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According to the Global Food Policy Report-2022, 14.8 million people would be at danger of becoming hungry by 2030 as a result of climate change. The analysis, created by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) says, 11.3 million people would go hungry in 2030 if climate change had no effect.
Over 750 million people in South Asia are reportedly affected by floods, droughts, and other climatic hazards brought on by climate change, according to a report that was released on Wednesday for Bangladesh at a hotel in Dhaka.
Climate change is predicted to cause a drop in overall calorie consumption in Bangladesh of up to 17% by 2030. The research stated that the region has seen production losses and decreased crop yields as a result of the unprecedented suite of climate changes.
According to the study, up to 60% of the animal protein consumed by people in India and Bangladesh comes from subsistence fisheries, but increased salinity intrusions in inland aquaculture ponds have led to fish mortality.
While temperatures rose on average by 0.7 degrees Celsius between 1901 and 2018, a greater increase was seen across the Himalayas, according to the report (1.3 degrees Celsius). According to the paper, Bangladesh has experienced an increase in average annual temperatures over the past six decades, with warming intensifying from 2001 onward. From 1981 to 2010, there was also a drop in precipitation of roughly 84 millimeters per decade.
Extreme precipitation events will be 1.7 times more likely in Bangladesh by 2050 than they are now, read the report presented by Aditi Mukherji, principal researcher at the International Water Management Institute. The 2017 Bangladesh flood is described in the study as “one exceptional case.” In 2017, flash floods in Bangladesh destroyed 220,000 hectares of boro paddy that was almost ready for harvest. Paddy prices increased by 30% year on year as a result of the floods.
Under low- and high-emission scenarios, a different study estimates that Bangladesh will have lost between $18 and 20 million by 2050 in ecosystem services as a result of climate change. The IFPRI research claims that urea use, a significant nitrous oxide emitter, is substantially subsidized throughout South Asia, particularly in irrigated areas, leading to its widespread overuse. This conclusion is based on the analysis of many studies.
Shahidur Rashid, director (South Asia) of IFPRI, said during the event that the region would find it extremely difficult to meet the SDG target of ending hunger by 2030 due to the impact of climate change. The worldwide emissions from the agriculture and food industries will provide a significant challenge over the next 30 years, according to Channing Arndt, director of IFPRl’s Environment and Production Technology Division. Countries must address this issue.
Tenzin Lekphell, secretary general of the Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation (BIMSTEC), stated that “Climate change is not confined to national boundaries and our member countries must consider trans-boundary action on mitigation and adaptation to address the impact of climate change”.
Planning Minister MA Mannan said the government was committed to promote sustainable agriculture.
He stated, “We are working to enhance early warning systems, invest in climate smart technologies and develop crop varieties that can withstand heat and salinity.
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]]>The programmes included nature-based and eco-engineering interventions, agricultural investment, water sector and marine resource management in short, medium and long term actions.
Environment, forest and climate change ministry organised a pre-validation workshop on the issue at Hotel Intercontinental in the city on Saturday.
While addressing the workshop, environment minister Md Shahab Uddin said the government wanted to formulate an effective adaptation plan to address the risks of climate change.
‘Bangladesh will be able to minimise the risk of climate change by adopting and implementing short, medium and long term projects as planned,’ he said.
In the drafted NAP 14 hazards, 11 climate stress areas and four priority sectors — crop, water, urban and disaster management were given emphasis.
Chairman of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on the ministry Saber Hossain Chowdhury, quoting a report, said that Bangladesh is in high risk but low prepared country in climate change issue.
He said that the government had a number of plans but hardly implemented.
‘We need to evaluate our achievement from previous plans and prepare the next from gathering experience from that,’ he said while speaking as special guest.
Bangladesh needs a risk profile and clear information about the loss from climate change, he added.
He also emphasized accountability of agencies to the parliament and standing committees.
Deputy minister on environment and climate Habibun Nahar said area-specific solution for solving local problems was important.
‘Problems of the people living in the coastal area should be given priority,’ she said.
Shahab Uddin said the government is working to ensure security for the people in terms of food, water, electricity, health and the others. Initiatives are being taken to further enhance the capacity to deal with natural disasters.
Climate specialist Ainun Nishat said that only 20 to 22 countries have their climate adaptation plan and Bangladesh is one of them to prepare a NAP.
He said that climate should be addressed in all development projects.
Centre for Environmental and Geographic Information Services executive director and a member of NAP committee Malik Fida A Khan said that the drafted NAP will be incorporated with views of different walks of people before finalising it.
