Adaptation to climate change is the only feasible strategy for Bangladesh

Bangladesh has been in the spotlight of its notorious and devastating natural calamities and other disasters like cyclones, flooding, desertification, salinisation, soil impoverishment and arsenic contamination in ground water for many years. Indisputably the impacts of global warming and climate change have severely imposed another disastrous phenomenon with existing one. Nonetheless, climate change sceptics may think otherwise. I don’t blame their doubts and above all denial as there has been turbulent year 2010 in which the climate change science has been undermined by leaked emails, which were shared by climate scientists from the University of East Anglia in the UK, failure of Copenhagen climate summit and mistakenly claimed in the IPPC’s 2007 report that all Himalayan glaciers could melt by 2030.

On the contrary, particularly on Bangladesh many climate change experts stated that the combination of rising seas, harsher storms and degradation of the Bengal delta may wreak so much damage that Bangladesh as we know it may virtually cease to exist (Jodi Jacobson, 1988 in Saunders, 2000, p.237). So many undeniable evidences are there and I believe that good sceptic arguments are always healthy when science gets very big. With carrying these new threats Bangladesh has been in the forefront of the debate, also has repeatedly reinforced the global arguments surrounding global warming and climate change.

Impacts of climate change are first felt in biophysically such as sea level rise inundates low-lying coastal areas, stronger cyclones results in increased coastal flooding, changing patterns in crops and vegetations, runoff changes and the risk of spread of infectious diseases. Long lists of biophysical consequences do not stop here; they impose a range of potential socio-economic impacts. Coping with these impacts depend on a society's technical, institutional, economic, and cultural ability. Therefore planned adaptation would determine how Bangladesh would cope against all odds of impacts of climate change (Klein and Nicholls, 1999).

In relation understanding regional and local environmental changes in Bengal delta is very important. Bengal delta has complex physical environment. The regional climate diversity, seasonal variation, geological characteristics, subsidence of low-lying coastal areas, local unpredictability and even variations of monsoon seasons from one year to another put Bangladesh in an unique situation to weaken the global discourse of global warming and climate change.

Bangladesh faces constant threats from floods, which are the usual scenario every year.  Large scale flooding during the rainy season and its force and length brings devastation on society and economy as a whole. Bangladesh is well known as one of the most flood-prone countries in the world. Fifty-four rivers flow into the country, which has the largest system of deltas and flat lands in the world (Symonds, 1998). Bangladesh captures only 7.5 per cent of the catchments area of the Ganges, Brahmaputra and Meghna rivers with 1.5 million square kilometres (Brammer, 1990). Rest of the vast catchments area with headwaters of those mighty rivers lie outside of the Bangladesh and has a tropical monsoon climate. Monsoon climate brings heavy rainfall that ranges annually from 300mm to 11615mm outside (Valleys in Nepal, Tibet and Cherrapunji on the Meghalaya plateau) and 1250mm to 5000mm inside of Bangladesh (Brammer, 1990, p.13).

Subsidence; motion of the earth’s surface is an alternative threat to Bangladesh. Many experts have blamed on several factors which have contributed to Bengal delta subsidence (Milliman, 1992) including continuous loading of sediment from the rivers, excessive tapping for hydrocarbons or groundwater, and compaction or shrinkage with drying. Milliman et al (1989) make more explicit reference to Bangladesh and they suggest that some low-lying deltas have natural subsidence rates as great as 1 to 10cm/year, that is 10 to 100 times the rate of present sea-level rise (Bradnock and Saunders, 2000) and Bangladesh is shown as subsiding at 1cm/year which is greater than Nile (3.5mm/year) and less than Mississippi (1.5cm/year) and New Orleans (2cm/year).

Another unique dimension of Bangladesh’s environment is the role of plate tectonics (Bradnock and Saunders, 2002). This primal but recently understood tectonic origins of Bengal Delta have provided another new facet, its destructive nature and impacts of it has catastrophic ability to bring an end to existence of Bangladesh. Three geo-tectonic provinces such as the Stable Shelf, the Central Deep Basin (extending from the Sylhet trough in the northeast towards the Hatia trough in the south and finally the Chittagong-Tripura Fold Belt have been related to a regional plate tectonic scenario, especially the collision pattern of the Indian plate with the Burma and Tibetan (Eurasian) plates. Movement of these tectonic plates will create earthquakes which remain far greater threats than impacts of climate change in Bangladesh.

