Climate Change and the 500 million

Water scarcity or rising sea levels - the bet is that scarcity will be the much bigger short-term issue facing communities, organizations, and engineers.  Link to the report and a summary:

""The increase in water scarcity that we found will impact on the livelihoods of a huge number of people, with the global poor being the most vulnerable," says Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, one of the co-authors and director of PIK. This might get buffered to some extent through adaptation measures such as expanding of irrigated cropland. However, such an expansion would further increase the pressure on Earth's ecosystems and water resources. "Now this is not a question of ducks and daisies, but of our unique natural heritage, the very basis of life. Therefore, greenhouse-gas emissions have to be reduced substantially, and soon.""