As Munjurul Hannan Khan, deputy secretary of the Bangladeshi Ministry of Environment and Forests told a conference in Dhaka last month, ‘For the north, [climate change] will mean a compromise with lifestyle. For us, it’s about future survival.’
But the sight from Old Dhaka is not all as grim as these projections alone suggest. While Western policymakers direct their focus toward mitigating carbon emissions, Bangladesh is one of the few countries to accept the inevitability of climate change and start tackling adaption head-on. Once the very symbol of backwardness—an ‘international basket case’ in Henry Kissinger’s infamous words—today’s Bangladesh may well soon be leading the way into a shared future of climate insecurity.
Saleemul Huq, a senior fellow at the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) in London, says Bangladesh, with its relatively high levels of education and a burgeoning awareness of climate change issues, was well placed to establish a ‘comparative advantage’ in adaptation research. ‘Over the course of the next ten years, this is where the world will learn how to deal with climate change,’ he says. ‘This is ground zero.’
Later in the year, Huq is relocating to Dhaka to head a new International Centre for Climate Change and Development (ICCCAD), based at the city’s Independent University. The aim, he says, is to use Bangladesh’s current situation as a means of training researchers and policymakers from other developing countries. ICCCAD will initially offer short courses, he says, but hopefully expand soon into a fully-fledged international Masters program in climate change adaptation studies. ‘The demand for knowledge and training on climate change is now mushrooming. People understand the problem and now they want to do something about it,’ he says.
Huq says adaptation could encompass a wide range of measures, including efforts to bolster anti-flood infrastructure and improve cyclone detection systems, draw migration away from Dhaka through regional job creation initiatives and encourage the resettlement of villagers dwelling on chars, river islands seen as particularly vulnerable to floods and rising sea levels.
Indeed, the country already has a firm adaptive foundation, having faced more than its fair share of devastating natural disasters. Today, as a result of early-warning systems and emergency evacuation plans, deaths from cyclones and tropical storms have fallen sharply: the Bhola Cyclone killed as many as half a million people when it made landfall in Bangladesh (then East Pakistan) in 1970; in 2007, when Cyclone Sidr was detected in the Bay of Bengal, around two million people were evacuated ahead of time and the death tolls—cited at 3,447 by one official—were correspondingly lower.
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Prof. Josephine Ngaira
Good, the article clearly spells out the main causes of degradation of Dhaka as population pressure exerted both on water and road networks and dense settlements on low lying areas. I want to point out that the people of Bangladesh should not get desparate after identifying contributing factors to the vulnerability of Dhaka to the effects of climate change. Some solutions to deal with and avoid the IPCC 2005 projected adverse effects could be drawn from the people who are likely to be affected themselves, community based adaptation. The polluted Buriganga river can be cleaned, could borrow a leaf from Kenya’s Minister for Environment- John Michuki who cleaned The murky Nairobi river to a clean flowing river within 6months. The Inernational Community in collaboration with the govt of Bangladesh should resettle those 1ooo,000 to upper ground even if it means settling them in Africaor elsewhere safe. Our concern now is the welfare of the poor in society. The highlight in the paper is good, keep it up.
Faisal Islam
Thanks for this timely article highlighting Bangladesh’s vulnerability to climate change as well as its achievements in terms of preparing to deal with the challenges head on.
There is a factual mistake in the article that I thought I should point out. It not the case that “Dhaka is free from cars running on petrol or diesel (the use of compressed natural gas is mandated by law).” Most private and public transports (cars, pick-ups, buses etc.) have been converted to run on CNG because CNG costs 60-70% less to cover the same distance. However, there are petrol or diesel run cars and most inter-district trucks still run on diesel because of not having adequate access to CNG stations and due to technical concerns over converted engines requiring more maintenance in the long run.