From: Biniam Haile \(SWE\) (eritrea.lave@comhem.se)
Date: Wed Jul 08 2009 - 22:02:16 EDT
GLOBAL: Twelve countries on climate change hit-list
Thursday 09 July 2009
Here is a look at countries most at risk of the five threats:
http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?ReportID=85179
JOHANNESBURG, 8 July 2009 (IRIN) - The World Bank has made a list of the
five main threats arising from climate change: droughts, floods, storms,
rising sea levels, and greater uncertainty in agriculture. Four of the
world's poorest nations top the list of the 12 countries at the highest
risk.
Malawi, a low-income southern African country where most people live in
rural areas and earn US$975 or less per year, is most susceptible to
droughts, which are likely to become more frequent and intense. It has
had two serious droughts in the past 20 years and a prolonged dry spell
in 2004.
Bangladesh heads the list of countries most at risk of flooding.
Increasing glacial melt from the Himalayan ranges as a result of rising
global temperatures is set to swell the Ganges and Brahmaputra rivers
and their hundreds of tributaries, flooding 30-70 percent of the country
each year as the water makes its way to the Bay of Bengal in the south,
where the coast is also vulnerable to flooding from rising sea levels.
Vietnam is most threatened by rising sea levels: up to 16 percent of its
area, 35 percent of its people, and 35 percent of its gross domestic
product could be hard hit if the sea level rises by five metres,
according to another World Bank study.
Most of Sudan, Africa's largest country, is arid land or desert, and
most at risk of food deficits resulting from the impact of climate
change on agriculture. It lies in the Sahel, a region described as the
most vulnerable in the world to droughts by the Intergovernmental Panel
for Climate Change (IPCC), an international scientific body.
The Philippines, a middle-income country in Southeast Asia consisting of
over 7,000 islands, leads the list of nations most in danger of facing
frequent and more intense storms. In 2008 it was one of three countries
hit by the most disasters, according to the Brussels-based Centre for
Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters.
Here is a look at countries most at risk of the five threats:
http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?ReportID=85179
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