Secretary of the ministry Md Mostafa Kamal presided over the workshop, while the parliamentary standing committee chairman Saber Hossain Chowdhury, national project director of the NAP Preparation Project Md Mizanul Hoque Chowdhury and deputy resident representative of UNDP Bangladesh Van Nguyen addressed the workshop as special guests.
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]]>If the global temperature increases by 1 degree Celsius, the country could lose approximately 21 billion working hours, said the study, conducted by researchers at Duke University in the US.
It estimates if the temperature rises by 2 or 4 degrees Celsius it can result in a loss of 31 or 57 billion work hours annually in the country. The study also projected that an additional 1 degree Celsius global warming could occur by 2037 and another 2 degrees Celsius by 2051.
Luke Parsons, a climate researcher at Duke’s Nicholas School of the Environment, and his colleagues published a peer-reviewed paper titled “Increased Labor Losses and Decreased Adaptation Potential in a Warmer World” based on their study in Nature Communications on December 14 last year where they presented
these findings.
“As heat and humidity levels rise throughout the day because of climate change, options for moving outdoor labour to cooler hours will dramatically shrink, leading to significant worldwide labour losses,” said Luke Parsons, who led the study.
“Sadly, many countries and people most impacted by current and future labour losses are not responsible for the bulk of greenhouse gas emissions,” said Parsons.
On a hot summer day in Dhaka, the study said, the temperature remains between 27 and 28 degrees Celsius. At this temperature assuming a 12-hour workday, an average worker loses 10 minutes of working hours due to heat exposure every day.
At the current temperature, Bangladesh loses 254 hours of labour per person annually due to heat exposure. The economic impact of such a huge loss of working hours is also staggering.
At the current temperature, the global economy is losing $280 to $311 billion per year due to heat-related productivity loss. According to the researchers, most of this economic loss occurs in low- and middle- income tropical countries like Bangladesh where a large number of people are involved in manual labour involving
agriculture and construction. In terms of vulnerability to work hours and productivity loss due to global warming, Bangladesh is the most vulnerable country in South and Southeast Asia after India and China.
Dr AKM Saiful Islam, professor of Institute of Water and Flood Management at Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology, said the study is very much credible and alarming. “We have already observed that several parts of urban areas like Dhaka and Chattogram turn into urban heat islands where average
temperature becomes 2 to 3 degrees higher than the average temperature of the country,” he said. “Most of our workers such as agricultural and other informal labourers work in uncovered environments and have to endure extreme heat exposure. They will quickly become dehydrated and heat stress conditions such as
heat stroke, heat exhaustion, heat cramps will increase which will reduce their working hours,” said Saiful.
Again, in Bangladesh humidity also contributes to heat stress. “We have seen in several studies that under current water evaporation conditions a person cannot stay in one place for more than six hours due to heat and humidity if the temperature exceeds 35 degrees Celsius. “During the recent heat waves, the mean
temperature of our country exceeded this limit quite often. And, there is no doubt that such conditions will decrease working hours considerably,” added Saiful.
Saiful suggested several adaptive measures to mitigate productivity loss. “We need to increase sheds and green spots fitted with drinking water sources in the urban areas where people will be able to take rest during hotter days. We need to subsidise agriculture so that farmers can employ labourers in two shifts
particularly during the sowing and harvesting seasons,” he said. “We also need to bring all our citizens under universal health insurance coverage so that they can access quality healthcare anywhere anytime which will encourage them to work even under difficult conditions,” Saiful added.
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]]>The window was proposed at the last climate conference at Cancun and its modalities were approved yesterday.
Bangladesh and Canada are the co-chairs of this new window, which will provide ways for countries to assess their loss and damage from climate change.
Once they can quantify their damage, the countries will then be able to demand funds from the window.
So, when a cyclone will hit Bangladesh, it will follow the modalities to assess the damage and then claim funds.
The new window will go into operation at the next climate conference at Doha next year.
Meantime, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC) yesterday at a press conference said not all hopes are lost for the Kyoto Protocol and funds.
Christiana Figueres, executive secretary of the UNFCC that hosts the conference, said a ray of hope can be seen at least on two issues — Kyoto protocol second commitment period and an adaptation fund.
She said many countries have agreed to commit to the second commitment and hoped that a compromise agreement will take place.
Kyoto protocol, the only legally binding emission agreement that was signed in 1997 is to expire in 2012 and efforts are afoot to give it a new lifeline by asking countries to assign it for a second term.
