This is a marvellously written piece. Without seeking to subtract from
it I would add that Bangladesh should first and foremost care if it
drowns. Bangladesh should be leading the charge against climate change.
And most importantly Bangladesh should be at the cutting edge of policy
design to combat the effects of global warming. Do we have the talent?
Of course we do. Do we have the political leadership to deal with this
issue properly? Of course we don't.
It is not enough that individual Bangladeshis of considerable courage
and merit are grappling with this issue.
We need politicians of vision and genuine talent to engage with our
people to face this crisis.
And all we can come up with is blood y Hasina and blood y Khaleda.
If 145 million people need to migrate it will not be to any Western
nation - it will have to be to India...
Ezajur Rahman
Kuwait
--- In alochona@yahoogroups.com, Isha Khan <bd_mailer@...> wrote:
>
> Everybody Should Care if Bangladesh Drowns
>
> A. Hannan Ismail asks what the global North's lack of commitment to
tackling climate problems might mean from a human rights perspective
> Bangladeshis have long been known as a mobile people. In fact, you
could say that it is in our blood to travel, move and explore. And yet,
this wanderlust owes much more to another form of liquid substance:
water.
>
> Have boat, will travel
> An earthquake-induced shift of the Jamuna river system made eastern
Bengal both navigable and cultivable from the late sixteenth century.
This change in waterways brought settlers from the west of the
sub-continent: pioneers who introduced agricultural practices and
non-liturgical Islamic rituals that intermingled with local religious
customs. Some of these newcomers became semi-mythologised as pirs (holy
men). The songs of Lalon, meandering across the late nineteenth century
like so many of Bengal's rivers, celebrated the admixture of faith and
farming that became their legacy.
>
> That other big chunk of water, the Bay of Bengal, enabled maritime
inhabitants of an earlier Bengal to explore and trade with Indochina and
Java, and export variants of Buddhism and Hinduism to those parts of the
world. All of this happened long before the Portuguese, the Dutch, the
French and then the British commandeered the waterways. Water too
carried agricultural labourers from greater Noakhali and Chittagong on
seasonal treks to the tilling fields of Burma. Such excursions are why
the old-timers of "Singapura" (Singapore) sometimes referred to people
of south Asian descent as "Bangals."
>
> Here today, gone tomorrow
> The eastern part of historical Bengal is an active delta. Geological
and hydro-morphological forces wash vast quantities of silt down from
the Himalayas and this settles to become alluvial sediment. This stuff
has built up over the last 6,000 years or so to form a territory that
is, for the time being at least, home to about 150 million people. Seen
through the telescope of time, Bangladesh is a geological infant. The
gradients of the Himalayas and its piedmonts, combined with the
monsoons, have made this plain land possible.
>
> Conversely, no Himalayas means none of our big rivers: no Padma, no
Jamuna and no Meghna: ergo no Bangladesh.
>
> Given enough time, all this will come to an end. Man-made climate
change will only accelerate us towards this conclusion. Thermal
expansion of the Bay of Bengal, tectonic events stimulated by changes in
temperature, increasingly erratic run-off from the estuaries, topsoil
erosion where most of the bio-diversity lives and dies, more intense
pulses of rainfall and a potential collapse of the monsoon cycle itself,
saline penetration, aridity in the western part of the country, and so
on.
>
> We have pressed fast-forward to the inevitable, as documented so
evocatively in Afsan Chowdhury's film Does Anybody Care if Bangladesh
Drowns?
>
> Eight centuries after water carried Bengali traders to the perimeters
of the Indian Ocean, and four centuries after water again brought
pioneers from upper-riparian reaches, water will again prompt
Bangladeshis to set sail.
>
> Awareness is good but not good enough
> Many readers of Forum understand that the science is now pretty clear.
Finally, fourth time round, the world is listening to the work of the
United Nations and its Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change
(IPCC). And with it, a new generation of Bangladeshis at home and
overseas has tuned in.
>
> The growing awareness has many converts, not all of whom you'd want
your mother to meet. The Pentagon, for instance, produced a report in
2004 warning of the national security threat posed by climate change
(the inevitable first filter for that most martial of governments).
