Thursday | 16 January 2025 | Reg No- 06
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Thursday | 16 January 2025 | Epaper

Climate change and environmental justice

Published : Tuesday, 14 June, 2022 at 12:00 AM  Count : 1071
Golam Rasul
We observed World Environment Day on June 5. In recent years, we are celebrating the day, while the climate is fast changing and the environment rapidly deteriorating.

According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Sixth Assessment Report (Working Group 2) published in February 2022, climate change is accelerating, and climate-related loss and damage are increasing.

According to the International Fund for Relief and Development (IFRC), extreme weather events and climate disasters have killed over 410,000 people and affected the lives of 1.7 billion people around the world in the last few decades. In 2020 alone, 30 million people were displaced due to weather related events.

Economic losses due to weather and climate related extreme events have climbed from $175 billion in 1970-1979 to $1.38 trillion in 2010-2019. Low- and middle-income countries like Bangladesh have borne a large share of these losses.
Bangladeshi citizens are among the least responsible for greenhouse gas emissions. Bangladesh has the lowest per capita CO2 emissions in the world, despite being one of the most affected by climate change. While observing the Environment day, question thus arises, is it just a day to celebrate the environment, or also time to actin protecting the poor who suffered, and the Mother Earth?

Bangladesh is one of the most disaster-prone countries in the world. Every year, the country faces different natural disasters incurring poor people huge economic losses due to climate induced disasters such as flood, cyclone, river bank erosion, sea level rise, saline water intrusion, ecosystem degradation, drought and other climate induced health and livelihood risks.

In Bangladesh, every year thousands of people lose their crops, cattle, land, homestead, and livelihood assets and they are displaced from home due to floods, riverbank erosion, cyclones, and other natural disasters.
Thousands of people were displaced by the super cyclones Sidr and Aila. According to a World Bank report published in 2018, as many as 13.3 million Bangladeshi may be compelled to migrate by 2050 due to intensified climate impacts. Losing land, homestead and livelihood assets, most of them move to towns and cities and shelter in slums.

The impact of climate change is more severe in coastal areas in Bangladesh. According to the IPCC report, the freshwater river area in the southwest coastal zone in Bangladesh is anticipated to shrink from 41% to 17% between 2012 and 2050.

Saltwater is intruding into freshwater in the coastal belt due to lower dry season flows from rivers originating from India and rising sea levels. This is affecting coastal ecosystems, which has not only disrupted agricultural livelihoods but also contaminated drinking water resources, increased health risks, diseases, food insecurity and malnutrition in the coastal areas.

Freshwater scarcity has caused and will continue to cause water borne diseases. A growing body of scientific evidence suggests a link between climate-related calamities and health and disease. Extreme weather phenomena such as floods, cyclones, storm, droughts, heat waves, and sea-level rise increase the risk of deaths, injuries, and psychological stress.

The association between heavy rainfall, floods and water borne diseases is well observed in Bangladesh and other developing countries. According to the IPCC Assessment, Bangladesh will face an increasing disease burden in climate hotspots, leading to 2.2 million additional E. coli cases by 2100.
Scientists now agree that the impacts of climate change would intensify even if emissions were reduced to keep global average temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels because the action on mitigation and adaptation measures have been slow and inadequate.

Some climate change impacts are unavoidable because they have already been 'locked in' to the Earth's system and losses and damages may occur where adaptation limits have already been reached and adaptation is physically and technically impossible and socially unacceptable.

Loss and Damage, initially recognized in COP 16 in the Canc�n Adaptation Framework and later in the COP 19 through the establishment of Warsaw international was mechanism for loss and damage. In Paris agreement, loss and damage was first recognized separate from adaptation and dedicated an Article (Article 8) on Loss and Damage in COP 21 in Paris.

Loss and damage had also been a contested issue in COP 26 in 2021. After strong pressure from developing countries, in COP 26, loss and damage were recognized as important aspects of climate negotiation.

The COP 26 acknowledged, "Climate change has already caused and will increasingly cause loss and damage and �, will pose an ever-greater social, economic and environmental threat".

It also reiterated the "urgency of scaling up action and support, as appropriate, including finance, technology transfer and capacity-building, for implementing approaches to averting, minimizing and addressing loss and damage associated with the adverse effects of climate change in developing country Parties that are particularly vulnerable to these effects".

Despite this recognition, no concrete step has been taken to compensate the poor people of developing countries who are least responsible for greenhouse gas emission and global warming but withstanding the worst of the climate change impacts.

What commitments do we make for the people who have suffered the most because of environmental and climate change, despite the fact that they have contributed relatively little to climate change?
It is necessary to ensure environmental justice. We must acknowledge the loss and damage as well as the suffering of the poor people of developing countries and the responsibility of the developed countries for their historical emissions and resultant change in the climate and environment.

It is necessary to take comprehensive action to curb the greenhouse gas emissions and develop clear international and national mechanisms to minimize the climate risks as well as compensate the poor people of developing countries for their suffering.

The developed countries should provide long-term climate finance and assistance to developing countries to assist poor people in adapting to climate change in a sustainable manner.
Golam Rasul, Professor, Department of Economics, IUBAT- International University of Business Agriculture and Technology









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