The Tide is High...

• Sea Level Rise and Coastal Erosion

"Warming of the climate system is unequivocal, as is now evident from observations of increases in average global air and ocean temperatures, widespread melting of snow and ice and rising global average sea level."

"Global GHG emissions due to human activities have grown since pre-industrial times, with an increase of 70% between 1970 and 2004."

"It is very likely that there has been significant anthropogenic warming over the past fifty years."

Quotes taken from the 4th IPCC Assessment Report published in November 2007.
http://www.ipcc.ch/

Climate change is a product of anthropogenic abuse; globally, civilisation, or more accurately the developed world, has altered the direction of Earth's future. Ironically, it will not be the developed countries that face the full force of changing nature, but the poorest. This is not to say that the richer west will escape from the path of an altered environment, but it screams intolerable injustice, that the least responsible countries, already afflicted with drought, mass poverty and disease should be the ones to pay our greatest debt to nature. Bangladesh, for instance, one of the world's poorest countries will be one of the worst affected by rising sea levels.

"Bangladesh is extremely vulnerable, and there is a major moral issue because this is not a problem that people here have caused."

Saleem-ul Huq: Fellow at the International Institute of Environment and Development (IIED)

World Bank report on the sea level rise threat to Bangladesh and possible management options

Statement made by the High Commissioner of Bangladesh

International Institute of Environment and Development (IIED)