Report For Climate Change In Bangladesh

What is Climate Change?

Describe about the Report for Climate Change in Bangladesh.

Climate change is real, despite much debate on it happening worldwide, its effects cannot be ignored. All across the world, countries have been experiencing climate change, from its mild form to its destructive form. And what are climate, and the said climate change? Climate means the normal weather of a place. Weather is the day to day variations that are seen and felt; in a day it can be rainy, sunny, hot, or even cold (Pielke et.al, 1998). Such patterns determine the climate of a place. Climate change is, therefore, a variation in the normal weather of a place; it could be of rain received in a region in a year, or in the usual temperature of a place for a season or even a month (Stern, 2007).

Climate change

Climate change also refers to the alteration of the earth’s climate. In comparison to weather, which can change after only a few hours, change in climate takes a long period, say hundreds or even millions of years. Researchers in the field of climate change have pointed out that over the last 100 years; earth’s temperature has risen with one degree Fahrenheit (Flannery, 2007). Climate change is as a result of different underlying factors: natural, and those that result from human activities. Naturally, earth’s climate can vary due to alteration in its distance from the sun, less or more energy reaching earth from the sun, change in oceans, volcanic eruptions, among others (Karl, 2009). Human activities such as heating or cooling houses, driving cars, cooking, manufacturing goods, all require energy. This the major source of carbon dioxide emission.

The Climate of Bangladesh

Considering the current trends, and if nothing gets done to better the situation, scientists are of the thought that earth’s temperatures will keep rising in the course of the next 100 years (Archer, 2016.). Many countries are already feeling the rough side of climate change. One of these countries is Bangladesh, which is the country of highlight in this paper. Bangladesh is among the world’s largest deltas; it has a high vulnerability to natural disasters due to its low-lying and flat landscape, geographical location, poverty, population density, illiteracy, among others (Mohammad, 2015). Therefore, the social, physical, and economic states of Bangladesh representative of any the countries in the world that are most vulnerable to natural calamities. It has a total land area of 147,570 sq.km. Eighty percent of these areas are flood plains meaning that during the rainy season, a majority of the country is prone to flooding. As of 2011, Bangladesh had a population of approximately 150 million people, and at birth life expectancy is 63 years; adult literacy rate stands at 48%. Bangladesh ranks 140 out of 177 countries in development according to a recent Human Development Report. The annual growth rate of the population is around 2%, and almost three-quarters of the population dwell in rural areas.

Climate change impacts

Climatic impacts

Typical to the climate of Bangladesh are heavy rainfall, high temperatures, and high humidity; this climate is marked by three seasonal alterations: medium to heavy rainfall, hot summer, shrinking winter. According to Karim and Mimura, one of these effects is high temperatures and drought and the country’s north and north-western suffer much due to the problem of extreme temperatures. The second effect is cyclones and storm surges; during the last couple of years, the country’s south and south-eastern parts got hit by tropical cyclones. The third effect is floods or flashes floods approximately 80% of the country’s total area are prone to flooding. The fourth impact is salinity intrusion, a problem being experienced in nearly the entire coastal belt next to the Bay of Bengal (2008).

The Climate of Bangladesh

Sectorial impacts

Fisheries and agriculture

The major economic activity in Bangladesh is agriculture, two-thirds of the country’s population engages directly or indirectly in agricultural activities. Continued Climate change would, thus, have overall widespread impact on agricultural production in Bangladesh consequently devastating the country’s economy. Salinity problem, severe temperature, and drought are among the climate change effects responsible for the decreasing crop yield in Bangladesh (Van Aalst, 2006). Changes in rainfall and temperature have also to a great extent decreased the country’s arable land area. In the coastal area, salinity intrusion is bringing about dire implications for the coastal land whose traditional use was rice production. There have also been adverse effects in the fisheries sector as a result of climate change. In Bangladesh, 3.5% of the GDP comes from the fisheries sector. Within the territory of Bangladesh, there are about 260 species of fish and most of them are sensitive to certain fresh and salt water conditions.

Forestry, Water Resources, and Hydrology

Bangladesh is home to a large diversity of ecosystems such as the mangrove forests found at the south-most part of the country. The country’s Sundarbans along the Bay of Bengal is the world’s largest mangrove forest and comprises of 577,000 hectares of land area. The changes in Earth climate have and will continue to negatively affect the ecosystem of the forests round the country; especially the 425 species, including the Royal Bengal Tiger, already identified in the Sundarbans forest. These changes in water resources and hydrology will have a substantial impact on the economy of the Bangladesh since most people depend on subsurface water for the fishery, irrigation, and navigation, industrial production, and other like activities (Faruque and Ali, 2005).

The country’s cities and towns located along the coastal belt are more prone to climate change related disasters; these places could go through severe direct damage due to rise in sea level and storm surges. In Bangladesh, 40 percent of the urban population dwells in squatter and slum settlements of cities which are much prone to the risk of disaster when it rains. Climate change has, thus, put the urban poor at direct risk in the face of natural disasters especially due to lack of proper infrastructure. In 1991 there was a Cyclone and Storm surge, and the number of women deaths that resulted from it was five times higher than that of men (Haque, and Blair, 1992).

