Hyderabad, November 17: The Fourth Assessment Report of the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) warned that climate change would lead to an unprecedented crisis of shortage of fresh water availability, increase in hunger, extreme weather conditions, droughts, heat wave, cylcones and mortality due to diarrhoea, said Prof Dennis Rumley, Chairperson, Indian Ocean Research Group (IORG).
He was delivering the keynote address at the three-day conference on “Climate Change in the Indian Ocean Region: Geopolitics, Energy and Security” that began at Centre for Indian Ocean Studies Department in Osmania University on Monday. The Conference was organised jointly by Indian Ocean Research Group (IORG) and Centre for Indian Ocean Studies (CIOS).
Prof Dennis Rumley said that climate change is projected to impinge on the sustainable development of the environment associated with rapid urbanisation, industrialisation and economic development. Island states of the Indian Ocean, especially small island States remain vulnerable to effects of climate change.
“The IPCC specifically lists three climate change processes that most directly associated with human migrations or population displacement – droughts, cyclone intensity and rise in sea level. A significant aspect of the impact of climate change, which unfortunately drew poor attention of social scientists is about equity and social imbalances that are occurring and would occur in the near future,” he opined.
Dennis Rumley said that the growing trend of environmental migrants are clashing with widespread antimigrant sentiment in both developed and developing countries around the world. Some countries are perceiving migration, particularly unauthorised international migration, as a security threat.
“They are even employing military forces to deter or manage the human flows, especially if they entail the crossing of international borders.
Consequently, migration is fast transforming from a law enforcment low politics issue into a high political concern,” he noted.
He said that a significant sea level rise is one of the major anticipated consequences of climate change and it would create problem to the twothirds of world population that resides in the coastal regions. India has been identified as one of the 27 countries which are most vulnerable to the impact of global warming related accelerated sea level rise.
Osmania University Registrar Y C Venudhar, NGRI senior scientist RK Chada, vice-chairperson of Indian Ocean Research Group Sanjay Chaturvedi, Director Centre for Indian Ocean Studies of OU Prof PV Rao and more than 50 delegates from various countries are attending the conference.
–Agencies