Bangladesh plight serves as warning to world

If climate change continues unabated, the plight of Bangladesh, which wages an annual battle against floods, provides a grim lesson for many other parts of the world. It will loose the war against rising water.

“If the sea level predictions are true, parts of the country will simply disappear,” said Jo Scheuer, deputy country director of the United Nations Development Programme in India.

Most parts of Bangladesh are less than 10m above sea level, so rising seas coupled with storm surges could put large parts of the population and agricultural land under threat of severe flooding.

The toll would be catastrophic for a country where half its population lives below the poverty line.

South and east Asia, including Vietnam, Bangladesh, India and parts of China, including Shanghai, will be most vulnerable to climate change because of their large coastal populations in low-lying areas, according to the UK International Institute for Environment and Development.

Poor countries, which consume little energy per capita relative to developed countries, have historically played the smallest role in producing carbon emissions.

The average Briton, for example, produces 48 times more carbon dioxide than someone living in Bangladesh. India’s per capita annual energy consumption was just 594 kWh in 2003 compared with 14,057 kWh in the US.

The Financial Times