Even in India, where some four-fifths of the population still live in the countryside and where Gandhian suspicion of consumerism runs high, the rising tide is improving lives.

ECONOMIST: Poverty consumed, perhaps

Flood-tide: rising tide, part of the tidal cycle between low water and the next high water.

UNESCO: L O S S A R Y

Located at the thin end of the Thames tidal estuary, it is considered to be one of the cities most under threat from rising sea levels with around 150 square kilometers located below high tide level -- home to more than one million Londoners.

CNN: London leads climate change fight