Human vulnerability in Bangladesh from environmental changes are immense including yearly flooding, cyclones, storm surges, mass deaths, droughts, displacement of human settlement, loss of fisheries and vegetation, loss of financial services, human health etc. Living in a world of such natural hazards most of the people in the region need to facilitate adaptation with these hazards (Ahmed et al, 1999). The economy of Bangladesh strongly depends on agriculture and natural resources that are sensitive to climate change and sea level rise. Target population’s coping capacity differs from one place to another. For example, cyclones in Bangladesh in 1970 and 1991 are estimated to have caused 300,000 and 139,000 deaths. In contrast, Hurricane Andrew struck the United States in 1992, causing 55 deaths (WHO, 2003).

In order to safeguard from the impacts, effective adaptive responses to climate change and sea level rise is very necessary. These measures include such as the creation support and extension services to improve or change agricultural practices, efficient mechanisms for disaster management with construction of safe shelter for emergency situation, construction of embankments where possible, development and introduction of desalinisation techniques, and the plantation of mangrove protection belts (Haq, 2002). We need to evaluate the effectiveness of our sea and river defences. One of the main focuses has to be how can we prevent big cities from flooding? However, the adaptation needs to be cross-cuttings of different disciplines and hence a multi-disciplinary and integrated approach needs to be taken up to reduce vulnerability. Coastal resources, Freshwater resources, Agriculture, Human health, Ecosystem and Biodiversity were identified as the most vulnerable to climate change in a study on Bangladesh: climate change and sustainable development 2000 by World Bank (Haq, 2002).

The question has always been raised whether adaptation or mitigation, which strategy is for Bangladesh? Lots of initiatives towards mitigating measures of climate change have taken into account both national and international levels namely signing the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the Kyoto Protocol, to stabilising or reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and enhancing carbon sinks. Even though how rigorous the mitigation levels are placed there in countries around the world the impacts of climate change are inevitable (Haq, 2002). And that is why country like Bangladesh needs to focus on strategic adaptation and implementation to the effects of climate change into the policy making under the National Adaptation Programme of Action (NAPA) and Bangladesh Climate Change Strategy and Action Plan (BCCSAP) for continuous adaptation and mitigation activities.

Building adaptive capacity (Klein and Nicholls, 1999) depends on a country’s plan, prepare, economic wealth, technology, infrastructure, knowledge that it processes, institutional arrangements, its commitment to equity, and its social capital. It is therefore not surprising that most industrialised countries have higher adaptive capacities than developing countries. Consideration of such issues question can be asked whether developing countries like Bangladesh do have the current level and sufficient adaptive capacity to cope with the impacts of climate change in the long run and what about funding for such strategies. Rajendra Pachauri; chair of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said before 2010 UN Climate Conference in Cancun that ‘financing is a prerequisite for a climate agreement’. He also stated that developing countries are very sensitive about the funding issue; talks will collapse in Mexico without strong and secure financing in place. The Poor have always been vulnerable to natural calamities. Therefore the best way to help the poor is to enable an environment that would provide the poor an opportunity to climb out of poverty and can afford a whole range of adaptation strategies to protect and insure themselves against climatic uncertainties (Haq and Klein, 2003).

Undoubtedly our planet is warming up, but we don’t know how far this will affect us in the future, also difficult tasks will still remain how to quantify the effects. More difficult when there are so many regional and local environmental variables exist. When we talk about global environmental issues like global warming and climate change it is important to understand the regional and local concept, more specifically Bangladeshi local environmental variability. How far is the global debate explains or taken into account the regional and local impacts of environmental changes? Many scientists argue that the impacts of climate change are inevitable and it appears that global warming already has increased the frequency of different unwanted scenarios in Bangladesh such as harsher storms and heavier rainfall, and because of that we experience further displacement of people from coastal areas and destruction of their livelihoods. As a result many people move to the cities where they will have limited or no access to basic utilities, or services and eventually settle down in the slums.

Even though how scrupulous the mitigation levels are placed, impacts of climate change are remarkably destructive for Bangladeshi livelihood. Therefore, it is necessary country like Bangladesh to focus on strategic adaptation and implementation to the effects of climate change into the policy making. And climate change issues should not be only the environmental concerns but also developmental problems where social concerns also need to be addressed.