As Little As 10 Years Left Before Small Island State Citizens Begin To Leave - Permanently

[hatrack]

In less than a decade, climate change-induced sea level rise could force thousands of people to migrate from some small island developing states (SIDS), according to the executive director of the United Nations Environment Program.

The world’s 52 small island developing states (SIDS) increasingly share sea level rise and other escalating environmental threats that are further aggravated by economic insecurities, Achim Steiner added.

“What makes this situation even more grievous is that the climate change threats facing many SIDS are by-and-large not of their own making,” Steiner wrote in The Guardian. “Their total combined annual carbon dioxide output, although rising, accounts for less than 1% of global emissions.”

In his commentary, published in advance of this week’s third international conference on Small Island Developing States in Samoa, Steiner said small island states are suffering disproportionately from acts of environmental negligence of which humankind is collectively guilty. “Larger economies, until recently, have managed better than small ones to mask the impacts of exhausting their natural capital and contributing heavily to greenhouse gas emissions, but the consequences of this neglect are catching up with them too,” he said.

EDIT

http://www.desmogblog.com/2014/09/03/climate-change-could-force-thousands-small-islands-less-decade-un

[Louisiana1976]

1. When these Small Island Developing States are wiped out due to sea level rise, who's going to

take their people in?

[Jim Lane]

2. I worry more about Bangladesh.

The SIDS refugees will have a real problem -- but the bright spot is that their numbers will be tiny. I think it likely that various other countries will take them in, because it won't be a significant burden.

The Ganges Delta, on the other hand, is home to &quot b)etween 125 and 143 million people" (per Wikipedia). Their land won't as quickly be outright submerged, the way those islands will be, but they live in a flat, low-lying area that's shot through with the distributaries of the Ganges. With river water, sea level rise, and increased tropical storms from the Bay of Bengal, quite a bit of the delta could become uninhabitable as a practical matter well before being completely and permanently submerged.

This could easily become the biggest refugee crisis in human history.

[madokie]

3. Sad that so many aren't listening and some who are are in denial.