City braces for environmental problems: Nishat

Dhaka city will experience severe environmental problems in the coming days due to urban flooding caused by climate change, according to an eminent water expert, reports UNB.
"Dhaka city will face severe impacts of flood in the future due to heavy rainfall if 300 millimetres of precipitation occurs in the capital in a day," said Prof Ainun Nishat.
He was addressing the inaugural session of a three-day Gobeshona Conference at the Independent University, Bangladesh (IUB) in the city on Thursday.
Prof Ainun Nishat said the Chittagong port city has already experienced a severe urban flooding in the last monsoon with a 300-millimetre of precipitation in a day and if the same magnitude of rainfall occurs in Dhaka city, its drainage system will simply collapse, accelerating an urban environmental disaster.
The Gobeshona Conference for Research on Climate Change in Bangladesh is an annual conference that showcases research on climate change in Bangladesh. Gobeshona is a knowledge sharing platform for climate change research on Bangladesh.
About the global climate fund, Prof Nishat said the Green Climate Fund has already been set up. "If we (Bangladesh) can work out proper plans and actions to cope with climate change impacts and submit those to the fund authorities, I'm optimistic we'll get money from the fund."
Executive director of Bangladesh Centre for Advance Studies (BCAS) Dr Atiq Rahman said the poorest of the poor are going to be affected further due to climate change.
"The poor have already paid due to climate change impacts. If you go to the country's coastal belt, you'll see poor people raise their homesteads with their own resources," he said.
Speaking at the same conference Water Resources Minister Barrister Anisul Islam Mahmud said about 30 per cent of the floating people in the capital are the worst victims of riverbank erosion.
"About 30 per cent of the floating people of Dhaka city come from the areas affected by riverbank erosion, losing their homesteads and all belongings," he said.
Speaking as the chief guest, Mr Mahmud said Bangladesh is one of the biggest deltas with the estuary of three river systems-Ganges, Brahmaputra and Meghna (GBM).
The three river systems bring around 1.5 billion tonnes of silt, which run through Bangladesh each year accelerating the riverbank
erosion, he said, adding that 93 per cent of GBM catchment is outside the country while only seven per cent of catchment is located inside it.
"Water of the 93 per cent catchment areas of the Ganges, Brahmaputra and Meghna flow through only seven per cent narrow catchment," the minister said.
Terming climate change one of the biggest threats to Bangladesh, he said the problems of climate change cannot be addressed by Bangladesh alone as the world's rich nations are responsible for global warming.
Deputy Minister for Environment and Forests Abdullah Al Islam Jacob, France Ambassador in Dhaka Sophie AUBERT, water expert Prof Ainun Nishat, executive director of Bangladesh Centre for Advance Studies (BCAS) Dr Atiq Rahman and director of the International Centre for Climate Change and Development (ICCCAD) Dr Saleemul Huq, among others, spoke on the occasion.