Somalia, Haiti and Afghanistan top the Climate Change Vulnerability Index, calculated from dozens of variables measuring the capacity of a country to cope with the consequences of global warming.

"We wanted to look at what is going to impact human populations," explained Fiona Place, senior environmental risk analyst at Maplecroft, a Britain-based firm that provides global risk intelligence for businesses.

Even if the world agrees at make-or-break climate talks in December to slash CO2 emissions, many of those impacts -- rising sea levels, increased disease, flooding and drought -- are already inevitable, UN scientists say.

Of the 28 nations deemed at "extreme risk", 22 are in Africa.

Bangladesh and Sri Lanka are similarly threatened, with Pakistan right on the edge and India not far behind.

At the other end of the spectrum, Norway, Finland, Japan, Canada and New Zealand are best insulated, due to a combination of wealth, good governance, well-managed ecosystems and high resource security.

The United States and Australia -- the largest per capita emitters of CO2 among developed nations -- are comfortably within the top 15 countries least at risk, according to the index.

With the exception of Chile and Israel, the rest of the 41 nations in the "low risk" category of the ranking are European or from the Arab Peninsula.

Japan's enviable position is due to its highly-developed infrastructure, its stable political and economic system, and its overall food and water security, explained Place.

Although it imports much of its energy needs, it does so from many sources, spreading the risk.

"Japan is also relatively rich in biodiversity, including well-managed forests. Human induced soil erosion is not a critical issue," she said.

"That's in contrast to, say, Ethiopia" -- or dozens of other poor nations -- "where there's a high population density and soil erosion is a real issue, impacting the ability to grow crops," she said.

One weak point in Japan, however, is the high concentration of populations along the coast exposed to rising sea levels.

"Japan does need to take very seriously the issue of climate change vulnerability," Place said.

Another country threatened by ocean levels, which many scientists say will go up by at least a metre by century end, is Bangladesh, most of whose 150 million people live in low-lying delta areas.

Among the so-called BRIC economies -- Brazil, Russia, India and China -- only India is in the "high risk" group, due to high population density, security risks and especially its resource security.

India's food vulnerability was highlighted last month by a study in the British journal Nature which said that the country's underground water supply was being depleted at an alarming rate.

China and Brazil face "medium" risk, while Russia is in the "low" category.

Many small island states literally at risk of being washed off the map by rising seas, such as Tuvalu and the Maldives, were not included in the ranking.

The climate change index is based on 33 distinct criteria grouped into six sub-indices: economy, government institutions, poverty and development, ecosystems, resource security, and population density in relation to infrastructure.

The two items weighted most heavily are potential impact of rising sea levels, and mismanagement of land resources, both forests or agriculture.

earlier related report
French science yacht to map climate change
The schooner Tara is to set sail on a three-year scientific voyage on the trail of naturalist Charles Darwin to map the effects of climate change on the marine organisms from which all life evolved.

The 150,000 kilometre (81,000 nautical mile) journey will take the French boat into all of the the world's oceans and from the ice caps to the tropics, following and also expanding on Darwin's 1831-1836 trip on board the Beagle.

That voyage inspired Darwin's theory of natural selection to explain the evolution of species, while the Tara's trip will study the clouds of tiny ocean flora and fauna that produce 50 percent of the world's oxygen.

"Without these microorganisms man would never have come into being. If they disappear, so do we," Eric Karsenti, the Tara's 60-year-old scientific leader, told AFP as the crew prepared for their departure this weekend.

"Marine microorganisms -- 90 percent of the oceans' biomass -- absorb the majority of atmospheric carbon dioxide and produce half our oxygen," explained Karsenti, head of cellular biology at the European Bio-Molecular Laboratory.

"Measuring the impact of the warming that they are undergoing and studying the carbon and oxygen cycle will allow us to incorporate as yet unknown data in future climate simulation models," he said.

The mission, dubbed Tara-Oceans, is the double-masted yacht's second related to climate change following an 18-month trip between 2006 and 2008 to chart the shrinking ice sheets in the Arctic between Siberia and Greenland.

This time, the boat will cruise warmer waters in the Mediterranean and the Indian, Pacific and Atlantic Oceans as well as returning to the Arctic and Antarctic and making stops in around 50 countries.

Divided between the 36-metre yacht and various laboratories on land, around 100 scientists will be involved in analysing the samples and data gathered.

"This ambitious mission will plunge us into the invisible world of marine ecosystems, one of the least explored realms of oceanography," said Etienne Bourgois, head of the company Tara Expeditions.

"From viruses to jelly fish, larvae and fish and coral, to various microorganisms such as coccolithophorids and diatoms, we are going to study all the ecosystems at the base of the marine food chain," said Karsenti.

"This has never been done at the global level and in the continuity of all the seas of the world," he added.

The effects of climate change on marine organisms like plankton are not yet fully understood -- some species might bloom in warmer waters, others might die out -- and many are also threatened by pollution such as fertiliser run-off.

As ocean species die or thin out it has an effect right through the ecosystem as they form the base of the food chain as well as an oxygen source.

The voyage will largely be financed by the fashion house Agnes B. and Tara Expeditions has signed several partnership agreements, including one with the global news agency Agence France-Presse (AFP).

"The mission in this case is universal and the adventure unique," said AFP chairman Pierre Louette.

"It's about allowing as many people as possible to see what ails our oceans and what nevertheless still leaves them so rich, and this to promote awareness of our natural environment," he said.

"In contributing to science and consciousness by distributing this news across the whole world, AFP is faithful to its own mission."

The Tara is due to sail out of the Breton port of Lorient on Friday or Saturday and head south across the Bay of Biscay towards its first stopover in Lisbon on September 11.

From there, it will round Gibraltar and enter the Mediterranean.

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