Greenpeace alerted the Indian government and people of the subcontinent to the massive humanitarian crisis the South Asian region could face if global warming was not kept below the 2 degree tipping point.
Blue Alert – Climate Migrants in South Asia: Estimates and Solutions, a paper authored by Dr Sudhir Chella Rajan, professor of Humanities and Social Sciences at IIT Madras, and a climate expert, estimates the number of people who could be displaced from their homes at 125 million in India and Bangladesh alone.
Blue Alert warns that if greenhouse gas emissions continue to grow under the business-as-usual scenario as projected, leading to global temperature rise by 4-5°C, the South Asian region could face a wave of migrants displaced by the impacts of climate change, including sea level rise and drought associated with shrinking water supplies and monsoon variability.
Need for proactive policy
Dr Chella Rajan recommended 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.”
Bringing in the Bangladeshi perspective, Mohon Kumar Mondol, the Executive Director of LEDARS, Bangladesh, stated quite simply that the world had to act to arrest the climate crisis, or take on the onus of rehabilitating millions of Bangladeshi refugees.
“India would certainly be the first country to experience an inflow of refugees.” Making an emotional appeal he said: “This is a reality in my lifetime. I don’t want to see the day I lose my home to the sea and saline deserts where people have to live without clean water. It can be prevented and we are the last generation that can stop it, governments across the world have no choice but to stop this nightmare from becoming reality.”
Numbers are huge
About 75 million people from Bangladesh would migrate to India as climate change, rise in sea levels, drought, shrinking water supplies and monsoon variability takes a toll on coastal states and regions.
In all, about 125 million migrants, including 50 million from densely populated coastal regions and other vulnerable parts of India, could become homeless.
The scale of migration would be equivalent to the Partition ten times over. It would displace 375 times the number of people needing rehabilitation from the Sardar Sarovar project.
Migration would be heavy from West Bengal (10 million), Maharashtra (10-12 million), Tamil Nadu (10 million), Andhra (six million), Gujarat (5.5 million) and Orissa (4 million).
'Blue Alert' campaign
Greenpeace, is simultaneously launching a ‘Blue Alert’ campaign in five of the most vulnerable coastal cities in India namely Kolkata, Mumbai, Chennai, Kochi and Goa. The campaign would bring home to citizens the reality of what is in store for these cities if the government fails to start acting now.
Addressing the press conference, Vinuta Gopal, Climate and Energy campaigner, from Greenpeace said: “Prevention is better than cure - that’s common sense. If we don’t nip the cancer that is global warming at the early stage of detection, which is now, we are signing off the future of the world to a terminal stage that has no cure. We have the tools to fight this problem, what we need is the political will to do so.”
The Blue Alert campaign aims to catalyse citizens in the coastal danger zones, and empower them with information so that impacted communities are able to bring up their concerns with their elected representatives.
Mitigation is as important
“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, Campaign Director, Greenpeace India.
She urged the Indian government to seize the initiative to develop a low carbon economy. “We have an opportunity to be world leaders at 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.
Source: Greenpeace and Hindustan Times