Our role on climate change

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A nine-member European Parliamentary Committee on Climate Change recently visited Bangladesh seeking the country's active engagement in a conference on this issue to be held in Denmark later this year. Bangladesh is most vulnerable to climate change. Yet it has typically been relegated to the role of a mere spectator in international forums on the issue.
Foreign Adviser Iftekhar Ahmed Chaudhury told the European Union (EU) delegation that Bangladesh would continue to play an active role in the international negotiations on global climate change. This sounds great. But we know that the environment ministry is yet to develop any of its functionaries whose expertise on climate change can match the requirements for effective presentation of our case in relation to issues in the arena of international negotiations. There should be a chief climate negotiator and a negotiation team which would rightly put forward Bangladesh's case in international forums. The government needs to develop a team consisting of experts who will consistently represent the country, highlighting its areas of concern for supportive actions by the international companies, at climate change forums.
One of the ways Bangladesh can see its demands heard and redressed is through a united stand with the other members of the LDC group of which it is a leader. It is in our interest that this group becomes effectively functional, upholding unity of the LDCs in the face of pressure from the polluting G7 member countries which want to downplay the importance of mitigation.
Unless Bangladesh capitalises on the current, high media interest in climate change and advocacy by various international supportive groups in favour of the legitimacy of demands for compensation in place of charity from the G7 group, it will continue to remain a positive onlooker as far as the developments in related international meetings are concerned.
Ahmed Reza
Dhanmandi R/A
Dhaka