One estimate says that as many as 150 million people may be displaced by the impacts og global warming and consequent sea-level by 2050. That’s 1.5 percent of that year’s predicted global population of 10 billion.
According to a report by the IPCC, Regional Impacts of Climate Change:
a one-meter rise in sea level inundate 3 million hectares in Bangladesh, displacing between 15 to 20 million people.
Vietnam could lose 500,000 hectares of land in the Red River Delta and another 2 million hectares in the Mekong Delta, displacing roughly 10 million people.
a one meter rise would swamp about 85 percent of the Maldives’ main island, which contains the capital Male. It could turn most of the Maldives into sandbars, forcing 300,000 people to flee to India or Sri Lanka. ‘We would have no choice,’ said President Gayoom as long ago as 1989, ‘for the Maldives would cease to exist as a nation.’
West Africa is at high risk. Up to 70 percent of the Nigeria coast would be inundated by a one-meter rise, affecting more than 2.7 million hectares and pushing some beaches three kilometers inland. Gambia’s capital, Banjul, would be entirely submerged.
South American cities would suffer some of the worst economic effects. A one-meter rise in sea level would displace 600,000 people in Guyana – 80 percent of the population and cost US $4 billion, or 1,000 percent of its tiny GNP.