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Bangladesh has to bear the brunt of awful climate impacts though its contribution to global warming is negligible, believed to be less than 0.47 per cent of global emission. The Bonn-based green organisation Germanwatch reaffirmed this phenomenon and focused on how climate change is likely to leave disproportionate impact on countries like Bangladesh. It estimates that climate-induced disasters inflict a loss of $3.0 billion on this country annually and affect above 6.3 million of its people.
Because of its unique location and geophysical formation, Bangladesh is a disaste- prone deltaic plain, battered almost regularly by cyclones, floods, heat waves, erratic rainfall and drought that seriously hinder its development efforts. In recent years, these extreme climatic events are taking place in Bangladesh more frequently and with increased fierceness. Quoting Germanwatch, this newspaper reports that cyclones have assumed a more devastating proportion and are taking place recurrently in the Bay of Bengal under the impact of global warming. Bangladesh was devastated by some 49 cyclones since 1960 and was swept over by as many as five cyclones just in twelve months beginning from May 2023.
Scorching heat waves have become an almost common feature of the country's weather pattern during the summer months. According to Bangladesh Meteorological Department, mercury rose to a record high of 43.8 degree Celsius in Jashore in April last year. The World Weather Attribution claims that climate change has made heat wave 30 times more likely, indicating a growing threat of compounding climate disasters.
Drought is increasingly becoming more and more damaging due to declining rainfall ? for example, 66 per cent in April, 44 per cent in May and as low as 16 per cent in June in 2023. But the most devastating impact of climate change on this low lying country is that some 17 per cent of the country's total area along the coastal belt is likely to be permanently submerged under seawater due to rise of the sea level by only one metre at the end of the century. This will lead to a complete destruction of the flora and fauna of the affected areas, forcing millions to migrate to other areas.
The combined effect of all these climate calamities will lead to a human catastrophe in this most densely populated country. Poverty of about 21 per cent of the population is a harsh reality, only to be aggravated by almost every disaster. Poverty scenario follows a cyclic pattern in this country due in part to climate catastrophe: as a section of the poor people somehow pulls itself out of poverty, another section slides down to it following a disaster. Climate catastrophes make poverty eradication a difficult task in this country.
Germanwatch underscores the need for urgent action as climate crisis is increasingly becoming a worldwide security risk with the intensification of global warming. It also called for increased climate finance for vulnerable countries to keep global warming near the set target of 1.5 degree Celsius above the pre-industrial level. Though some of the wealthy nations like Spain, Italy and Greece are exposed to Nature's fury, coastal countries such as Bangladesh are most vulnerable to it. Since these countries have to suffer the impact of global warming despite no or negligible contribution to greenhouse gas emission, they deserve due compensation from the worst polluters to tide over the crisis. Experts suggest, as the global climate change is taking place due to GHG emission by developed countries, they are obligated to provide for the loss-and-damage fund as adopted by the UN at the Dubai climate conference in 2023. Bangladesh must strive hard to get its legitimate share of the global climate fund and at the same time go on with its own mitigation and adaptation programme.