Hunger and water shortages will hit worst the poorest countries, according to the latest report approved Friday by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and released in Brussels, Belgium.

Global warming is already having observable impacts worldwide - from massive floods and avalanches in Asia to species extinction - and if temperatures continue to rise will be more dramatic unless nations adapt to climate change and halt its progress, Today's Global Warming Report Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability, says.

IPCC report indicates that as temperatures rise, the impacts of global warming get more severe. Just 2 degrees of warming over 1988-1999 levels will lead to increased mortality from heat waves, floods and droughts and puts 30% of the world's species at risk for extinction.

"This report no longer describes global warming as a looming environmental crisis, but as a rapidly advancing human crisis," said Philip E. Clapp, President of the National Environmental Trust, "It forecasts millions of deaths worldwide and enormous increases in poverty and hunger beyond anything the world has ever seen.

The final IPCC report is the clearest and most comprehensive scientific statement to date on the impact of global warming mainly caused by man-induced carbon dioxide pollution. More than 120 nations attended the meeting. Each word was approved by consensus, and any change had to be approved by the scientists who drew up that section of the report. However, the governments of some of the world's biggest polluters and oil producers, China, Russia, and Saudi Arabia, tried to water down some aspects of the report.

The summary will be presented to the G8 summit of the world's richest nations in June, when the European Union is expected to renew appeals to President Bush to join in international efforts to control emissions of fossil fuels.

“We have to invest in protecting people here in the United States and help the world's poorest,” Clapp said in a statement, “But investments in adapting will all be wasted unless the United States takes a lead in cutting its own emissions and works with other big industrial countries to cut theirs.”


WHAT TO EXPECT AS GLOBAL WARMING CONTINUES

Today's Global Warming Report Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability said up to 30 percent of species face an increased risk of vanishing if global temperatures rise 3.6 degrees above the average in the 1980s and 1990s.

Areas in drought will become even drier, adding to the risks of hunger and disease, it said. The world will face heightened threats of flooding, severe storms and the erosion of coastlines.

North America will experience more severe storms with human and economic loss, and cultural and social disruptions. It can expect more hurricanes, floods, droughts, heat waves and wildfires, it said. Coasts will be swamped by rising sea levels. In the short term, crop yields may increase by 5 percent to 20 percent from a longer growing season, but will plummet if temperatures rise by 7.2 degrees.

Africa will be hardest hit. By 2020, up to 250 million people are likely to be exposed to water shortages. In some countries, food production could fall by half, it said.

"Scientific language like 'declining crop yields in the poorest nations' really means that millions of people face starvation as global warming makes it impossible to raise enough food to survive. Over the past 20 years, we have already seen what drought and famine do: the conflicts in Ethiopia and Somalia were touched off in large part by migrations of drought-stricken people in search of food,” Philip E. Clapp said.

Parts of Asia are threatened with massive flooding and avalanches from melting Himalayan glaciers. Europe also will see its Alpine glaciers disappear. Australia's Great Barrier Reef will lose much of its coral to bleaching from even moderate increases in sea temperatures, the report said.

The ice sheets in Austria's Alps continue to shrink significantly and most will vanish by the end of the century. The Austrian Alpine Association said experts measured 105 of Austria's 925 glaciers last year and found they had receded by an average of 52 1/2 feet, with one of the glaciers shrinking a dramatic 262 feet during 2006.