Responsible leadership for a sustainable future
Saturday, 19 September 2009
Ameer Hamza
The environmental movement started some four decades ago with warnings that unwise exploitation and over-consumption of the earth's resources, and emissions of greenhouse gases, predominantly by the industralised North, were endangering the entire planet. Today, climate change is an undeniable reality. Although some experts see little reason to panic, by and large the prognosis is bad, claim most. If the current fossil fuel consumption patterns, with their gas-generating and heat trapping properties continue, global temperatures could shoot up by as much as six degrees centigrade within this century, warned the International Panel for Climate Change in 2001. And this would speed up snow-melt, leading to sea-level rise and triggering severe and more frequent floods on the one hand and desertification on the other. For Bangladesh a sea-level rise of one metre would mean the disappearance of all the islands and coastal areas, displacing some 17 per cent of the population. These dire IPCC warnings are not to be rubbished given cyclones like Gorky in 1991 and more recently the onslaught of Sidr and Aila.
The Prime Minister had been to the five-day Climate Change conference early this month in Geneva in a bid to make Bangladesh's case heard, which is important. This was one of the many meets taking place prior to the UN Climate Change Summit in December this year in Copenhagen. A World Editors' Forum is also expected to meet in Denmark next month, perhaps to be 'briefed' about the coming summit. Bangladesh, hopefully, will be well represented by knowledgeable media people who have sufficiently 'internalised' the all-encompassing problem of global warming and its multiple effects ---- unlike many among the 40-member entourage that had accompanied the Prime Minister to the Swiss capital.
Individually poor countries like Bangladesh do not have the global, political and economic systems to reverse the trend and secure their futures. They also find themselves becoming the world's cesspools, as the developed countries' dirty industries get dumped there. Optimists see hope in the fact that moneys are being made available from a Multi Donor Adaptation Fund to help developing countries cope. More and more North-South cooperation is noticeable in areas where the health of the entire planet is at stake, and wise policy makers can make environment-friendly choices if they are committed. Bangladesh must make the best of these global interactions and use them to direct its development needs.
Critics claim that most industrialized countries' emission-reduction plans are centred around trading carbon credits with the South rather than actually cutting their own emissions fast enough. Apart from token sums for renewable energy their business as usual continue to worsen global warming. Meanwhile China is fast becoming one of the world's largest emitters and India's emissions are rising at twice the global average rate, according to one report. At the present rate of growth the Southern countries together will be contributing half of all global emissions by 2020, and in another decade, as much as two-thirds !
Southern governments have the right to development but that does not mean they can avoid obligations to seek sustainable ways just as the North cannot shirk its responsibilities of cutting its GHG burden urgently and earnestly, by helping the former to adapt to climate change, financially and technologically. The benefits of an inextricably interdependent world is that even the least developing countries can now jump-start on the latest sustainable technologies that smart innovators are coming up with. With an enlightened leadership the right choices can be made that need not have adverse impacts on the immediate environment and ultimately on the planet as a whole.
The environmental movement started some four decades ago with warnings that unwise exploitation and over-consumption of the earth's resources, and emissions of greenhouse gases, predominantly by the industralised North, were endangering the entire planet. Today, climate change is an undeniable reality. Although some experts see little reason to panic, by and large the prognosis is bad, claim most. If the current fossil fuel consumption patterns, with their gas-generating and heat trapping properties continue, global temperatures could shoot up by as much as six degrees centigrade within this century, warned the International Panel for Climate Change in 2001. And this would speed up snow-melt, leading to sea-level rise and triggering severe and more frequent floods on the one hand and desertification on the other. For Bangladesh a sea-level rise of one metre would mean the disappearance of all the islands and coastal areas, displacing some 17 per cent of the population. These dire IPCC warnings are not to be rubbished given cyclones like Gorky in 1991 and more recently the onslaught of Sidr and Aila.
The Prime Minister had been to the five-day Climate Change conference early this month in Geneva in a bid to make Bangladesh's case heard, which is important. This was one of the many meets taking place prior to the UN Climate Change Summit in December this year in Copenhagen. A World Editors' Forum is also expected to meet in Denmark next month, perhaps to be 'briefed' about the coming summit. Bangladesh, hopefully, will be well represented by knowledgeable media people who have sufficiently 'internalised' the all-encompassing problem of global warming and its multiple effects ---- unlike many among the 40-member entourage that had accompanied the Prime Minister to the Swiss capital.
Individually poor countries like Bangladesh do not have the global, political and economic systems to reverse the trend and secure their futures. They also find themselves becoming the world's cesspools, as the developed countries' dirty industries get dumped there. Optimists see hope in the fact that moneys are being made available from a Multi Donor Adaptation Fund to help developing countries cope. More and more North-South cooperation is noticeable in areas where the health of the entire planet is at stake, and wise policy makers can make environment-friendly choices if they are committed. Bangladesh must make the best of these global interactions and use them to direct its development needs.
Critics claim that most industrialized countries' emission-reduction plans are centred around trading carbon credits with the South rather than actually cutting their own emissions fast enough. Apart from token sums for renewable energy their business as usual continue to worsen global warming. Meanwhile China is fast becoming one of the world's largest emitters and India's emissions are rising at twice the global average rate, according to one report. At the present rate of growth the Southern countries together will be contributing half of all global emissions by 2020, and in another decade, as much as two-thirds !
Southern governments have the right to development but that does not mean they can avoid obligations to seek sustainable ways just as the North cannot shirk its responsibilities of cutting its GHG burden urgently and earnestly, by helping the former to adapt to climate change, financially and technologically. The benefits of an inextricably interdependent world is that even the least developing countries can now jump-start on the latest sustainable technologies that smart innovators are coming up with. With an enlightened leadership the right choices can be made that need not have adverse impacts on the immediate environment and ultimately on the planet as a whole.