The southern part of Bangladesh may be submerged due to the sea level rise by the next century. Available reports conducted by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), World Bank (WB), Department for International Development (DFID), Bangladesh Centre for Advanced Studies (BCAS) indicate that Bangladesh's climate is changing and it is becoming worse day by day. In the famous Oscar winning Al-Gore movie Bangladesh has been highlighted amongst the most vulnerable countries, which would go under seawater by the next century.
According to a Guardian report, climate change will take the form floods, intrusion of salinity and droughts -- all of which will drastically affect crop productivity and food security. It will cause riverbank erosion, sea water level rise and lack of fresh water in the coastal zones.
The report says, the prognosis is: more extreme floods in a country already devastated by floods; less food for the country in which half of the children already don't have enough to eat; and less clean water for the country where waterborne diseases are already responsible for 24 per cent of all deaths.
In addition, according to another forecast, were the Earth to warm by just one degree Celsius, 11 per cent of Bangladesh would be submerged, putting the lives of 55 million people in danger.
Today state sovereignty and national interest are playing the major role over global interest. At this level, role of the global governing bodies like United Nation and the Bretton Woods institutions such as the World Bank (WB) gives a light of hope to the poorer and vulnerable countries like Bangladesh. Institutions such as the WB and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) are working towards promoting 'sustainable development' in developing countries. Different IOs have activity in Bangladesh regarding climate change. The Department of Environment, Bangladesh along with UNDP, EU and DFID jointly initiated a programme named Climate Change Component of the Comprehensive Disaster Management Programme (CDMP). This is a comprehensive five-year plan, which will work towards awareness building among local community and others. The scale of success of this project needs to be analysed also.
However, at global level, IOs' role such as United Nations Environment Plan (UNEP) or the process like the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) has been acclaimed. The UNEP initiative of the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has been recognised for its role in creation of awareness against climate change or global warming. Nevertheless, these organisations so far have been very successful in creating global awareness to face the environment issue but not so much successful in creating a platform for global co-operation.
For instance, UNEP has attempted to raise issues such as desertification and fresh water supply problem, but since these problems mainly affect the South, little attention has been given to them by the Northern Industrialised nations. In addition to that, early in the UNCED process for example, many non-governmental groups with the backing of some governments proposed the need for an international agency to promote energy efficiency and renewable energy and renewable energy sources, as a balancing complement to the existing International Atomic Energy Agency, which to date is the only UN body directly concerned with energy matters, which was fiercely opposed by the oil producing countries.
Furthermore, an analysis says that all the UNCED texts seem far removed from the ideal global partnership.
The climate change will hit the poor harder than rich according to the forecast. On the other hand, NGO's role in the global summits on environment is getting bigger. Emergence of the multi-billion dollar NGOs like Greenpeace, OXFAM, World Resource Institute and Third World Network were relentlessly working to promote a platform of a global co-operation.
A good example is Global Forum in Rio which is a parallel event of Rio declaration. These NGOs have expertise like scientists, economists, sociologists in their strong team. The establishment of the Commission on Sustainable Development (CSD). There are claims that NGOs are engaged in lobbying its country of origin's interest in the global summit. Most of the high profile NGOs are based in the North. Southern NGOs do not have the resource base of their Northern counterparts and thus tend to find themselves marginalised in both the process of setting the agenda for international environmental movement and access to international conferences and organisations. Southern NGOs have been critical of the sometimes patronising attitude of the dominant NGOs and the manner in which they conceptualise environment problems that may have specific impacts on the South.
So where will go from here? To whom we should seek assistance? Bangladesh contributes very little CO2 emission at global scale, yet we have to face the most disastrous result. At a global level rich countries and leading developing countries are divided on different issues, there are examples that different agents like the TNCs, IOs and NGOs tends to see the rich nations' interest first. The main emitters are rich and consequences left to bear for poor like us. Being a victim of global politics Bangladesh needs help from all around the world to avoid the catastrophe of climate change. The head of the UNDP said recently that 'the $100bn in financial assistance to "developing countries" would need to increase each year by 50 to 100 per cent." This statement shows that rich nations need to act quickly in order to save the victims of their economic growth. Countries like Bangladesh needs urgent assistance from the rich nations to start a massive programme to avoid disastrous result of climate change.
Why most of the global summits are ineffective? Environmental problems can be seen as a challenge to the principle of state 'sovereignty'. The USA, the largest polluter country in the world, withdrew itself from signing the Kyoto Protocol because of the opposition in its senate. Not only that priority for combating climate change differs from country to country, which as a result produces less effective environment regime.
In the case of climate change, most African countries are concerned about land degradation whereas small states like Bangladesh are concerned about sea level rise. More examples of how national interest is jeopardising the global interest is available from the past global summits. The oil exporting countries such as Kuwait and Saudi Arabia did not sign the climate convention. Because they fear it will hit their economy hard. Then again, how long Bangladesh could fight with the climate change alone? It already is spending most of its resources fighting against poverty, crime, corruption and many other issues.
Kerala's Coca-Cola case
On the south coast of India in Kerala, a panchayat moved the Supreme Court (SC) against Coca-Cola, accusing the US-based multinational corporation of overdrawing and polluting ground water. Papua New Guinea is another example where a developing country has to contend with environmental issues because of international business.
On the other hand, Africa must also contend with the rape of its natural resources by multinational conglomerates. Over-exploitation will serve only to further damage Africa's unstable environment according to WB report. An important point to note here is that all of these TNCs are based in the Rich North. They are very powerful as, largest 500 TNC controls about 70 per cent of the World trade, 80 per cent of foreign investment and 30 per cent of world GDP'. To this strong lobby Bangladesh is not a very important name that is for sure.
(Concluded)
