Subeh Tarek :
On August 20 last, humanity witnessed an event first ever in its recorded history – rainfall on the summit of Greenland ice sheets. Though the news can be seen as just an addition to the piles of bad news 2021 has in its store, it deserves our attention in a greater span than we realize. With the downpour of China on one side of the world and Canada’s extreme heat waves on the other, the global climate change situation certainly sets an emergency alarm for every existing life on the planet. As surreal as it may sound, the possibility of a catastrophic climate change occurring in our only habitat in the galaxy is a very real fear now. And as a country on the coast of the Bay of Bengal, Bangladesh falls under the first-row victims of climate change. But how far down the line are we?
With more and more cases of natural calamities around, climate change has been a buzzword for quite some time. To identify the roots of what went wrong with the extreme events and why climate change needs to be addressed, it is better to start right from the beginning. As climate refers to the average weather conditions in a place over years, climate change means a shift in those decade-long average climate conditions. In anthropological analysis, Climate change is a natural process. After all, the earth was not always a habitat for the species ruling it today. It is the effects of climate change that make it a safe haven. So, the question arises, why be bothered by it now? The answer is its rapidness – the earth’s climate is changing faster than it should be and that is where the concern starts.
Bangladesh being a low-lying land by the Bay of Bengal, is highly vulnerable to rising sea levels and increasing temperature – the two major scenarios of climate change. Although the 57,360 square miles of area that belongs to the country is predicted to be affected by climate change, the coastal part of the region catches the eye as a red zone. The potential coastal zones can be divided into four parts- eastern, western, and central parts with the islands included as the fourth one. The areas mentioned are predicted to be affected economically, socially, and politically leading to a country-wide event of abruption. To start off, economical perceptions-the most visible of all aspects can be taken into account. The placement of Bangladesh makes the country inescapable of its dependency on the vast water body of the Bay of Bengal. From the country’s trades at the macro-level to the livelihoods of the locals at the micro-level, an extreme change can be as catastrophic as it sounds or even more.
The two other factors however are different from what meets the eye. As the sea level rises, more land area is lost with several being under threat of extreme salination. Bangladesh being dependent on its fertile soil and produced crops, the salination can create a country-wide food shortage with a viable chance of famine in extreme scenarios. The heavily affected structures, houses, shelter centers, educational institutes- not made for such catastrophic conditions will bring normal life to a standstill. With the agriculture sector’s wreckage in sight, another possibility is often predicted by researchers- migration. With one-third of the population at risk of displacement, cases of migration in the country’s capital and abroad is often the way out for the victims of climate change.
Climate impact on Bangladesh, having a population of 161.4 million, does not only make it to national issues but also an international concern. As important as it is to be aware of the predictions, be prepared to face the issue in a responding and alarming manner is something of more urgency. The major initiative of the government of Bangladesh addressing the predictions was the formation of The Bangladesh Climate Change Strategy and Action Plan (BCCSAP), 2009 which highlights the authority’s determination of taking climate change as an issue worth the time. The BCCSAP states climate change as a major concern in eradicating poverty, a threat to increasing employment opportunities, ensuring food security, providing access to energy and power, and achieving the economic and social well-being of all the citizens of the country. More so, Bangladesh is stepping up its role by working on the 2030 Agenda for sustainable development adopted by all the UN member states in 2015. It gives a ray of hope that Bangladesh is on the right track as the most active member to combat climate change. But at NASA’s dedicated page to climate change and global warming, the shocking statistics measure the long fight ahead for the human life in this delta. So how ready are you to take the stance?
(Subeh is a third semester student at Islamic University of Technology, Bangladesh).