But complexities have arisen as US is not interested to sign it and neither is India.
-With The Daily Star input
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]]>For the period 1991-2010, Bangladesh was followed by Myanmar and Honduras, the report said.
However, Bangladesh is not on the list of the 10 worst affected countries in 2010.
The report, titled “Global Climate Risk Index 2012”, was published yesterday in Durban, South Africa, at the UN Climate Change Conference.
Germanwatch, a Germany-based NGO that works in the areas of food, agricultural and climate change, analysed the quantified impacts of extreme weather events both in terms of fatalities as well as economic losses due to weather-related events.
This year’s analysis underlines the fact that the less developed countries are generally more affected than the industrialised ones.
Last year’s most affected countries were Pakistan, Guatemala and Colombia. They were followed by Russia, Honduras and Oman.
All the ten most affected countries in the 1991-2010 period were developing countries.
All these countries were hit by different weather related events, including hurricanes, floods and heat wave.
On an average, 7,814 people died each year in 251 instances of extreme weather conditions in Bangladesh during the period, causing damage of $2,091 million a year that led to a 1.56 percent GDP loss.
In total, more than 7,10,000 people died as a direct consequence of more than 14,000 extreme weather events, and losses of more than $2.3 trillion occurred from 1991 to 2010.
Except for Russia, none of the 20 countries most vulnerable to natural disasters are developed nations.
-With The Daily Star input
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As the stories emerging from Africa to Americas, Asia to Australia tell the same grave situation of ever increasing drought, floods, storms and hot spells, a Climate Change Conference began here yesterday with hopes that the rich nations will keep their commitments to extend helps to the poor and that they would themselves pledge to reduce carbon emission.As negotiations will roll on for the next two weeks, the key focus will be on breathing a new life to Kyoto Protocol, the only legally binding treaty to cut greenhouse gas, through agreeing to a second commitment period after 2012. The first commitment period mainly agreed by the European Union will expire next year.
The fate of Kyoto Protocol now mainly depends on whether the United States agrees to cut its emission. If the US does not agree, the whole thing is likely to fall through as other rich countries including the EU might step back. EU that contributes barely 11 percent of the greenhouse gas said it might renew its commitment for a second time. But that remains a big ‘might’.
The desperation to keep Kyoto alive was also reflected in the opening speech of South African President Jacob Zuma who opened the conference, also known as Conference of Parties (COP), at the International Conference Centre, Durban.
“You have before you the responsibility to re-affirm the multilateral rules-based system anchored by the Kyoto Protocol and to provide the funding needed to address impacts of climate change through activating the Green Climate Fund,” Zuma said.
“The expectation is that you must work towards an outcome that is balanced, fair and credible,” he stated.
The South African president also outlined how severe drought in Somalia is displacing people to Kenya — how scarce grazing land is leading to conflicts in Sudan and how hurricanes are pummeling coasts in the US.
“This meeting is taking place because climate change poses serious risks for humanity, especially in the developing world,” he said. “Climate change can no longer be treated as just an environmental challenge. It is a holistic, sustainable development challenge.”
But a sense of uncertainty prevails among the participants of the conference as nobody knows what will happen after the $30 billion Fast Track Fund timeline ends next year. The issue here is whether the developed world keep on funding the poor nations after 2012.
“We will also sit on the formation of the adaptation committee and technology transfer fund,” said Saleemul Huq, senior fellow of International Institute for Environment and Development. “We have to fix national adaptation plan modalities and look for funds from the rich nations. The rich have agreed to provide adaptation and technology transfer funds. But it is not clear how much they will contribute.”
Although there is a common sense of understanding that the rich nations will contribute their $100 billion to the Global Climate Fund from 2020, an agreement has yet to emerge on the structure of the fund. The transitional committee that was tasked with preparing the structure could only come up with a draft.
Meantime, smaller nations are declaring their own initiatives to cut greenhouse gas probably as a tactic to shame the rich nations.
“The good news coming into negotiations is a “growing momentum for action,” Christiana Figueres, executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), said at a press conference on Sunday, pointing to recent actions in nearly 20 countries to reduce carbon pollution.
And the South African president yesterday made it clear that his country is progressing towards reduction of emission by 34 percent in 2020 and by 42 percent in 2025.
“But such efforts are not enough to cap the rising temperature to 1.5 degree Celsius of pre-industrial era,” said Saleem. “We need solid commitment from the rich to reach that level. Or else, many countries will go under water.”
Courtesy of The Daily Star
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