Bangladesh must be saved, UK Parliament told By Syed Nahas Pasha London, Nov 7 (bdnews24.com)—A senior British politician Frank Dobson MP told UK's Parliament this week that worldwide action is needed to rein in climate change and save the most at-risk countries like Bangladesh.  The Labour MP and former health secretary, terming it "the most vulnerable" country, said Bangladesh could only be saved by supporting long-term climate adaptation plans on a "vast scale". "Nothing else will do," Dobson said during a five-hour debate on climate change in the House of Commons last Thursday. Secretary of state for energy and climate change Ed Miliband admitted in the debate that the 15th UN Climate Change Conference (COP15) at Copenhagen in December is unlikely to produce a legally binding way forward on curbing global emissions and tackling climate change. He said "political agreement" was a more likely outcome, which he hoped would drive forward "a very clear timetable, to a legally binding treaty". Miliband told the Commons: "I think an agreement without numbers is not a great agreement. In fact it's a wholly inadequate agreement." In the Barcelona climate talks this week, held in preparation for COP15, the poorest African countries walked out of talks in protest that rich nations were not prepared to pledge the required cuts in emissions to avoid significant global warming. China, India and Indonesia have all recently published plans for emission cuts, but political wrangling among industrialised nations and emerging economies over details of the agreed proposals looks set to continue. Bangladesh, meanwhile, which fears rising seas will displace 200 million people by 2100, has been at the forefront of the Least Developed Countries in pressing for global climate adaptation funds and a climate refugee plan at international forums ahead of the Copenhagen summit. Dobson's speech in the Commons on Thursday focused entirely on Bangladesh, termed on the "frontier" of climate change. He told the house, "Today's debate is general and wide-ranging, and I will leave it to others to deal with many of the issues involved. It is clear that the climate is changing and that in most parts of the world it is changing for the worse. I wish to concentrate my attention on the one place that is most vulnerable to climate change and has the largest population at risk—Bangladesh, a country a little larger than England and with nearly three times our population." Highlighting the problems of flooding caused by climate change, he told fellow MPs that dangerous and damaging floodwaters come from three different sources, sometimes at different times and sometimes in combination. The monsoon rains over Bangladesh, the meltwaters of the Himalayas and cyclones from the Bay of Bengal all cause flooding. All three sources of flooding are beyond the control of the government and people of Bangladesh. All that can be done is to try to protect against them, he said. "Most of Bangladesh is formed of the delta of not one but two of the world's major rivers, the Ganges and the Brahmaputra, as they discharge their waters into the Bay of Bengal. As a result, most of the people of Bangladesh live on one of the ultimate frontiers of the world—a frontier between land and water and between the works of humankind and the forces of nature," said Dobson. "Bangladesh has been successful in developing manufacturing industry, but most of its people are still dependent on the products of the land. The abundant water irrigates their crops and the silt renews the soil. That is in the good times. In the bad times, the self-same waters build up, get out of control and wreak destruction and death over huge areas. To put it in some perspective, the last major flooding extended over an area almost equal to the distance between London and Manchester. The scale is enormous." Dobson said Bangladesh had long shown tremendous resilience in the face of natural disasters. "In the face of those natural disasters, over the centuries the people of Bangladesh have shown a resilience unmatched anywhere else on earth with the possible exception of Holland. Land lost to the rivers or the sea has been reclaimed, new crops planted and replacement homes built. More recently, with help from the UK and other donor governments, limited steps have been taken to provide storm refuges and lift the level of the land." Dobson told the commons, "Until very recently, all that happened in response to occasional, sudden and rather unpredictable crises. Not any more. Climate change threatens to melt the snows and glaciers of the Himalayas more quickly than in the past, and it is likely to affect the monsoons and increase the frequency of the cyclones. Above all, it threatens an inexorable rise in sea level. That is not just a future threat—it is causing problems now in Bangladesh. " He praised Britain's climate pledges to Bangladesh. The UK is already providing £75 million to support climate change adaptation and has committed another £100 million in coming years to help people maintain livelihoods in areas most vulnerable to climate change, he said. "Those are immediate measures intended to deal with the problems that are arising now, but the longer-term protection of the people of Bangladesh will require funds and attention on an altogether vaster scale," said Dobson. "Otherwise, about half the population of Bangladesh—70 million people—could be affected by flooding every year and a tenth of the low-lying land could be lost for ever. Therefore, vast civil engineering works will be required: villages must be raised above flood levels; more flood and cyclone centres need to be built; embankments must be raised; and probably equally importantly, crops capable of coping with the occasional ingress of salt and brackish water must be developed." Frank Dobson said just one glance at the map of Bangladesh shows both the scale and the complexity of the problem and any measures intended to deal with it. "Climate change will cause problems in [the UK], but without wishing to diminish their significance in any way, they will pale into insignificance compared with the problems of Bangladesh. The white cliffs of Dover are not likely to be engulfed, but the chars, sandbanks, mudbanks and riverbanks of Bangladesh will be unless we help the resilient and talented people of that country to build the protection they need against the disastrous and deadly consequences of climate change." Frank Dobson is Labour MP for London's Holborn and St Pancras. |
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