12 April 2005The Navhind Times
Some 2.3 billion people in about 50 countries will face water shortages by 2020 as a result of global warming, according to United Nations estimates.The melting of mountain glaciers throughout the world, which, experts say, account for as much as 95 per cent of water in river networks, would worsen the growing water crisis. For example, it is estimated that the Himalayan glacier receded substantially in just the past decade. These glaciers supplied fresh water to many South Asian rivers such as the Brahmaputra, which flows through Tibet and India to Bangladesh and on which millions of people depend.
Mr Arun Bhakta Shrestha, a Nepalese government hydrologist, told Reuters that climate change has caused the shrinking of the Himalayan glaciers. "This may result in acute water shortages not only in Nepal but in India and Bangladesh during the dry season and may cause flooding in the wet season," says Mr Shrestha.
As a consequence of global warming, glacier lakes may burst their banks and trigger floods downstream, the hydrologist warns. Furthermore, small islands such as those in the Caribbean and South Pacific are in danger of being wiped out, as world temperatures climb by between and 1.4 and 5.8 degrees Celsius by 2100.
Mr Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), sees the greatest dangers of climate change as the adverse effect on agriculture, particularly for farmers dependent on rain-fed agriculture. Evidence of the consequences of climate change is found in the spiraling summer temperatures in South Asia, which reach 122 degrees Fahrenheit, and the erratic nature of the monsoon, one of the world's most closely observed weather phenomena.
Compounded by growing populations and greater demand for agriculture, cities and industry, the result is a rapid decline in the availability of water. Within the past two decades, per capita availability of water in India has plunged from 141,000 to 66,000 cubic feet. In the next 20 years, it could fall to 35,000 cubic feet, experts say.
"Rainfall patterns would change as the result of climate change, affecting the established pattern of the monsoon," says Mr Pachauri. "We could have excessive and frequent flooding as well as droughts more or less in the same locations. All of this would affect agriculture adversely and threaten food security in the region," he said.