Conservative periodicals such as The Economist have finally caught up
with 40 years of environmentalist lobbying on the matter.
>
> Bangladeshis who have been on the climate change beat for decades
continue to plug away, earning well-deserved plaudits for their efforts.
Indeed, we are fortunate to have some well-regarded and well-placed
experts at home and abroad. They are now being joined by a whole new
generation of players. Young Bangladeshi journalists are beginning to
pen their own news stories and analysis with increasing literacy. All
sorts of neophytes are getting involved too, mobilizing, meeting, and
engaging everywhere. The Bangladeshi blogosphere is buzzing, in its
sometimes-silly and sometimes-useful way.
>
> A growth in public awareness of climate change is a secular good. The
progressive text book says that public awareness and mobilisation can
induce both governments and the private sector to develop and deepen
commitments to climate change action. It goes on to say that people as
citizens can pressure their governments to act; while the same people,
this time acting as consumers, can prompt similar responses from
markets. Flipping to the chapter about empowering poor and marginalised
people, we understand that deepening democracy and making markets more
inclusive can bring power to still more people. Without informed and
mobilised publics, both governments and the private sector will likely
remain either too reactive or too slow, stuck-in-the mud throw backs
rather than vanguards of transformative change.
>
> But will public awareness be enough to save Bangladesh this time? I
have already suggested an answer to this question, but it is worth
burying false hopes and naïve defiance once and for all.
>
> Optimism of the will, pessimism of the mind
> Here is where we are today as described by actors worth listening to.
Rajendra Pachauri, chair of the IPCC, has suggested that the
international community has only seven years to pull its proverbial
finger out and demonstrate meaningful action. Bleak becomes bleaker if
you believe the World Wildlife Fund's assessment of the recent G8 summit
outcome on climate change: "Pathetic."
>
> Many readers will recall the recent remarks of former US
vice-president Al Gore, who has called for his country to shift to 100
per cent renewable energy consumption within ten years. Veteran
development thinker Susan George has weighed in to claim that bottom-up
participatory approaches will not help us this time. She calls for a New
Keynesian approach of directed top-down intervention to respond to the
crisis. These are constructive but desperate calls. If you think they
are radical ideas (they're not really), then listen to James Gustave
Speth, former head of the United Nations Development Program. He
contends that it's not very clever to expect the problem to become the
solution. In his new book, The Bridge at the Edge of the World:
Capitalism, the Environment, and Crossing from Crisis to Sustainability,
he concludes that the costs of capitalism far outweigh its benefits. He
argues that the world needs less rapacious and unsustainable approaches
to
> creating value out of ecology and society. Put this one on your
reading list.
>
> My personal experience suggests that pessimism is entirely
appropriate.
> Right now I work in Zambia, sub-Saharan Africa. The team I work with
has supported the government to develop a national climate change
strategy, a national action plan of adaptation, a national climate
change secretariat, the beginnings of in-depth economic analyses on the
impacts of climate change, developed a proposal to "climate proof" the
national development plan, and so on.
>
>
>
>
>
> We have helped augment country-wide awareness campaigns and are trying
to strengthen the capacity of Zambians to engage meaningfully in
multilateral processes. Finally, we are debating the very debatable
virtues of carbon trading.
>
> In spite of this effort, climate change remains just one of the
million issues vying for space within the consciousness of elected
representatives and public officials. Who can blame them? This is a
class of political and administrative elite that has been schooled and
seduced and sold to the myths of the CO2 economy. Not unlike upper and
middle class Bangladeshis. They are disciples of the narrowly
economistic world views of the IMF and the World Bank, one which
important bilateral donors such as the UK's Department for International
Development have been only too happy to reinforce down the years.
>
> Meanwhile mean surface temperatures have risen by fully one degree
celsius in the last 30 years; the Kalahari Desert is remobilising
northwards; aridity is becoming endemic; seasons are becoming less
predictable and disrupting the agricultural cycle upon which the
majority of the population depends; and natural disasters are more
erratic and intense when they do occur. If this wasn't enough, here come
the same donors again, sacks full of cash and this time talking the good
talk about climate change.
>
> What we miss
> Is there a future for Bangladesh's bottom 145 million? In Bangladesh?
