By S. Habib

This year monsoon season, Bangladesh suffered its worst flooding since 2004. Over seven million people in the north-eastern region have been severely affected, with floods damaging 185,000 acres of crops fields and 741,000 acres of other crops, including every kind of vegetables. This is in addition to the loss of precious lives, besides the damage to property and infrastructure. Bangladesh has always been dependent on on its water assets.

Its location demands it, as it is situated on the lower regions of river basins, where the weather is branded by monsoon rain. In this delta region, the basins of four major rivers converge the Ganges, Brahmaputra, Jamuna, and Meghna. Consequently, during years of highest rainfall, water flow has inundated substantial areas of the Bangladesh. Considering Bangladesh’s high susceptibility to climate change, it is worthwhile considering where Dhaka sits on the broad spectrum of climate geopolitics and the country needs to  consider to navigate the challenges posed by the climate crisis in the years to come.

When the Paris Agreement on climate change came into being, member countries agreed on an international agenda to restrict global warming to well below 2°C and follow struggles to limit it to 1.5°C. The purpose of this consensus was also to reinforce the capability of countries to treat with the impacts of climate change and to support each other in their struggles.

The Sixth Assessment Report (AR6) of the UN’s International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) shows that if the world simply proceeds on a as usual basis against the 1.5°C temperature goal, there will be irreparable consequences. The compounded impacts of climate change and an international pandemic have brought to a time when disturbing terms, such as ‘terrestrial emergency’, are realities Bangladesh has to live and accept, and learn how to tackle it. For the implementing the Paris climate goals, it is imperative for Bangladesh to explore the possibilities of new pathways to achieve national targets.

According to the World Bank, climate-related disasters affected nearly 700 million people across South Asia in the past decade around half of the region’s population. Bangladesh’s development is hampered not only by the global climate crisis and contextual realities like the COVID-19 pandemic, but also by the influx of over a million Rohingya refugees from neighboring Myanmar in recent years.

Even if countries have started implementing the Paris Agreement obligations diligently, the world will still experience a 3.2°C temperature increase by the end of this century. The countries that are bearing the brunt of climate change are small island nations and densely populated countries. Bangladesh falls in the latter group, in addition to having a huge coastal region in the Bay of Bengal.

Over the years, the country has come up with numerous strategies, including installing more than six million solar-home systems in off-grid areas, distributing over 4.5 million enhanced cooking stoves in rural areas, and even abandoning plans to build ten coal-based power plants worth USD 12 billion of foreign investment.

Bangladesh has taken large paces to fight the climate crisis with its own resources. It has established its own national Bangladesh Climate Change Trust Fund (BCCTF), with a budget of USD 447 million between the Fiscal Years 2009-10 to 2019-20. As Bangladesh takes steps to reach middle-income status, by graduating from least developed countries (LDC) rank, through it would be an end to its dependence on its development partners, such as Japan and other OECD countries.

For the implementation the Paris climate goals, it is imperative for Bangladesh to discover the new pathways to achieve national targets, which includes reducing carbon emissions. This target will be achieved by cutting about 96 percent emissions from the energy sector, such as power, transport, industry, households, commercial, agriculture, brick kilns, and fugitive emissions. The remaining is to be removed from agriculture and livestock, forestry, and municipal solid waste and wastewater.

Furthermore, the country needs a multi-stakeholder approach for development. It is important to mainstream climate change into developmental processes via inter-country interoperability. This is compound, but it can open doors for greater regional cooperation, such as with South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) neighbors, including Sri Lanka and the Maldives, which are also excessively susceptible to rising sea levels. Lastly, Bangladesh needs the global community help to recover from its plight.