Washington, Oct.8 (ANI): Increasing water scarcity caused by unabated global warming will have a drastic impact on grasslands in Eastern India, a study has claimed.
According to the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) study, mean global warming of two degrees, the target set by the international community, will expose an additional eight percent of humankind to new or increased water scarcity.
Authors of the study, Dieter Gerten, Lila Warszawski, Sebastian Ostberg and Hans Joachim Schellnhuber said that apart from the grasslands of eastern India, the other regions at risk include the shrublands of the Tibetan Plateau, the forests of Northern Canada, the savannas of Ethiopia and Somalia, and the Amazonian rainforest.
Many of these are regions of rich and unique biodiversity and the authors have warned that over 500 million people might not have water or just very little of it if steps are not taken to arrest the process of global warming.
Gerten pointed out that already over a billion people are already living in water-scarce regions today, and added that parts of Asia and North Africa, the Mediterranean and the Middle East are particularly vulnerable.
The authors warned that global warming of five degrees, likely to happen in the next century if climate change goes on unabated, would put nearly all terrestrial natural ecosystems at risk of severe change.
They said that their findings support the assertion that humankind is fundamentally destabilizing natural systems. (ANI)
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