Editorial
Dealing with climate change
Discourse should take grassroots opinion on board
AT a meeting in Dhaka of editors of Asian News Network on Friday, some eminent environmentalists made it clear how climate change poses a challenge to Bangladesh. And the challenge takes on wider ramifications when one considers the matter as one directly related to justice and security. They have thus taken us back to an issue which has exercised minds in Bangladesh and elsewhere in recent times. Obviously, our concerns with the environment, indeed with climate change, are there because of the grievous impact they will have on our socio-ecological scene. As a small, developing nation, it is only natural that the focus should remain on what we can do, in association with other nations confronted with similar threats, to stem and even reverse the tide of despair we see before us.
In the existing circumstances, there are certain specific steps which need to be taken vis-à-vis meeting the environment challenge in Bangladesh. The first is of course undertaking a programme of action geared to creating and intensifying public awareness about the threat posed by climate change. That can be done through such institutions as schools, madrasas and colleges all over the country but especially in the rural interior. Outside these academic institutions, the local bodies at various levels can be instructed to fashion environment-related programmes the focus of which will be on educating the masses on the issue. One caveat here is that such awareness programmes must carefully avoid anything that might even remotely give rise to a sense of panic among citizens. And in order to make sure that environment-related issues percolate through to the level of citizens in our villages, a definitive breakdown of the issues and ways of dealing with them are tasks to be undertaken by environmental experts at the national level.
In other words, a national discourse on the challenges to our ecology needs to get underway. Such a discourse, apart from involving experts, should also include inputs at the grassroots level, by which we mean ideas of handling weather and the like that have been handed down to people from generation to generation. In fact, through a complementarity of policy making at the expert level and wisdom gleaned through traditional factors a wholesome, substantive approach to environment issues can be made. Outside such considerations comes the fact of what the developed world, largely responsible for the looming disaster we face, must do about rolling back the danger of climate change faced by developing nations. Needless to say, the depletion of the ozone layer has had its source in gas emissions in the West and in other powerful countries. It is therefore for these nations to acknowledge their responsibility and then come forth with corrective measures that will allow people in the affected parts of the globe to live fairly normal lives.
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