Dear Editor,
Hope you are doing well and thanks for publishing my previous write-ups
This is an article about "Sidr in Bangladesh and global awareness". I will be highly honoured if you publish this article. I apprecite your time to read this article.
Thanks
Have a nice time
With Best Regards
Ripan Kumar Biswas
New York, U.S.A
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Sidr in Bangladesh and global awareness
Ripan Kumar Biswas
Pedestrians, who were busy to grab the Thanksgiving sale, were frequently stuck with the news clips of a giant TV screen in front of the Reuters building at Times Square, Manhattan, New York. "This is unbelievable and even more pathetic than the last Hurricane Katrina, the most destructive natural disaster in U.S. history, which killed 1,600 people across the Gulf Coast, destroyed or severely damaged more than 200,000 homes and made more than 800,000 people homeless overnight," said a 45 year female New Yorker and asked me whether I am a South Asian or not.
Before leaving, the lady prayed to God for Bangladesh as I gave some more information about the recent Sidr cyclone in Bangladesh that uprooted more than 3,153 lives and unknown number of homes according to the army aid control room. Reports on death kept pouring in from remote areas as people and rescuers continued search for the missing from one place to another. The most deadly recent storm was a tornado that leveled 80 villages in northern Bangladesh in 1996, killing 621 people.
A noble-winning UN panel of scientists (IPCC) released their highly-anticipated report on climate change at Valencia, Spain on Saturday, November 17, 2007, warning of inevitable human suffering and the threat of extinction for some species and urging the world to adapt specific policies in order to avoid worst-case scenarios from developing.
As early as 2020, 75 million to 250 million people in Africa will suffer water shortages, residents of Asia's mega cities will be at great risk of river and coastal flooding, Europeans can expect extensive species loss, and North Americans will experience longer and hotter heat waves and greater competition for water, the report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says (IPCC).
The document says recent research has heightened concern that the poor and the elderly will suffer most from climate change; that hunger and disease will be more common; that droughts, floods, and heat waves will afflict the world's poorest regions; and that more animal and plant species will vanish.
By some estimates, a one-meter sea level rise would submerge about one-third of Bangladesh's total area, uprooting 25-30 million people. The category 4 cyclone on November 15, 2007 is one of the worst natural disasters and an example of the rapid changing of world climate which is largely caused by human activity in recent times as almost whole country was affected, but in the face of such a deluge, there is little that Bangladesh can prevent this natural disaster.
A cyclone, called a hurricane or typhoon in other world regions, is a low pressure system with high velocity spiraling winds. In the case of Sidr, these winds triggered a 15-foot tidal surge that violently struck populated areas and easily flooded Bangladesh's low topography, tore apart villagers, forced millions of coastal villagers to evacuate to government shelters, and destroyed much of the country's communications and electrical infrastructure, making phone calls and e-mail correspondence difficult.
The aftermath of the cyclone is more horrified as waterborne diseases have started breaking out in coastal areas. Stench from the decomposing cattle corpses, still afloat in water and lying scattered here and there. Government has to divert most of its finance for developing to overcome from the cyclone.
Asia, which covers two-thirds of the world's population, is effectively on the front line of climate change as half of the population living near the coast and billions are directly vulnerable to sea-level rise driven by a warming world.
Although many people in the world, low-lying tropical region regard the last catastrophic cyclone in Bangladesh as an act of God or fate, but others see it largely as a man-made disaster that could have been anticipated and should have been prevented. May be all of the globe's citizens will not share equally in its woes, but climate change is global in its sweep and more worrisome.
The United Nations Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon, has called for "urgent, global action" to meet the challenge of climate change. His statement followed the publication of the fourth and final report this year of the UN scientific panel which declared that climate systems have already begun to change. "There are real and affordable ways to deal with climate change and a new agreement should provide funding to help poor countries adopt clean energy and to adapt to changing climates," Ban Said.
Although President Bush described the report as flawed because major developing countries such as India and China, which are large carbon emitters, were excluded from any obligations, he recently welcomed defeated democratic presidential rival Al Gore to the White House for the first time since 2001, celebrating Gore's Nobel Peace Prize and discussing global warming.
World leaders will start negotiations next month on the resort island of Bali, Indonesia for a replacement to the Kyoto protocol, which requires 35 industrial nations to cut their global-warming emissions 5 percent below 1990 levels by 2012, when the accord expires. "There is an unprecedented level of awareness about climate change among people and leaders worldwide and it is important for all the countries of the world to realize that none of us will be apart of the affect of climate change," said Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of IPCC.
The IPCC, which distilled research from about 2,500 scientists, has confirmed that it is 90% sure that recent global warming is down to human activity, and warn that the impact of future temperature rise will be severe.
World will have a tripling of world food demand by 2085 because of higher population and bigger economies, and it would not be surprised to see as much as one-third of today's agricultural land will be no more to cultivate due to water. So it's going to be a tight race between food supply and demand. Bangladesh's food security is at stake following the recent floods and Cyclone Sidr and government requested world community to help the affected people with food.
Bangladesh's vast Sunderbans mangrove forest, home to the endangered Royal Bengal tiger, bore the brunt of a deadly cyclone that smashed into the country, likely killing wildlife. According to the Ainun Nishat, the World Conservation Union's country representative in Bangladesh, the strong tidal surge could have killed wildlife. Thousands of deers and some tigers would have been washed into the rivers by the surge and might have died. UNESCO included the Sunderbans into the World Heritage List in 1987 as because not only it is the largest mangrove forest in the world (140,000 ha) but also an excellent example of ongoing ecological processes.
It's a given fact that we are destroying the earth's climate and we're headed for disaster and there is no opposing voice to the rhetoric. According to the warning by the IPCC, unless action is taken, human activity could lead to abrupt and irreversible changes that would make the planet unrecognizable.
November 29, 2007, New York
Ripan Kumar Biswas is a freelance writer based in New York
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