Global warming is bringing many physical changes like intense heat waves, severe droughts, ice melting, powerful storms, more destructive floods and rising sea level. These changes in turn affect food security and the habitability of low-lying regions as well as local ecosystems.
According to the leaked report of an Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), scheduled to be released in April 2007, drafted by Dr. Graeme Pearman, rising temperature will cause critical water shortages and millions of people in the world will die due to food shortage by 2080. 2 to 3 Celsius (3.6 to 4.8 Fahrenheit) rise in temperature will cause typical food shortages in a period of 70 years affecting 200 to 600 million people across the world, while coastal flooding will hit another 7 million homes.
Talking with Reuters late last month, Dr Graeme Pearman, a recipient of a United Nation's Environment Programme Global 500 Award in 1989 for his active involvement in a national awareness programme on climate change, said that Africa and poor countries such as Bangladesh would be affected most because they are least able to cope with greater coastal damage and drought.
According to the NASA's (National Aeronautics and Space Administration, U.S.A) Goddard Institute for Space Studies, over the last century, the average global temperature climbed from 13.88 degrees Celsius in 1899-1901 to 14.44 degrees in 1999-2001, an increase of 0.56 degrees. But four-fifths of this gain came in the century's last two decades. During the last century, sea level rose an estimated 10-20 centimeters (4-8 inches) and the projected sea level rise during this century will be 9-88 centimeters (4-36 inches).
Bangladesh scene
Climate change affects food security in many ways. In 2000, the World Bank published a map of Bangladesh showing that a one-meter rise in sea level would inundate half of that country's rice land. Bangladesh would lose not only half its rice supply but also the livelihoods of a large share of its population. The combination of a population of 144 million expanding by 2.7 million a year and a shrinking cropland base is not a reassuring prospect for Bangladesh.
Bangladesh's food supply is already threatened by flooding due to melting glaciers in some areas and droughts due to heat in others. Moreover, the typhoons and monsoons that routinely pummel Bangladesh are intensifying because of climate change.
It is so strange that when we have a real problem and that it threatens our so beautiful system, we tend to diminish the problem or making it disappear by focusing on the wrong thing. Although Bangladesh is a signatory to a number of Multilateral Environmental Agreements (MEA) including the Rio Conventions on biological diversity, climate change, and desertification, the country's capacities at different levels to implement these conventions are limited.
Bangladesh lies on a flat, alluvial plain. It is surrounded by India on three sides, while its southern border dissolves into the Bay of Bengal. Two mighty rivers, the Ganges and the Bramaputra, flow through Bangladesh and fan out like tassels into the Bay. This low delta and its beautiful mangrove islands are constantly transforming and shifting with typhoons, rains, and dry periods.
The soft, malleable coast is vulnerable to rising seas. Even if greenhouse gas emissions were to stop today, scientists believe that warming already underway will cause seas to rise between one and two inches over the next century. If nothing is done to curb emissions, sea levels could climb more than three feet. If this happens, 15 per cent of Bangladesh could be under water. The mangrove forests of the low-lying Sundarban islands, a world heritage site, as well as the Royal Bengal Tiger and hundreds of bird species may disappear.
It is precisely the topography that makes Bangladesh particularly vulnerable to the effects of global climate change. If these environmental effects converge with the country's high population and widespread poverty, they will create a perfect storm of disaster.
Moreover, Bangladesh doesn't have any capacity or planning to go through a real challenge under climate change, biodiversity, and desertification.
Life in Bangladesh is already harsh. Bangladesh's dense population may give a glimpse into the future elsewhere. In an overpopulated Earth, millions of people may have no choice but to live on the fringes of habitable environments. This in turn can severely increase the human toll of environmental disasters.
Bangladesh is poor and contributes only a miniscule amount of the world's carbon dioxide emissions that cause global warming. Possible solutions to water storage, reforestation and shelters are expensive and difficult. Nobody knows who will pay for disaster prevention and relief.
Continuing emissions of greenhouse gases from human activities are likely to result in significant changes in mean climate and its intra seasonal and inter annual variability in Asian region. Although the emissions of greenhouse gases usually more visible in the developed countries, Bangladesh should also aware of it due to lack of resources to protect this emissions.
Does Bangladesh have any intention and preparedness to with the serious impact of climate change?
