Editorial
Climate change challenges
It is never too early to initiate remedial measures
Experts opine that we are two decades too late in undertaking remedies to counter the adverse effects of global climate change although remedies were at hand over the last 20 years. It hardly needs reemphasizing that our security will be greatly impaired by the degradation of the state of our environment and of our economy because of the effect of climate change brought about by global warming.
Like it or not, climate change is a reality. But its harmful impact can and must be attenuated. However, the most unfortunate aspect of it is that it is not countries that are responsible for causing global warming that will bear the brunt of consequences of its aftermath. It is the poorer countries that are at the receiving end of the deleterious effects that will accrete over time.
And it is the poorest in the poorer countries that will have to bear the heavy cost if steps are not initiated immediately. And if one were to go by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predictions which experts say are the best guide to future shape of the global environment, things are going to get worse since we can expect, with things as they are, a temperature rise of between two and four and half degree Celsius. Therefore, the time to act is now.
For Bangladesh it is very bad news since land and agriculture, on which the majority of our people subsist, will be the worst affected, not to speak of the large areas of forest that stands the risk of decimation coupled with declining availability of fresh water.
The time to act is now and we are heartened by the government's focus on the indigents by its recently initiated project on 'Community-based adaptation to climate change through coastal afforestation'. It hardly needs to be said also that while the worst affected countries must formulate environment friendly development plans, the cost of ameliorating the consequences of global warming is indeed very high for the poorer countries to bear by themselves; it must be shared by the more affluent countries that are primarily responsible for the current state of global environment.
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