GLOBAL civil society leaders at a climate seminar now in progress at Warsaw in Poland have said industrialized nations are responsible for global climate refugees and these refugees must have their right to be rehabilitated in the industrialized countries. We agree with their observations, share their concerns and urge the global community to formally recognize the rights of the climate refugees. Civil Society Organisations – a platform of nineteen civil society bodies from Asia, Europe and Latin America has raised the demand for recognition of the rights of the climate victims as the liability of the rich nations at the seminar started from November 11 under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. News reports said the participants including climate experts from Bangladesh hold the view that the world is becoming warmer at an increasing rate with the highest ever rise of temperatures this year. They blamed the industrialized nations for the rise in temperature saying, this in turn is causing the sea level rise to cause frequent cyclones, droughts and such other calamities contributing to a rapid rise in climate refugees all over the world. The rise in emission of greenhouse gases is the root cause of the global warming causing the melting of ice in the arctic and destroying the stability of global climatic behaviour. The number of global climate migrants will cross 1.0 billion by 2050 from 250 million now, experts told the seminar. They deserve to be rehabilitated and their physical relocation should be carried out to developed countries with equal rights and dignity.
The seminar has also identified Bangladesh as the worst hit nation by climate change. Its vast coastal belt has over 10 lakh hectares of land which has been destroyed by high salinity to turn into a barren land and losing its fertility for farming. Statistics showed on an average 4 lakh people enter Dhaka city every year in search of livelihood. Most of the migrants live in city slums in unhealthy environments. They are very poor and cannot meet the basic needs of life and become victims of chronic malnutrition, hunger, serious diseases and suffer from low level of life expectancy. Researchers indicate that most slum dwellers in the cities are environmental migrants driven out of home by cyclones or river erosion. Natural disasters often cause production decline and push marginal farmers to leave their ancestral homes and livelihood.
Bangladesh is a poor country, but the population of one of its coastal districts is more than the entire population of any island country taking the brunt of climate change. At least 20 million of Bangladesh’s over 160 million populations would be displaced, and one-fifth of the country’s 140,800 sq. km (55,000 sq mi) land surface would be inundated if the sea level rises by one meter by 2050. The cost of housing and relocating huge numbers of these people would be immense and impossible. Experts have rightly held the rich nations responsible for climate disasters and we welcome their demand that climate refugees must be the liability of the rich nations.
-With The New Nation input
