and local carrying capacities are reduced, tensions could mount around the world," it said. This could lead some wealthier nations becoming virtual fortresses to preserve their resources.

"Less fortunate nations, especially those with ancient enmities with their neighbours, may initiate struggles for access to food, clean water, or energy," the report said.

Few places are more exposed to climate change than the low-lying Maldives islands, to the west of Sri Lanka, where the highest natural point is under 2.5 metres.

"We still face the threat of sea level rise," Maldivian President Maumoon Abdul Gayoom said in a recent interview.

"There is encroachment of the sea on many islands, there is erosion of our beaches," he said. In response, the Maldives is building an island that is a metre higher than the capital Male.

Malcolm Duthie, WFP's country director in Laos, said even small changes in weather patterns, such as a delay in the monsoon of just a few weeks, is a threat to subsistence farmers. In Laos, he said rains seemed to have become shorter and sharper, meaning faster run-off and more erosion.

Such changes are also threatening millions of farmers in Indonesia, where rapid industrialisation, slash-and-burn land clearing and illegal logging have caused extreme weather and pollution across the archipelago, experts say.

"The wet season is shorter than usual which has led to higher rainfall during that brief period and sometimes caused landslides and floods," said Indonesian weather expert Agus Paulus.

Government officials have said in the past years water levels at a number of reservoirs in densely populated Java island are close to a critically low level.

As countries try to adapt, it will be the poor who suffer most from climate change, said IPCC chairman R.K. Pachauri in the report "Up in smoke?" released last month.

"The impacts of climate change will fall disproportionately upon developing countries and the poor persons within all countries," he said, meaning the lot of millions of peasants could become far worse than it is now.




 
  Today's Top News     Top World News
 

Shanghai targets empty cabs for traffic woes

 

   
 

US$46,000 offered to nab Beijing drug dealers

 

   
 

China to audit senior military officers

 

   
 

Air crash raises safety concerns

 

   
 

China, Cuba to stick to independent road

 

   
 

US rejects Ukrainian election results

 

   
  OPEC chief: Oil prices to drop in 2005
   
  Yushchenko appeals to Ukraine high court
   
  Japanese court rejects suit against Koizumi's war shrine visits
   
  Typhoon, storm leave 79 dead in Philippines
   
  IAEA: Brazil OKs uranium plant inspection
   
  North Korea wants urgent atom talks - UN
   
 
  Go to Another Section  
 
 
  Story Tools  
   
  Related Stories  
   
Russian approves Kyoto environment treaty
   
European winters could disappear by 2080 - report
   
Europe is warned of changing climate
   
Disasters claim 439 lives, damages farmland
   
Drought, floods likely to continue
   
Climate change affecting crops
   
Strategy drafted on climate change
  News Talk  
  Are the Republicans exploiting the memory of 9/11?  
Advertisement
         
主站蜘蛛池模板: 亚洲午夜精品 | 国产精品拍自在线观看 | 成人国产一区二区三区精品 | 久久精品.com | 丝袜美腿精品一区二区三 | 国产精品国产三级国产专 | 一区二区三区在线播放视频 | 国产在线视频精品视频免费看 | 亚洲第一se情网站 | 一区二区国产在线播放 | 一区视频在线 | 精品视频在线视频 | 成人精品一区二区久久 | 国产综合久久久久影院 | 亚洲综合成人网 | 亚洲人成综合 | 精品视频在线免费播放 | 免费高清不卡毛片在线看 | 男人天堂网在线观看 | 亚洲成av人影片在线观看 | 日本韩国台湾香港三级 | 香蕉依依精品视频在线播放 | 国产精品国产三级国产专播 | 日韩在线视频免费不卡一区 | 国产在线精品二区韩国演艺界 | 国产日韩欧美视频在线 | 欧洲美女a视频一级毛片 | 午夜伦y4480影院中文字幕 | 免费国产成人18在线观看 | 免费在线观看一区 | 亚洲一区亚洲二区 | 在线欧美 | 男女视频免费网站 | 精品亚洲成a人在线播放 | 国产成人在线免费观看 | 亚洲欧美在线视频免费 | 曰本aaaaa毛片午夜网站 | 亚洲欧美在线视频免费 | 日本三级欧美三级人妇英文 | 国产成人高清精品免费5388密 | 欧美jizz19性欧美 |