Thaindian News

Kolkata, March 25 (IANS) Global environmental NGO Greenpeace will launch ‘Blue Alert’, a campaign in the coastal belts of India to make people aware of the impending dangers of global warming. The movement would be launched in all coastal states of the country, including West Bengal, Orissa, Maharashtra, Goa and Karnataka.

“We will start this campaign in India in the next one month. The movement would be consolidated by involving people coming from different sections,” Greenpeace campaign director Divya Raghunandan told IANS here Tuesday.

She said Greenpeace was in talks with several MPs from the coastal belts who could raise the climate change issue in parliament. They could highlight the humanitarian crisis the entire south Asian region would face in the near future, if global warming was not kept below the 2-degree Celsius tipping point.

“The campaign would first start at the state level and finally would land up in New Delhi to create a greater impact,” she said.

Greenpeace has also commissioned a study by Sudhir Chella Rajan, a professor in the department of humanities and social science in the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Chennai.

The study, issued by Greenpeace, throws light on the problems that people living in the Low Elevation Coastal Zone (LECZ) areas in India and Bangladesh would face in the days to come.

“The impacts would not only include sea level rise but water droughts associated with shrinking water supplies and monsoon variability as well,” Rajan said.

The report, ‘Climate Migrants in South Asia: Estimates and Solutions’, shows if global temperatures rise by about 4-5 degrees Celsius in the course of the century, as they are projected to under the business-as-usual scenario, the south Asian region could face a wave of migrants displaced by the impacts of climate change.

The Blue Alert study also says that about 125 million people in India and Bangladesh - nearly 75 million from Bangladesh and the remaining 50 million from India’s LECZ areas - could be rendered homeless by the end of this century.

“The Blue Alert survey suggests that the government adopt a decarbonisation policy with a focus on fast mitigating climate change. India has no option but to seek policy options that could lead to sustainable economic development in the future,” Raghunandan said.