Nation struggles to deal with climate crisis

Prof Dr Ahmad Kamruzzaman Majumder :
Bangladesh is one of the world’s nations being most sensitive to climate change as a result of its unique geographic location. Natural disasters such as tropical cyclones, storm surges, river and coastal flooding, landslides, and droughts frequently affect Bangladesh. Due to the frequency and severity of these natural disasters, as well as Bangladesh’s socioeconomic status, the lives and livelihoods of people throughout the nation are negatively impacted. These disasters also cause damage to infrastructure and economic assets.
A consequence of Bangladesh’s susceptibility to natural disasters is climate displacement, which is the forcible uprooting of people and communities from their homes and lands. These include “slow onset processes” like coastal erosion, seal-level rise, salt water intrusion, changing rainfall patterns, and drought, as well as “sudden onset events” like floods, cyclones, and river bank erosion. Tidal height rises along the coast (resulting in tidal flooding) and riverbank erosion inland are the main contributors to climate change in Bangladesh. Tropical cyclones, storm surges, and river flooding in the mainland and coastal regions are the main secondary causes of displacement. On the mainland, the coastal areas and the river delta regions have seen the most relocation. A total 24 coastal and mainland districts in Bangladesh’s 64 districts already have relocated people due to climate change. In Bangladesh, six million people are thought to have have been relocated as a result of climatic threats. The effects of climate change, however, are expected to make Bangladesh even more climate sensitive. Many of the natural disasters that Bangladesh is already susceptible to, such as flooding, tropical cyclones, storm surges, salinity intrusion, and river-bank erosion, are predicted to get worse as a result of climate change.
The Brahmaputra, Ganges, and Meghna, three of the world’s largest rivers, form the delta in which the majority of Bangladesh is located. These rivers carry around two billion tonnes of sediment annually and have a combined peak discharge during the flood season of 180,000 m3/sec, which is the second greatest in the world after the Amazon. The majority of the nation, which is less than 5 metres above sea level, is vulnerable to river flooding. Approximately one-fourth of the country is flooded on average every year.
As the country struggles to deal with the Rohingya crisis, hundreds of thousands are forced to take the difficult decision between urban slums and ravaged coasts. Bangladesh, a heavily populated, riverine country in South Asia, has always managed to survive its fair share of hurricanes, floods, and other severe weather events. But today, climate change is speeding up time-honored destructive processes, producing fresh displacement patterns, and igniting an unprecedented wave of hurried, chaotic urbanisation. The State Department and other foreign aid organisations have not done enough to stop migration brought on by climate change in developing nations, according to a new study from the U.S. Government Accountability organization, which singled out Bangladesh as being especially vulnerable. In addition, Dhaka serves as a warning for refuge cities around the world as climate change forces up to 200 million people to migrate globally by 2050. The Internal Displacement Monitoring Center estimates that over the past ten years, natural catastrophes have caused an average of 700,000 Bangladeshis to be uprooted annually. When there are major cyclones, like Aila in 2009, which caused millions of people to be displaced and over 200 fatalities, this number tends to increase. However, even in years that are comparatively quiet, there is a growing drumbeat of eviction as factors including crop failures, erosion, saline intrusion, sea-level rise, and repeated flooding make life along the coast impossible. According to a March 2018 World Bank estimate, the total number of Bangladeshis displaced by the various effects of climate change might reach 13.3 million by 2050, making it the nation’s top cause of internal migration.
The migrant crisis in Bangladesh is a small version of climate injustice, which is one of the biggest problems in the world right now. Cyclones, monsoons, floods, and hurricanes that don’t stop have eroded the shorelines, and rising sea levels have sunk homes. At the Copenhagen Climate Summit in 2009, rich countries promised to send $100 billion each year to developing countries by 2020 to help them deal with climate change. We never got to the goal. The elephant in the room at COP 26 in Glasgow last year was who, when, and how much reparations should be paid to developing countries. Bangladesh’s National Adaptation Programme of Action (NAPA), which was made by the Ministry of Environment and Forests, was finished and put out in 2005. A Project Steering Committee, led by the Ministry of Environment and Forests and made up of people from other important ministries, departments, and agencies like the Ministry of Finance and Planning, oversaw the planning process.
Climate displacement in Bangladesh will only get worse as climate change makes natural disasters that are already causing people to move around the country happen more often and with more force. It is very important that effective and long-lasting solutions to this growing crisis are found right away and put into place. Climate displacement in Bangladesh will only get worse as climate change makes natural disasters that are already causing people to move around the country happen more often and with more force. It is very important that effective and long-lasting solutions to this growing crisis are found right away and put into place.
 
 (The writer is the Dean; Faculty of Science, Chairman; Department of Environmental Science, Stamford University Bangladesh).