Increasing climate change refugees

Environmental degradation around the world is creating a new category of people known as "environmental refugees."

According to a National Geographic article in 2005, there are at least 20 million environmental refugees worldwide, the group says—more than those displaced by war and political repression combined. This figure continues to increase rapidly.

The inhabitants of the Carteret Islands are the first climate refugees due to sea level rise attributed to global warming and climate change. Other inhabitants of low lying islands and Island states, are also at risk. Tuvalu and Maldives are especially susceptible to changes in sea level and storm surges.

By 2010 the number of environmental refugees could grow to 50 million, the Institute for Environment and Human Security (UNU-EHS) predicts.

Professor Norman Myers, who is a British environmentalist and authority on biodiversity has estimated climate change will increase the number of environmental refugees six-fold over the next fifty years to 150 million.

Equatorial countries that are home to hundreds of millions of people will become uninhabitable as food and water run out due to climate change, scientists are expected to warn this week.

A report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), to be published on Friday, will warn that the temperature rises of 2-3C predicted by 2050 spell global disaster for both humanity and the environment.

Australia has said that it will prepare to play its role as a part of a global coalition to do their share of assisting the low lying Pacific island states such as Kiribati, the Marshall Islands, and Tuvalu - which sit just a few metres above sea level - are at risk of being swamped as global warming forces sea levels to rise.

Maldives needs to quickly put its house in order internally and start taking action for long term survival/relocation without being content on asking the international community to reduce the greenhouse gases. The environmental threat is already looming on the horizon and we really don't have the time to waste in playing unproductive games.