Others say a large-scale migration out of the country will mean the world has failed to tackle global warming. It's a prospect they don't even want to acknowledge. "This idea of climate refugees take up too much of our time. It's an apocalyptic issue of the future," said Omar Rahman, dean of the Independent University, Bangladesh, in Dhaka.
Ainun Nishat, the International Union for Conservation of Nature's representative for Bangladesh, said he is skeptical of migration predictions. Even if they are true, he argued, Bangladesh's needs are more immediate: infrastructure improvements, cyclone shelters, improved flood warning systems and a massive build-up of food security.
'It's not time to worry about it'
"Will people leave? Maybe in a hundred years, but that's not my priority now," Nishat said. "People are living in areas that go underwater once in a fortnight in the coastal belt. The point is, they're still there. They're not migrating today.
"It's not time to worry about it. My priority is the natural disaster that is happening now."
This year, the Western world will continue to grapple with the issue. U.S. President Barack Obama will try to convince Congress to pass a domestic cap-and-trade bill. Meanwhile, the European Union is struggling to implement a plan on reducing emissions. In China and India, which have the economic muscle to begin some actions, debates continue to rage over how much responsibility to bear for fast-rising emissions.
There is little news about this here in Harinagar, where men and women said they probably won't be able to wait for politicians to agree on a global solution. Like the proverbial grains of sand that slowly assemble to make up a beach, individual families are making their painful decisions, creating the possibility of more cruel things yet to come.
"The area is getting worse. I don't think it's going to get better," Gaurpodomando said. His wife, Chorna, her face loosely framed by a red floral headscarf, bounced the couple's 3-year-old daughter on her hip and said she, too, wants to stay, but she's also realistic about the family's prospects. Maybe, she said, they'll go to Khulna, a booming port city about two hours away by car.
Gaurpodomando said his brothers living outside of Kolkata "say it's good over there. They keep asking me to go, and they tell me there's good earning to be done there."
But Harinagar, where the thatched mud huts still look out over a lush countryside, and where a woman who lost everything in a recent flood will still offer a visiting stranger a plate of eggs, has been his family's home for at least three generations.
"I'll do whatever work I can find, but I might have to go outside," Gaurpodomando said. "We might have to leave this village."
Reprinted from Greenwire with permission from Environment & Energy Publishing, LLC. www.eenews.net, 202-628-6500
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4 Comments
Add CommentThe entire planet needs to adopt China's one child policy. The primary force driving climate change is an overpopulation of homo sapiens and extinction of the other similar sized species not seen as food or pets by homo sapiens. Our planet had over time developed into a bio-diverse balanced system, we are destroying the balance.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTo prevent (actually delay) another extinction we all need to act now. Recognise the benefits of biodiversity, far more important than a multi cultural homo sapien planet.
If we don't act evolutionary pressures will restore balance, but it wont be a humane process.
I have an idea...rather than restrict ourselves to one child, how about we limit our maximum age to 35 years and then we are summarily put to death? Hmmm, seems I've heard that story line before. I wonder how mother earth managed to save itself from cataclysmic climate change in eons past.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisClimate is ALWAYS changing. Always has, always will. As a result, some areas become uninhabitable and others become habitable. Don't go prescribing vasectomies for everyone. If you believe in anthropogenic global warming, then that means that man-kind was smart enough to change the climate in one direction so we should be smart enough to change it in the other as well right? If you don't believe in it, then what difference does it make what we do either way?
It will be almost impossible to get people to agree to terminating their life at a given age, I would happily comply with such a global requirement and donate all my organs to the sick and the rest of my body to science. Asking people to lower fertility is possible. Science can modify microorganisms that reduce fertility, to be non pathogenic. We wont need vasectomies, when you want a baby just take a pill.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOur planet does regulate the environment using feedback mechanisms that is why we exist. Still there have been five major extinctions. We know the fifth could have been a result of a meteorite impact followed by an increase in volcanic activity. Our earth has a thin plastic skin on which we live followed by a molten layer. The impact of the meteorite may have exerted pressure on the molten mass. Liquids cannot be compressed and would try to squeeze out of every nook and cranny; this could be an explanation for the resulting volcanic activity.
Climate has been changing on earth ever since it formed 4+ giga years ago, but change has always been slow, except for some freak events, each of which can be attributed to a cause, some of which are still unknown.
We are now talking about rapid temperature change. Species are becoming extinct at rates greater than that experienced during the fifth extinction (40 K years approx.). Many scientists believe we are in the sixth extinction, I agree. To do nothing is to doom a decent but egocentric species to extinction.
Excellent article !
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhile the Earth has always endured natural climate change variability, we are now facing the possibility of irreversible climate change in the near future. The increase of greenhouse gases in the Earth?s atmosphere from industrial processes has enhanced the natural greenhouse effect. This in turn has accentuated the greenhouse ?trap? effect, causing greenhouse gases to form a blanket around the Earth, inhibiting the sun?s heat from leaving the outer atmosphere. This increase of greenhouse gases is causing an additional warming of the Earth?s surface and atmosphere. A direct consequence of this is sea-level rise expansion, which is primarily due to the thermal expansion of oceans (water expands when heated), inducing the melting of ice sheets as global surface temperature increases.
Forecasts for climate change by the 2,000 scientists on the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) project a rise in the global average surface temperature by 1.4 to 5.8°C from 1990 to 2100. This will result in a global mean sea level rise by an average of 5 mm per year over the next 100 years. Consequently, human-induced climate change will have ?deleterious effects? on ecosystems, socio-economic systems and human welfare.At the moment, especially high risks associated with the rise of the oceans are having a particular impact on the two archipelagic states of Western Polynesia: Tuvalu and Kiribati. According to UN forecasts, they may be completely inundated by the rising waters of the Pacific by 2050.According to the vast majority of scientific investigations, warming waters and the melting of polar and high-elevation ice worldwide will steadily raise sea levels. This will likely drive people off islands first by spoiling the fresh groundwater, which will kill most land plants and leave no potable water for humans and their livestock. Low-lying island states like Kiribati, Tuvalu, the Marshall Islands and the Maldives are the most prominent nations threatened in this way.“The biggest challenge is to preserve their nationality without a territory,” said Bogumil Terminski from Geneva. The best solution is continue to recognize deterritorialized states as a normal states in public international law. The case of Kiribati and other small island states is a particularly clear call to action for more secure countries to respond to the situations facing these ‘most vulnerable nations’, as climate change increasingly impacts upon their lives.