Bangladesh wants rich nations to pay the billions of US dollars it says it needs to help fight the effects of climate change because they are the biggest environmental culprits.
The impoverished South Asian nation — one of the world’s lowest emitters of greenhouse gases — will highlight its plight to the British government and other international donors in London on Wednesday.
Bangladeshi Environment Secretary Rezaul Kabir said that a study by the World Bank, leading donors and the Bangladeshi government had found the country urgently needed huge amounts of money to ensure its survival.
PHOTO: AP
“We need at least US$4 billion at least by 2020 to build dams, cyclone shelters, plant trees along the coast and build infrastructure and capacities to adapt to increasing number of natural disasters,” Kabir said.
Environmental experts say Bangladesh is experiencing more rainfall, flooding and droughts, as well as cyclones as a direct result of climate change.
Last year widespread flooding and a devastating cyclone caused crop and infrastructure damage worth US$2.8 billion — around 4 percent of Bangladesh’s GDP — a World Bank study found.
“We hope Western countries will grant the money as compensation for being the biggest carbon emitters,” Kabir said. “They are responsible for our woes and the increasing number of the disasters that befall on us.”
“In London, we will show where we are vulnerable and present our strategy to fight the greater number of floods, cyclones, a rise in sea levels and crop losses,” he said.
Bangladesh’s army-backed authorities this year launched a US$44 million fund dedicated solely to fighting the problems that the country faces as a result of climate change.
The Nobel Prize winning UN Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) predicts rising sea levels will devour 17 percent of Bangladesh’s total land mass by 2050, leaving at least 20 million people homeless.
James Hansen, director of the US-based NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, paints an even grimmer picture, forecasting the entire nation will be under water by the end of the century.
One of Bangladesh’s leading environment scientists, Atiq Rahman — a co-author of the IPCC report — believes money is not enough and rich countries should feel obliged to offer assistance.
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