Half of S. Asia living in vulnerable climate “hotspots”:wb

(NEW DELHI) REUTERS: Changes in temperature and rainfall will impact almost half of South Asia in the coming decades, reducing economic growth in one of the world’s poorest regions, the World Bank said.

A World Bank report released yesterday analyses two scenarios - “climate sensitive”, based on collective action by nations to limit greenhouse gas emissions, and “carbon intensive”, which assumes no action on climate change.

The report combines future changes in temperature and rainfall with household survey data linking living standards to weather conditions for the first time.

More than 800 million people now live in areas predicted to become moderate-to-severe “hotspots”, or affected areas, by 2050 under the carbon intensive scenario, with India accounting for almost three quarters of them, the report said.

Moderate hotspots are areas where projected consumption spending declines by 4-8 percent and severe ones are where the drop exceeds 8 percent.

“There seems to be some kind of correlation between climate hotspots and water stressed areas,” World Bank economist, Muthukumara Mani said.

The World Bank’s expectation of about half of India living in moderately or severelyaffected areas by 2050 tallies with a federal think tank’s report two weeks ago.