The New Nation - Internet Edition

SPEAKERS at a conference in the city the other day suggested that Bangladesh should raise the demand for planned migration of around 30 million people to developed countries. Mentioning Bangladesh's vulnerability to climate change impacts, they underscored the need for adopting integrated development policies and pursuing a foreign policy towards realising compensation from developed countries. They opined that achievement of goals of poverty reduction would fail if climate change was not made a part of the overall development strategy.

Bangladesh's share in world carbon emission is near zero percent. According to sources, Bangladesh stands at the 66th position in the list of countries emitting carbon into the atmosphere with its annual emission of 0.1 percent. But this country is going to be one of the worst sufferers from climate change impacts. According to an IPCC report, Bangladesh is 'especially at risk' from sea-level rise and its implications like coastal erosion and land loss, inundation and sea flooding and increasing salinity of inland river water.

About 16 percent of the total land area of the country are feared to go under seawater for a rise of only one metre in the sea level and cause huge damage to agriculture and forestry and seriously affect the national economy. This is likely to force about 17 million directly affected people to migrate to other areas. With increasing rise of the sea level, more and more people will be forced to join the mass exodus. Being a densely populated country, Bangladesh does not have the land to rehabilitate them. So the demand for migration of the likely affected people is very much legitimate. The Pacific island of Nauru has reportedly managed to send many of its people to Australia while the Maldives has begun searching for land elsewhere to rehabilitate its entire population.