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Bangladesh

Bangladesh - poverty and climate change

The impacts of climate change on poor people in Bangladesh played a central role in discussions at a major conference held in Dhaka to mark World Poverty Day.

The conference, called Making the Invisible Visible, was organised by Bangladesh's new All Party Parliamentary Group on Poverty and two NGOs - the People's Empowerment Trust - and Shiree, and supported by the DFID and the Government of Bangladesh.

Taking place just 50 days before the start of the UNFCCC meeting in Copenhagen, one of the central themes of the conference was the link between extreme poverty and the adverse impacts of climate change.

In Bangladesh, climate change represents one of the greatest threats to progress being made in meeting the Millennium Development Goals: destroying lives and livelihoods, and damaging economic growth and development. It is the poorest who are most vulnerable.

During the opening session of the conference, DFID Bangladesh Acting Head, Jim McAlpine, highlighted the support that the UK Government is providing to help Bangladesh tackle poverty and the impacts of climate change.

He said: "The climate crisis represents one of the greatest threats to poverty reduction and the extreme poor are most at risk.

"The impacts of climate change are already being felt in Bangladesh with more erratic and extreme weather patterns. If sea levels rise by just one metre, a fifth of Bangladesh could disappear under water, forcing 30 million people from their homes."

Leading Bangladesh scientist and a lead author of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Dr Atiq Rahman highlighted the 'vicious cycle of disaster and poverty'.

He spoke about how impacts such as increased salinity of land in coastal areas, unpredictable cyclones and riverbank erosion were making life harder than ever for ordinary people.

Other discussions addressed the need for clear guidelines on the spending of climate change funds to reduce extreme poverty and deprivation resulting from climate-related issues. And considered how industrial countries and their emissions have affected the global climate.

In his keynote paper, journalist Robert Kaplan, underlined his concerns for climate refugees and migration. He said that Bangladesh, the size of the American state of Iowa, had half the population of the USA and the total population of Russia.

Pinpointing increased salinity in the soil of Bangladesh as a result of climate change, he added that this was killing crops and was subsequently responsible for spurring mass migration of people.

In a pre-recorded video discussion shown at the event, Nobel Laureate Professor Amartya Sen said that greater and more meaningful interventions by the international community were needed to reduce extreme poverty and help developing countries minimise and adapt to the impact of climate change.

Professor Jeffrey Sachs, Special Advisor to the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon, also contributed to the video discussion, focusing on the need for delivery of the Millennium Development Goals and commending Bangladesh for its approach in tackling the impacts of climate change.

Speaker of the Bangladesh Parliament Md. Abdul Hamid MP, wrapped up the event by calling on electoral representatives to play their part in the poverty reduction campaign.

He said: "Lawmakers have direct links to their electorates and they should play an important role in the fight against poverty."

UK support

The UK government is investing approximately £200 million over the next five years to help six million extremely poor people improve their livelihoods and access to food. These include some of the poorest and most vulnerable groups living on chars in the flood plains and coastal areas, as well as slum and street dwellers in towns and cities.

Climate change is already affecting Bangladesh, with devastating impact. By 2050, 70 million people could be affected annually by floods and 8 million by drought, with increasingly intense cyclones hitting the coast.

In line with its White Paper commitments, DFID is providing £75 million to support Bangladesh's national climate change strategy. This will help communities better prepare for disasters through shelters and embankments, strengthen the early warning systems that already save so many lives, and develop crops that are saline and arsenic tolerant.