Rising Sea Level to Leave 20M Bangladeshis Homeless by 2050

By 2050, rising sea levels will have submerged almost 17 percent of Bangladesh, displacing 20 million people.

Michelle Bachelet, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights presented the information at the 48th session of the Human Rights Council on Tuesday, citing a report.

With over 80% of its land area below one meter above sea level, the Maldives is already suffering severe consequences, which will only worsen as sea levels rise, she warned.

Furthermore, predictions indicate that by 2050, daily high tides might flood places where over 48 million people now live, while annual flooding would damage the homes of over 79 million people across most of Southeast Asia, including Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, Thailand, and Vietnam.

Environmental disaster displacement is a particularly serious problem in Asia, where the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre reports that China, Bangladesh, India, and the Philippines experienced more disaster displacement than all other countries combined in 2019, accounting for 70% of the global total.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issued a dire outlook for South Asia earlier this month.