BSS, Dhaka :
Foreign Minister Dr AK Abdul Momen on Saturday said Bangladesh needs to build embankments with renewable energy facilities along coastal belt as part of ‘climate mitigation’ to save its people from becoming climate migrants due to sea level rise.
“To protect our people from getting inundated by sea level rise and river erosion, and from becoming climate migrants, we need to create embankments high enough and wide enough to sustain in natural disasters,” he said.
Dr Momen said forestation of mangrove around these embankments would work both as buffers during the natural calamities like cyclones and surges and will also work as carbon sinking.
“We can also use the space on the embankments for installing solar panels and wind turbines to provide electricity to nearby off grid areas, and also to supply to the national grid,” he said
In addition, he said that a beautiful road on the coastal embankment would be a scenic road that creates jobs for tourism.
The foreign minister made the remarks while virtually inaugurating a two-day “Climate Camp 2021” organized by a local non-government organization named Earth Society marking the World Environment Day.
British High Commissioner to Bangladesh Robert Chatterton Dickson, Convener of the Climate Parliament Bangladesh Nahim Razzaq, MP, Special Envoy of CVF Presidency of Bangladesh Abul Kalam Azad, Resident Representative, UNDP, Bangladesh Sudipto Mukerjee and Country Lead European Climate Foundation (ECF) Monower Mostafa also spoke at the inaugural session.
Following the launch of the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration 2021 – 2030, the ‘Climate Camp’ brings the youth of Bangladesh at the community level together to take action on resetting their relation with nature to achieve the UN goals as #GenerationRestoration.
Noting that Bangladesh government is doing its best to tackle the climate challenges, the foreign minister said the national parliament declared it as a” Planetary Emergency”.
