MidnightWatcher – Prophecy in Motion

“Climate-related disasters have displaced more than 42 million people in Asia over the past two years, the Asian Development Bank said Tuesday in a report calling for swift action to avert future crises.

‘Asia and the Pacific is the global area most prone to natural disasters, both in terms of the absolute number of disasters and of populations affected,’ said the report launched in Bangkok, which was itself affected by flooding last year.

About 31.8 million people in the region were displaced by climate-related disasters and extreme weather in 2010 — a particularly bad year — including more than 10 million in Pakistan owing to massive flooding.

A further 10.7 million were forced to flee their homes last year, it said, warning that such events will become more frequent with climate change.

‘While many of those displaced returned to their homes as conditions improved, others were less fortunate, struggling to build new lives elsewhere after incurring substantial personal losses,’ ADB vice president Bindu Lohani said in a foreword to the report, released at an Asian climate forum.” Read more.

Flashback: Millions Without Drinking Water As China’s Largest Inland Lake Dries Up; Half of Country’s Rice Fields Affected, 80% of Fish Stocks Die in Hubei Province – “The volume of water in Poyang lake in Jiangxi province, normally 100 miles-long and 10 miles-wide, is now a tenth of its normal level, according to Xinhua, the Chinese state news agency. Fishing boats and house boats have been left stranded on a vast stretch of the lake bed, now a lush grassland. The drought, which has seen no rainfall for two months, has struck the central Chinese provinces that are known as the country’s ‘home of rice and fish’. Almost half of all the country’s rice fields have been affected and four million people do not have access to drinking water.” Read more.