By the Numbers
The cost of doing nothing
THE UN climate change conference was kicked off in the Indonesian island of Bali on December 3, with the hope that it would achieve the much awaited breakthrough to address four key issues related to climate change. Over 10,000 delegates from 190 countries across the world are there for negotiations on a new global climate treaty.
A collective effort to combat global warming and climate change in Rio de Janeiro conference led to the creation of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change in 1992 and the Kyoto Protocol in 1997. Though enough nations ratified the Kyoto treaty agreeing to follow the environment friendly guideline to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, to bring it into force in 2005, the US and Australia did not ratify it.
It is encouraging that Australia's new prime minister Kevin Rudd has ratified the Kyoto Protocol on the opening day of the climate change conference. Rudd had pledged to commit Australia to the landmark UN treaty on greenhouse gas emissions as his first priority and kept his word after his official swearing as the prime minister.
Now a main thrust will be to draw the US, the world's largest greenhouse gas emitter, into the process. Among the most contentious issues ahead will be whether emission cuts should be mandatory or voluntary, as the US favours.
Over one billion people of 100 most vulnerable countries, including Bangladesh, face a bleak future due to climate change, according to a joint opinion paper prepared by two experts. According to the paper, 53 most vulnerable countries, including Bangladesh, Afghanistan, Bhutan, Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Nepal, and Yemen are from the Least Developed Countries (LDCs). The other countries are from Small Island Developing States (SIDs) and African nations.
The experts emphasised the need for taking strong mitigation and adaptation programs by the highest emitting nations, primarily the US, EU, China, Brazil and India, saying that if they fail to introduce strong mitigation measures, the most vulnerable countries will suffer catastrophic impacts over the longer term.
The UN secretary general Ban Ki Moon has called climate change "the defining challenge of our age." He said this while releasing the blunt and alarming final report of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) on November 17 in Valencia, Spain. The report has described the evidence of human-induced climate change as "unequivocal."
Ban said he had just completed a whirlwind tour to some climate change hot spots which he called as "frightening as a science fiction movie." He described ice sheets breaking up in Antarctica, the destruction of the Amazon rainforest in Brazil and children in Chile having to wear protective clothing because an ozone hole was letting in so much ultraviolet radiation.
The cost of doing nothing to reduce greenhouse effect has already been proved to be devastating, with the alarming frequency and magnitude at which natural disasters are occurring in recent days. The East Asian tsunami alone took a toll of 230,000 lives in 2004. Ten deadly disasters occurring in 2005 took away lives of more than 12,500 people. At least 395 natural disasters occurred in 2006, affecting 135 million people.
Economic cost of climate change is also enormous. According to the Stern Report, climate change could cost the world at least 5 per cent of GDP each year. It would be more than 20 per cent of GDP if more dramatic prediction comes to pass. The cost of Hurricane Katrina was $135 billion. The cost of climate change may rise to one trillion dollars a year within the next 35 years if the carbon emissions are not cut drastically.
Far more powerful then ever before, members of the UN panel said that review of the data had led them to conclude that reductions in greenhouse gases had to start immediately to avert a global climate disaster that could leave island states submerged and abandoned, decrease African crop yields by 50 per cent and lower global economic output by 5 per cent or more.
Over 2,500 climatic scientists from 130 countries, who contributed to the IPCC assessments, provided evidence that the industrialised countries, particularly the US and European Union, are responsible for global warming. Countries like Bangladesh, who are little responsible for carbon emission but vulnerable to climate change, should demand strong commitment from the developed world for gradual transfer of technology to facilitate environment-friendly economic growth.
The LDCs should also set to fight for adaptation funds. According to an estimate by Oxfam, the developing countries need at least $50 billion per year to cope with climate change, while the amount currently available is only $36 million.
Bangladesh is bearing heavily the brunt of climate change and its poor people are paying the highest prices to climatic stimuli that a man can pay. Climate change has been causing devastating impact on its socio-economic development, as both the frequency and intensity of natural disasters like floods, cyclone, drought, and tidal waves are on the rise.
The combined loss to assets and output caused by 2007 floods stands at $1.4 billion. Though the economic loss wrought by Cyclone Sidr is yet to be assessed, primary estimates reveal that it would be billions of dollars. The government has asked the donors to pump one billion dollars to assist in a massive plan to protect the coastal belts from recurring natural disasters and climate change.
The IPCC has already warned that Bangladesh is likely to be one of the hardest-hit countries in respect of its agriculture due to global climate change, and its rice production may be dropped by 10 per cent and wheat by one-third.
"The link between climate change and Bangladesh's natural disasters is proving to be extremely robust," said Dr. Saleemul Haq, an IPCC scientist. With its own annual carbon dioxide emissions only 172 kg per capita, compared to 21 tons in US, Bangladesh has strong reason to feel aggrieved for suffering the consequences of climate change.
As soft diplomacy has failed so far to address the inevitable consequences of climate change, Bangladesh needs to place a strong demand in the climate change conference for adequate funds to help countries like ours for adaptation, mitigation, and vulnerability reduction.
Bangladesh can also logically bargain for setting up an international research centre on climate change in Dhaka. The Bali conference would be meaningless unless the demands for tackling global warming issues are placed in a forceful manner.
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