No. Overseas? If this is about human rights, the answer should be: Yes.
>
> Let me try to explain. We all have rights, either realised or denied.
The Western mindset tends to obsess about civil and political rights,
but there are also social, economic and cultural rights. There are
rights to development and rights to habitat too. These rights can be
inter-generational. This makes the rights-climate change relationship a
Pandora's Box that most countries of the over-consuming global North
would want to remain nailed shut. This alone suggests that it is a track
worth taking.
>
> Why? As we can see from the discussions around Kyoto and its successor
arrangements, the over-consuming global North has yet to come close to
acknowledging its historical role in creating economies, politics,
institutions and cultures that depend on CO2-belching technologies. The
G8 cannot even agree on the baseline year from which to measure current
performance on emissions reduction. So, no accountability for the past
and not much for the present either.
>
> To establish "baselines" would imply responsibility. It's the foot in
the door through which the moral case for compensation could enter. The
Kyoto Protocol goes as far as to acknowledge differentiated
responsibilities, but a human rights-based approach to climate change
responsibility could take us further. Indeed, it could take us in the
direction of legal action or reparations.
>
> According to the Geneva-based International Council on Human Rights
Policy, there are at least four issues that can be considered in
bringing human rights into the climate change debate. Each has its
merits. First, looked at most simply, one can attribute responsibility
to groups of people who dump CO2-equivalent gases into the atmosphere
which have impacts on the current life chances of other groups of
people. Second, slightly more complicated, there is the impact of
current CO2-emitting activity that will lead to the loss of future life
potential. Third, and here things get tricky, since climate change is
global and will affect everyone, this raises a question of who is
responsible for how much of the burden for finding solutions. Fourth, we
can look at climate change in terms of entitlements for past, present
and future usage.
>
> It sounds complicated but only if you want to avoid taking
responsibility. If a rights-based argument doesn't carry the weight it
should, then perhaps the global North would prefer to apply some of its
own tested approaches to remedying transgression. Take, for instance,
the Nuremberg Principles.
>
> The good bits went something like this: If you invade another country,
you are responsible for everything that happens afterwards (civil and
ethnic strife: yours; sectarianisation: yours; economic collapse:
yours). Or to use former US Secretary of State Colin Powell's counsel to
President George W. Bush before Iraq II: "If you break it, you own it."
Now, translate this to climate change: if you emit without restraint,
you are responsible for everything that happens after that. Britain and
other Allied Forces applied this principle with a vengeance on the Axis
Powers after World War II. There are contemporary efforts that take such
an approach. I could cite, for example, the methods of assessed
repayment of climate debt proffered by Friends of the Earth.
>
> Pressing for justice and equity on climate change impacts from a human
rights-based perspective means that we in the under-consuming global
South must be ready to reverse the gaze and insist on the global North
taking responsibility. Yet today, few countries in the global South have
incorporated historical injustice into their calculations for a more
just future. Some do try to distinguish between emissions deriving from
conspicuous consumption as opposed to subsistence consumption. And there
are indeed a handful of countries, especially the big ones like Brazil,
China, India and South Africa, who have raised the matter of historical
responsibility.
>
> If we are serious about the human rights of Bangladeshis who will be
hit hardest by climate change, then our positions need to be invigorated
by a rights-based approach. Social, economic and cultural rights face
obliteration. The rights to development and habitation are at mortal
risk. Civil and political rights, which receive so much of the attention
under the crude shorthand of "democracy," will be washed away. The
rights-based approach means being serious about responsibilities. This
is about more than "Our Common Future" (the title of the landmark
Brundtland Report of 1987). It must begin with acknowledgment of
responsibilities for our common past.
>
> One-way ticket
> Since the "international community" does not appear to be up to the
task of shifting fast towards low-emitting systems of production,
distribution and consumption, the next logical and humane step would be
to start looking for new homes overseas for tens of millions of
Bangladeshis.
>
> To date, the effects of climate change have mostly produced internal
displacement within the borders of Bangladesh, with India also taking
some of the brunt. That is to say, its human impacts remain hidden from
the view of the global North. The net of migration must now be cast
wider.
