Are the Alps on your bucket list, the Great Barrier reef perhaps? What if they just didn’t exist anymore? Well, that could be a very real possibility in the not so distant future. Most of the places listed below are popular bucket list destinations, which will be but shadows of their present selves in the coming years, thanks to the unstoppable hurricane called climate change.

1. The Alps

No more Bollywood songs in the snow for us

Experts say these white wonderlands are warming three times faster than the global average. Glaciers are retreating, the snow line is crawling upwards, vegetation is moving higher reaching out for colder temperatures. The winter sports, famed in these parts of the world, are facing a very real threat of extinction with some resorts substituting powder from nearby glaciers to keep going.

2. Great Barrier Reef

Colours like this don’t exist anywhere else

When the reefs vanish, the fish will follow suit, the seabirds won’t be far behind and so it goes…It all starts with the bleaching of the coral reefs , an estimated 10 percent have already been lost to bleaching.

3. Mount Kilimanjaro

The top of Africa, a mountain on the equator with a snow cap

Mount Kilimanjaro’s prominent beautiful white top of glacial ice will be gone in the next 10 years. Africa’s highest and the world’s highest free standing mountain is also a sky island whose unique and vast biodiversity is being threatened.

4. The Maldives and The Pacific Islands

There’s no life like Island Life

The tiny island nation of Kiribati, last year, became the first country in the world to publicly declare that its population needed to be evacuated because of the effects of global warming. The majority of atolls face submersion and, because of the mixing of salt water in the water table, thirst. The Maldives are putting all their tourist loot in the bargain for a new homeland.

5. Italy

What will become of romance without a Gondola ride?

Female mosquitos bite more frequently, digest quicker and their larvae hatch faster in warmer climates. Italy was the first European nation to record an outbreak of the tropical disease, Chikingunya, in 2007. How’s that for starters?

And Venice, of course, has been sinking for centuries; it’s just happening faster now.

6. Alaska

A fish out of water, ice out of the freezer & a polar bear in the equator are no fun

Polar bears and tundra vegetation are both on the threshold of extinction, unable to cope with rising temperatures and melting ice. Floods and food shortage aren’t very hospitable conditions for any species. This is almost a preview of the world if corrective action is too late.

7 . Bangkok

Where will the world go for a massage?

Ridden with problems of population explosion and land subsidence, Bangkok has increased in popularity many fold over the years. Not many people know that the buzzing city is sprawled over a base of soft marine clay, due to which many fear it could be submerged entirely by 2030.

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Shivangi Rajendran

As the newest member of the content team, Shivangi Rajendran comes from the world of professional dancing. With a passion for travel and a flair for writing, the Masters in Mass Communication is just an added advantage. A gypsy at heart, she doesn’t believe in planning and is always ready to pack her bags and leave.

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