Home ›› 19 Nov 2021 ›› Opinion
Worldwide, climate change is destroying livelihoods, infrastructure and communities, forcing people from their homes, towns and even countries. In 2016 alone, extreme weather-related disasters displaced around 23.5 million people. This does not include the people forced to flee their homes as a consequence of slow-onset environmental degradation, such as droughts, sea level rise and melting permafrost. Bangladesh is on the frontline of these impacts. Rapid changing of climate, the effects of greenhouse and global warming, is an alarming situation for the world with its adverse effects, sending several countries under the waves. Unfortunately, Bangladesh stands at the peak of climate attacks. The land, water, and weather are being enormously affected by this outbreak of climatic changes. The dangers will intensify, if the precautionary measure is not taken immediately. However, to offset the grave concerns of unintended climatic changes in Bangladesh, hardly any significant initiative is taken. The changes will put its adverse impact on the socio- economic conditions of the country, putting the next generation on the line. Some ominous signs are already there for the concerned to respond with the required amount of fervor. Nations, have delayed curbing their fossil-fuel emissions for so long that they can no longer stop global warming from intensifying over the next 30 years, though there is still a short window to prevent the most harrowing future, a major new United Nations scientific report has concluded. Humans have already heated the planet by roughly 1.1 degrees Celsius, or 2 degrees Fahrenheit, since the 19th century, largely by burning coal, oil and gas for energy.
And the consequences can be felt across the globe: This summer alone, blistering heat waves have killed hundreds of people in the United States and Canada, floods have devastated Germany and China, and wildfires have raged out of control in Siberia, Turkey and Greece. But that’s only the beginning, according to the report, issued by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a body of scientists convened by the United Nations. Even if nations started sharply cutting emissions today, total global warming is likely to rise around 1.5 degrees Celsius within the next two decades, a hotter future that is now essentially locked in. Some devastating impacts of global warming are now unavoidable, a major new scientific report finds. But there is still a short window to stop things from getting even worse. The new report leaves no doubt that humans are responsible for global warming, concluding that essentially all of the rise in global average temperatures since the 19th century has been driven by nations burning fossil fuels, clearing forests and loading the atmosphere with greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide and methane that trap heat. The changes in climate to date have little parallel in human history, the report said. The last decade is quite likely the hottest the planet has been in 125,000 years. The world’s glaciers are melting and receding at a rate unprecedented in at least the last 2,000 years. Atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide have not been this high in at least 2 million years. Ocean levels have risen eight inches on an average over the past century, and the rate of increase has doubled since 2006. Heat waves have become significantly hotter since 1950 and last longer in much of the world. Wildfire weather has worsened across large swaths of the globe.
Over the last two decades, the Global Climate Risk Index rates Bangladesh as the seventh most affected country in the world from extreme weather events. Depending on the extent of sea level rise in the coming decades, an estimated 15 to 30 million Bangladeshis could be displaced from coastal areas, if not more. A 2018 US government report noted that 90 million Bangladeshis (56 percent of the population) live in “high climate exposure areas,” with 53 million subject to “very high” exposure. The United Nations Children’s Fund’s 2021 Children’s Climate Risk Index rates the climate risk facing children in Bangladesh “extremely high the index’s most severe rating. Amid the complex interaction of poverty and climate change, Bangladeshis in coastal communities have already begun migrating inland, mostly to urban areas. With weak local governance, poor urban management and existing ethno-religious tension driving underlying domestic fragility, climate-driven migration and poverty will drive or amplify conflict and human rights challenges. Bangladesh is one prominent example of why US policymakers should adopt a robust climate strategy that accounts for the short-term effects of climate change on conflict, human rights and governance. Urbanisation has been a key part of Bangladesh’s development strategy. Although most Bangladeshis still live in rural areas, the urban population has been on a steady rise since the country’s founding in 1971, as citizens seek economic and educational opportunities in better developed areas. Over the last decade, the capital city Dhaka has been among the fastest growing cities in the world. Today, Dhaka’s population is estimated at over 20 million and projected to keep rising.
But Bangladesh’s rapid urbanization has not been met with needed infrastructure improvements and environmental protections, which has deepened daily challenges. The number of Bangladeshis living in poverty has been in steady decline since 2000, but recent studies suggest that extreme poverty is rising in urban Bangladesh and that was before Covid-19, which drove a 20-point increase in poverty in 2020. The United Nations estimates that around four million people inhabit the city’s over 5,000 slums, which are continually fed by an influx of migrants, who are often forced to depart good-quality housing for abject conditions due to climate-related displacement. These slums have poor water and air quality and unsafe infrastructure that endanger their residents. Moreover, Dhaka is itself prone to floods that will likely become more common and severe with a changing climate. As these areas swell, communicable disease is more likely to spread. Furthermore, as Dhaka’s formal and informal economies reach capacity, child labor, sex trafficking and child marriage already serious problems in Bangladesh will become more common. The enormous, unprecedented pain and turmoil caused by the climate crisis is often discussed alongside what can seem like surprisingly small temperature increases 1.5C or 2C hotter than it was in the era just before the car replaced the horse and cart. These temperature thresholds will again be the focus of upcoming UN climate talks at the COP26 summit in Scotland as countries variously dawdle or scramble to avert climate catastrophe. But the single digit numbers obscure huge ramifications at stake. “We have built a civilization based on a world that doesn’t exist anymore,” as Katharine Hayhoe, a climate scientist at Texas Tech University and chief scientist at the Nature Conservancy, puts it.
The writer is a researcher based in UK
