GLOBAL: Twelve countries on climate change hit-list

The World Bank has made a list of the five main threats arising from climate change: droughts, floods, storms, rising sea levels, and greater uncertainty in agriculture. Four of the world's poorest nations top the list of the 12 countries at the highest risk. Malawi, a low-income southern African country where most people live in rural areas and earn US$975 or less per year, is most susceptible to droughts, which are likely to become more frequent and intense. It has had two serious droughts in the past 20 years and a prolonged dry spell in 2004. Bangladesh heads the list of countries most at risk of flooding. Increasing glacial melt from the Himalayan ranges as a result of rising global temperatures is set to swell the Ganges and Brahmaputra rivers and their hundreds of tributaries, flooding 30-70 percent of the country each year as the water makes its way to the Bay of Bengal in the south, where the coast is also vulnerable to flooding from rising sea levels.