City Desk :
Environment, Forest and Climate Change Adviser Syeda Rizwana Hasan on Monday said climate change is posing an existential threat to Bangladesh’s national security, territorial integrity and social stability, reports BSS.
Depicting a dire portrait of a future where rising seas and vanishing coastlines, she said climate-induced displacement could force Bangladesh to “redraw its map” within decades.
The environment adviser made the remarks while delivering a lecture titled ‘Impact of Climate Change on National Security’, held at the Defence Services Command and Staff College (DSCSC) in Dhaka. She warned that a one-metre sea-level rise – a plausible scenario by mid-century – would submerge 21 coastal districts, displacing millions and salinising rivers that sustain agriculture and fisheries. “When we speak of climate change, we are not just talking about sweet water turning salty,” she said, “We are talking about the surrender of sovereignty, the loss of national territory, and the erasure of communities.”
Rizwana cited projections that 52 small island nations, including the Maldives, could disappear by 2100.
For Bangladesh, she said, the stakes are even higher: 65 percent of the population relies on freshwater fisheries for protein, and saline intrusion threatens to collapse this lifeline.
The adviser dismantled the notion of climate change as a distant environmental concern, reframing it as a multiplier of instability.
Floods, cyclones, and droughts already cost Bangladesh one percent of its GDP annually-a figure set to double by 2050, he said. But, Rizwana said, the cascading crises of crop failures, water scarcity, and mass migration, she argued, will ignite conflicts over dwindling resources.
