Abstract
The impacts of global warming are now clearly visible with rising temperatures, increase in the number of hot days, changes in rainfall patterns, accelerated glacial melt and the rising frequency of extreme events. Such changes can be particularly devastating in a region like South Asia, where the larger part of the population lives in rural areas and is dependent on agriculture for a living. In addition, a large proportion of the rapidly growing urban population is composed of migrants from rural areas living in slums or shanty settlements, and equally or more vulnerable to the adverse impacts of climate change. Not only will global warming affect the livelihoods and incomes of the vast majority of the South Asian population, but it will have enormous impact on their nutrition and health and indeed their very survival. This chapter seeks to assess the expected impacts of global warming on the survival, health and nutrition status of the South Asian population with a view to underlining the urgency of taking appropriate action before the spillover adversely affects economic and human development in the region.
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Another version of this chapter has been published in The SAARC Journal, vol. 8, no. 1, December 2012, SAARC Human Resource Development Centre, Islamabad, Pakistan.
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Ramachandran, N. (2014). Factoring Climate Change into the Nutrition Scenario. In: Persisting Undernutrition in India. Springer, New Delhi. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-81-322-1832-6_9
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