By Farjana Akter/VOICE
First published in http://forum-adb.org

5 Aug 09 -- Most of the rural people of Bangladesh think that the changing climate, as well as the frequent natural disasters, happened by God's hand. These are natural disasters. They also think that because of our sins God gives us these troubles. These simple and vulnerable people are quite far removed from global politics and injustice order. They do not know that they are victims of climate change.

Death, loss of livelihoods, drought, severe weather threats, flooding, and heavy rainfall are all common manifestations of climate change seen in Bangladesh. People in Bangladesh are struggling with two giant difficulties: poverty and climate change. It can be said that climate change is one of the causes of poverty. People from the south are the main victims of climate change. Now it is well known by all that they are not responsible for causing climate change, but they are suffering the most from it. This is all about inequality and climate injustice. The world's poorer nations, which have contributed very little to global greenhouse gas emissions, are excessively affected by climate change.

Bangladesh is extremely vulnerable to storm surges from tropical cyclones and the country has been a victim of some of history's deadliest storms. A cyclone in 1970 killed as many as 500,000 people. Cyclones in 1991 and 1997 each left 150,000 people dead. In 2007 deadly Sidr devastated thousands of people’s lives, houses, livelihoods, agricultural lands and so on. Recently Aila, a tropical storm hit Bangladesh. Hundreds of people become homeless, living under water. Though they are surrounded by water, they have no clean water to drink. Many families have seen their land become an island. The storm has devastated farmers who were preparing to harvest rice and other crops. Miles and miles of crop land are now submerged in water. An Oxfam report says "chronic hunger may be the defining human tragedy of this century, as climate change causes growing seasons to shift, crops to fail, and storms and droughts to ravage fields."

Aila destroyed 4,000 kilometres of roads and embankments, according to government figures. Food and Disaster Management Minister Abdur Razzak said 100,000 poor villagers had been living on embankments and roads since the cyclone washed away their homes. International charities say the number of homeless could be around 375,000. There are also 1700km of river embankment that have been damaged by Aila.

Women are main victims of climate change. During floods and storms they have been confronting crisis in their daily lives. Houses are under water but they still need to cook and look after their family. They made a temporary room for cooking in the embankment. This difficulty hampered their reproductive health and women also faced serious problems with sexual harassment due to moving to embankments or roadside lands.

Fisherfolk communities mainly in the coastal belt depend on the sea. The sea is their only way of making a living, much like the farmers depend on their land. Many fishermen have disappeared in the sea during a storm. Some of them make it back home after struggling at sea, but without their boat they have lost their one and only way of livelihood. These fishermen had borrowed money for making their boat. Now they still have to pay back the loans without a source of income. How is this possible?

Bangladesh is a poor country; uncertain and frequent disasters damage its resources and make its economy more vulnerable. Climate change makes people refugees. While once they owned land, houses and boats, now they are homeless, empty, and poor. They come to Dhaka  the capital of Bangladesh, living in slum areas. Some of them work as soil diggers or rickshaw pullers. Their wives work as maid servants at rich men’s houses. There is no hope for them to go back to their own homes, which are now in the river or under the sea. The number of climate-displaced people has been increasing in Dhaka.

Debates and discussions are growing from country to country and from table to table; while the situation is worsening and people’s suffering is increasing. UNEP's Environmental Food Crisis report articulates that land degradation, erosion, drought and climate change are already causing a food crisis that has resulted in a 50–200% increase in selected commodity prices, driven 110 million people into poverty and added 44 million more to the undernourished.

Under the UNFCCC, the Conference of Parties (CoP 15) will be knocking at the door in December 2009. In preparation for the final negotiations in Copenhagen many inter-sessional climate negotiations are taking place. Most of the signatory countries of the climate protocol are looking forward to a new agreement that could address the issue of climate change. Developing countries are asking developed nations to cut their emission levels in order to keep the increase in average global temperature below 2 degrees Celsius. We are looking towards Copenhagen for a fair and just negotiation within the UNFCCC framework to bring about climate justice for all.