Bogumil Terminski Environmentally-Induced Displacement ... - Cedem

(with a coast equal to or lower than 10 meters) account for only two percent ofthe earth’s mass, but up to ten percent of the world’s population and thirteenpercent of its urban population. The 2007 report, Environment andUrbanizations, says that 634 million people live in coastal areas within 30 feet(9 m) of sea level. A rise in sea levels is not limited to small island states (atollstates). Rather, about 60 percent of the world’s biggest cities with more thanfive million people are located in low-lying coastal areas. (Eleven of theworld’s fifteen largest cities are on coastal plains). Indeed, over 70 percent ofthe world’s population lives on coastal plains.According to researchers’ estimates, sea level rose between 20 and 40centimetres during the last century. In 2001, the Intergovernmental Panel onClimate Change projected a global rise of 9cm to 88cm (3.5 to 34.6 inches) insea levels between 1990 and 2100. In 2007, the Intergovernmental Panel onClimate Change (IPCC) predicted that global warning would lead, by 2100, toa rise in the ocean level of 180 to 590 mm. According to a significant numberof researchers, ocean levels will rise from at least 1.5 to 2 meters over the next100 years. According to Nicholls (et al.), a “pragmatic estimate of sea-levelrise by 2100, for a temperature rise of 4°C or more over the same time frame,is between 0.5 m and 2 m – the probability of rises at the high end is judged tobe very low” 113 . According to the present author’s estimation, the projectedmagnitude of this phenomenon could forcibly displace at least 187 millionpeople worldwide.The areas most vulnerable to the effects of increasing sea levels seem to befrom the highly populated coasts of China as well as the southern coasts of theMediterranean, the west coast of Africa (Nigeria), South Asia (Bangladesh, SriLanka, India), and many small island states (Maldives, Tuvalu, Palau, Kiribati,Marshall Islands, Papua New Guinea, and Nauru). Residents of China appearto be particularly at risk from the long-term effects of sea level rise. China hasparticularly high rates of urbanisation along its coastline. It is estimated that a113R.J. Nicholls, N. Marinova, J.A. Lowe, S. Brown, P. Vellinga, D. de Gusmão, J. Hinkel, R.S. Tol, „Sea-levelrise and its possible impacts given a 'beyond 4°C world' in the twenty-first century”, Philos Transact A MathPhys Eng Sci, 369 (1934), January 13, 2011, p. 161-181.