>
>
>
>
>
> If I was a policy wonk, I would suggest that such relocation would
have two inter-related objectives: first, the protection of the rights
of the people relocated reconciled with the responsibilities of
receiving countries in lieu of actual repayment of climate debt; and
second, the avoidance of tension and conflict likely to occur in the
absence of such strategies. The first objective is the yin to the second
objective's yang.
>
> Sound crazy? It might, if you already haven't begun to think about it.
But we're serious about human rights, aren't we?
>
> It sounds nuts because today we live in a world defined by the
prohibitions of nation-states, plus regional and global compacts more or
less premised on the sovereignty of nation-states. This coercive
apparatus, erected across the globe over the last one hundred years, is
already over-loaded by toxic disputes involving nationalisms, class,
ethnicity, religion, livelihoods and resources. It doesn't take too well
to large-scale human movements. Then add tens of millions of
Bangladeshis to the equation.
>
> That's where we're headed because until the over-consuming global
North in particular pulls its finger out, it's the right thing to do
because it's the rights-based thing to pursue.
> It won't be fun. The politically-sanctioned resettlement of entire
populations is nothing new. They have been prompted by war and sometimes
presented as a remedy to avert further war. Hundreds of thousands of
Germans were resettled westwards after World War II as part of a
political outcome framed by the Allies. The Jewish diaspora too needed
accommodation after the horrors meted out during that same conflict.
Were it not for the subsequent denial of Palestinian rights and the
disastrous disregard for a status quo based on the 1967 borders, today's
bloodshed in that region could have been much
> reduced.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Large-scale resettlements are rarely handled well if handled abruptly
or non-transparently. Had Clement Atlee's Labour government not been in
such a hurry to run away from the Indian sub-continent (remember, it
brought forward its withdrawal one year ahead of schedule), perhaps the
appalling scale of massacre in the Punjab could have been averted. And
going further back still, resettlement of Native Americans westwards,
ahead of the advancing settlers, was marked by the treachery and
betrayal of President Andrew Jackson and others. Indeed, it served as a
thin veil for genocide until 1893, when the US census declared, with
chilling banality, that the internal frontier was closed.
> These precedents do not augur well for an evacuation of Bangladesh.
But what are the humane alternatives?
>
> A common refrain of south Asian immigrants growing up in Britain in
the 1970s and 1980s was: "We are over here because you were over there."
The influx of south Asians into Britain was intertwined with the British
presence in south Asia for two centuries beforehand. The New
Commonwealth Immigration Act of 1964 implicitly recognised this
historical tie.
>
> Today, people uprooted by climate change should be getting ready to
move for an analogous reason. "We are coming over there because you have
been emitting over, well, everywhere actually." You can call this
blow-back, historical symmetry, reaping what you sow, or just desserts.
But it is history balancing itself out and it cannot be avoided.
>
> A fight for the right
> The natural course of action for this human-induced catastrophe would
be for people to up and move from A to B. People have done this
throughout all of human history when confronted by environmental change.
In pre-modern times there was of course no talk about human rights. But
then again, there were no nation-states either.
>
>
>
>
>
> I wasn't joking about applying Nuremburg-type principles. Universal
human rights offer a basis -- I would argue the only basis -- on which
Bangladeshis can confront the restrictions and denials and obfuscations
of the over-consuming global North. That means adding a third pillar to
climate change responses alongside adaptation and mitigation:
litigation.
> Human rights can provide a vocabulary through which ethical and moral
arguments can be fought to protect and promote the life chances of
millions; it can generate grounds for solidarity between peoples who
share common cause for inter-generational justice, and it can call to
order those who would argue that the past is past, and we should now
only focus on a Churchillian age of consequences.
>
> If the G8 and other over-consuming emitters do not sort themselves out
soon, then a real age of consequences will be upon us. Tens of millions
of Bangladeshis will call upon the traditions of their maritime
forebears and make their ways to more clement shores. They will demand
their right to live.
> And what will we do then?
>
>
> A. Hannan Ismail lives in Zambia. You can contact him at:
ahannanismail @yahoo.co.uk.
>
> http://www.thedailystar.net/forum/2008/august/care.htm
>
------------------------------------
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