Bangladesh's leading environment expert has said the country needs to adapt to climate variability on an urgent basis as climate change and climate variability are now real.
"Science is clear, we need political will to achieve success both in adaptation and mitigation," said Prof Ainun Nishat, vice chancellor, BRAC University.
He was presenting his keynote paper titled 'Climate Change Challenges, Global Politics and Future of Bangladesh' held in Rajshahi city yesterday.
He told the seminar that there is evidence of climate vulnerabilities like excessive rainfall, untimely and irregular heavy rain, increase in tidal bores, increase in cyclonic conditions, variation in tidal flow, increase in frequency of flash flood, and changes in timing, temperature variation, change of seasonal cycle, cold winter days, increase in droughts and dry spells, storms and hailstorms, increased surface temperature and increase in number of insects.
Nishat mentioned that all 195 countries in the world admit that climate change is happening and adaptive measures should be adopted but developing nations like Bangladesh and especially the least developed countries have no capacity to address the adverse impact alone.
He defined adaptation as a process to cope with the changing environment while mitigation is intervention to manage emission of greenhouse gases.
Nishat said Bangladesh needs a Climate Change Strategy as it has done fairly well in several development areas despite such huge odds but these gains and future well-being are under grave threat due to climate change.
Nishat felt that all development sectors like water, agriculture, industry, forests, health and energy will be adversely affected in some way, natural disasters will affect Bangladesh more frequently and with greater intensity and food security and livelihood and health will face serious threat.
He said, coastal areas, flood plains and other ecologically fragile areas will be most vulnerable. A strong compliance regime and a deep emission cut has become an urgent need. Efforts should be made to ensure that global mean temperature does not increase beyond C 1.5/2.