CANBERRA, january 30 : Rising temperatures will leave millions more hungry by 2080 and cause critical water shortages in China and Australia, as well as parts of Europe and the United States, according to a new global climate report.
By the end of the century, climate change will bring water scarcity to between 1.1 and 3.2 billion people as temperatures rise by 2 to 3 degree Celsius, a leaked draft of an Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report said.
The report, due for release in April but detailed in The Age newspaper, said an additional 200 million to 600 million people across the world would face food shortages in another 70 years, while coastal flooding would hit another 7 million homes.
“Every region of the earth will have exposure,” said Graeme Pearman, who helped draft the report. “China, like Australia, will lose significant rainfall in their agricultural areas,” said Pearman, the former climate director of Australia's top science body, the Common-
wealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization.
Africa and poor countries such as Bangladesh would be most affected because they were least able to cope with greater coastal damage and drought, said Pearman.
The IPCC was set up in 1988 by the World Meteorological Organization and the UN Environment Program.
In a related development, an UN spokesman said on Tuesday that a climate change summit of world leaders would help drive momentum spurred by reports and changing attitudes in Washington to global warming.
The meet, tentatively planned for September, would focus on the hunt for a successor to the Kyoto Protocol on cutting greenhouse gases linked to dire forecasts of heat waves, floods, droughts and rising sea levels.
editor@expressindia.com