Coastal areas

In Bangladesh, around a quarter of the population live in the coastal areas; a majority of this population is affected directly or obliquely by river bank erosion, coastal floods and tidal surges, tropical cyclones, salinity, etc. (Zhu, Linham, and Nicholls, 2010). As the sea level continues to rise, Bangladesh will with time lose a lot of its land surface to sea water; about 30 million people rising in the coastal areas may turn to refugees due to such impacts of climate change. From the Bay of Bengal, salinity intrusion penetrates 100 kilometers into the country during the dry season; the scenario is likely to deteriorate as climate change gradually progresses.  Most of Bangladesh is 10 meters above sea level, and approximately 10% of the population lives below 1-meter elevation. The Bay of Bengal at the tilt of the North Indian Ocean experiences severe cyclonic storms and frequently generated long tidal waves; these hit the coast line with huge impacts due to the cyclonical shape and shallow nature of the Bay near Bangladesh.

Climate Change Impacts

What is responsible?

According to the 2009 Global Climate Risk Index compiled by German Watch, an international nongovernmental organization working on the development and environmental issues, Bangladesh tops the list of 170 countries (Singh, Pathirana, and Shi, 2006. The country’s risk heightens due to its vast delta plain that comprises of 230 rivers; during the monsoon rains, many of these rivers unstably swell and overflow onto inhabited land. The melting glaciers of the Himalayas in the north add to the river water, and so does the encroaching Bay of Bengal from the south; the excess water leads to severe flooding. Then prevalent intense storms go ahead to make the flooding situation worse.

Actions that Bangladesh should take

The United Nation notes that a quarter of coastline in Bangladesh could be swamped should the sea rise three feet in the coming 50 years; 30 million Bangladeshis would consequently get displaced from their farms and homes. In adapting to the rising sea level, the nation should at moderate expenses repair, extend, and better maintain its 7,000 kilometers-long coastal dikes (Adger, 2005). The country should also quicken and invest more on the research they have underway into saline-resistant rice varieties. Relying on neighboring countries for resettlement is not an option; India, for example, is constructing a fence across its border. Bangladesh should also be at the frontline in the fight against emission of greenhouse gasses by convincing China, United States, India, and Europe to reduce the said emissions.

Conclusion

This paper has looked at what climate is and what differentiates it from the weather. The paper has further delved climate change, an alteration of the climate conditions of a place and the world as a whole. The center of climate change discussion in this paper is the impacts of climate change in Bangladesh: climatic impacts and sectorial impacts which comprise of fisheries and agriculture; forestry, water resources and hydrology; and Urban areas and vulnerable groups, and coastal areas. There is also a discussion on what is responsible for the climate change effects in the Himalayas: melting glaciers, greenhouse gasses among others. As much as the country is expected to deal with the climate change impacts it experiences, the rest of the world should also come in and assist Bangladesh as well as other countries facing and that will face similar challenges.

References

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Flannery, T., 2007. The weather makers: How man is changing the climate and what it means for life on earth. Grove/Atlantic, Inc..

Faruque, H.S.M. and Ali, M.L., 2005. Climate change and water resources management in Bangladesh. Climate Change and Water Resources in South Asia, Balkema Press (Taylor and Francis group), Leiden, pp.231-254.

Haque, C.E. and Blair, D., 1992. Vulnerability to tropical cyclones: evidence from the April 1991 cyclone in coastal Bangladesh. Disasters, 16(3), pp.217-229.

Karim, M.F. and Mimura, N., 2008. Impacts of climate change and sea-level rise on cyclonic storm surge floods in Bangladesh. Global Environmental Change, 18(3), pp.490-500.

Karl, T.R., 2009. Global climate change impacts in the United States. Cambridge University Press.

Mohammad, N., 2015. Climate change and Displacement in Bangladesh: Issues and Challenges. Handbook of Climate Change Adaptation, pp.177-194.

Pielke, R.A., Avissar, R., Raupach, M., Dolman, A.J., Zeng, X. and Denning, A.S., 1998. Interactions between the atmosphere and terrestrial ecosystems: influence on weather and climate. Global change biology, 4(5), pp.461-475.

Stern, N.H., 2007. The economics of climate change: the Stern review. cambridge University press.

Singh, A., Pathirana, S. and Shi, H., 2006. Assessing coastal vulnerability: developing a global index for measuring risk. UNEP/Earthprint.

Van Aalst, M.K., 2006. The impacts of climate change on the risk of natural disasters. Disasters, 30(1), pp.5-18.

Zhu, X., Linham, M.M. and Nicholls, R.J., 2010. Technologies for climate change adaptation-Coastal erosion and flooding.

Adger, W.N., Hughes, T.P., Folke, C., Carpenter, S.R. and Rockström, J., 2005. Social-ecological resilience to coastal disasters. Science, 309(5737), pp.1036-1039.