News Shorts and Other Busyness

Future Resource Water Wars

Squall 12, Spring 1996, pg. 5.

Millions of environmental refugees will be created by global warming within a hundred years, a top government scientist has warned.

Sir John Houghton, chairman of the Government’s Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution, made his stark prediction that some of the world’s most densely populated areas will be lost to flooding in a speech to the Royal Society in February.

Sir John, who is also an advisor to the prime minister and chairman of the United Nations advisory panel on climate change, told his audience of leading scientists that Southern China, Bangladesh and Egypt will face massive land loss. Even if the emission of greenhouse gases were stabilised now, he said, sea levels would continue to rise for centuries.

He added that the potential for disaster would be compounded by increased rainfall in areas where there are already heavy downpours and reduced rainfall in dry, drought prone areas.

Sir John also predicted an increase of diseases such as malaria and that water supply would become the main flashpoint in conflicts between nations.