The New Nation - Internet Edition

Our Correspondent

Gaibandha, 18 November: Enlisting the help of elephants, cows, donkeys and horses to get their messages across, more than four thousand people took part in a colourful march and rally in Gaibandha, northern Bangladesh, to raise awareness of climate change, and its impact on the most vulnerable communities.

Many in the crowd wore head banners reading "Stop harming, start helping". They are calling for richer countries, who are primarily responsible for most of the world's greenhouse gas emissions, to cut their national carbon emissions. They want more help for poorer countries like Bangladesh to undertake adaptation measures to reduce their vulnerability to the negative impacts of climate change.

Two elephants joined the crowd, one bearing the national flag of the United States, symbolizing the slow progress made by the world's leading industrialized nations to take steps to reduce global warming, which was blocking the development of poor countries like Bangladesh.

Among those taking part were farmers, carrying agricultural tools, and women living in char areas (islands of silt created within river systems), who have been forced to move their homes many times because of river erosion, caused by flooding and heavy rainfall. Climatic changes, they said, had made it harder to farm and feed their families.

The mass mobilization is the first of a series organized by Oxfam and its key partner, the Campaign for Sustainable Rural Livelihoods (CSRL), ahead of the United Nations conference on climate change in Poznan, Poland, next month (December 1-12)

In the last few years Bangladesh, already prone to cyclones and other weather-disasters, has seen an increase in the intensity and frequency of climate related problems. Changing conditions have meant weather-related disasters have become less predictable and more difficult to manage. A lack of information and resources makes it harder for the poorest communities to prepare or respond to increased hazards.

Scientists have predicted that Bangladesh could lose up to seventeen per cent of its land by 2050 because of rising sea levels due to global warming.