Climate-induced mayhem likely to start in Bangladesh

Malathi Nayak in the Miami Herald: Nowhere is the potential threat from climate change more worrisome than in Bangladesh, a country strategically sandwiched between rising superpowers China and India, and which also acts as a bridge between South Asia and Southeast Asia. Already, Bangladesh is beset by extreme poverty, overcrowding and flooding that frequently renders large numbers of people homeless. The country's Muslim majority is the target of Islamist radicalization.

Over the next two generations, those problems are likely to grow worse if climate change, as predicted, raises sea levels and temperatures. By 2050, rising oceans are projected to cost the low-lying country 17 to 20 percent of its land mass. That in turn is expected to render at least 20 million people homeless and decimate food production of rice and wheat, according to the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

The potential for internal unrest to spill into neighboring India is great. "That is a frightening scenario," said Maj. Gen. A.N.M. Muniruzzaman, a retired Bangladeshi military officer who heads a research center called the Bangladesh Institute of Peace and Security Studies. "Given the complications of conflict relations in South Asia, any destabilization of a regional border can have very severe consequences."

Many Bangladeshis already try to flee to India, either to escape the periodic floods or to seek jobs. The deluge of humanity is so great that the Indian government has built a massive border fence to keep them out - and plans to electrify it….