World | India
Climate change 'will leave 125m homeless in the subcontinent'
The threat of climate change would impact India, Pakistan and Bangladesh in the most dangerous way since rising global temperatures.
- By Pamela Raghunath, Correspondent
- Published: 00:17 March 27, 2008
Mumbai: The threat of climate change would impact India, Pakistan and Bangladesh in the most dangerous way since rising global temperatures and the subsequent rise in sea levels would leave at least 125 million homeless by the end of this century, according to a study released by Greenpeace, the environmental activist group.
It means that large coastal cities such as Mumbai and Kolkata which are at an elevation of 2-10 metres from the sea level will not only face submersion but a huge population is likely to move into the already burdened towns in the interior - such as Delhi, Chennai, Bangalore, Ahmedabad, Pune and Hyderabad. These cities will already be undergoing serious resource constraints of their own by the middle of this century.
Catastrophe
Therefore, "India needs to lay emphasis on mitigating climate change because the costs of adaptation to a climate catastrophe are not in the realm of what is possible," says Sudhir Chella Rajan, professor, Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, in his study called "Climate Migrants in South Asia: Estimates and Solutions."
About 75 million from Bangladesh alone will be rendered homeless, which also means that India has to keep in mind that a bulk of these displaced people are very likely to seek refuge in India, says Rajan.
Although India has until now been a relatively minor contributor to the concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, the US, China and India will be responsible for a major part of global emission growth in the future.
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