Aid agency raises climate alarm after Bangladesh ends up ‘hotter than Abu Dhabi’ amid heatwave
The growing threat of climate change could heavily affect public health and access to education across Bangladesh, an aid agency boss has said.
Asif Saleh, the executive director of Brac, an international development organisation in Bangladesh, said schools and universities were closed this week because of a heatwave probably caused by climate change.
The South Asian country of 174.3 million people is the seventh most vulnerable to global warming, with about half of the population living and working in areas at high risk of climate change.
“We have seen the worst heatwaves in the country – it’s almost 42°C. It’s higher in Bangladesh than it is in Abu Dhabi, and that is something we have never seen before,” Mr Saleh told The National on Tuesday at the Asian Venture Philanthropy Network Global Conference in Abu Dhabi.
“Schools have been closed for the last few days. It means loss of productivity, loss of produce in the farms and it is a huge source of disaster of many different types.”
Brac has been operating schools in the country since 1987, with more than 15 million children having graduated.
“We have found a number of models, which are very low cost and scalable, by creating one-room schools to support dropout children from state schools,” said Mr Saleh.
Climate change is linked to public health and contributes to a shortage of drinking water, he said. Rising sea levels result in salinity that affects drinking water. About 26 million people in the country are exposed to a high content of salt in shallow groundwater.
This puts them at risk of hypertension and pre-eclampsia, skin diseases, acute respiratory infection, diarrhoea-linked diseases and the transmission of mosquito-borne diseases.
“People are drinking salt with water, resulting in other kinds of public diseases,” said Mr Saleh.
“We are now trying to come up with different models for water because we are doing a lot of rainwater harvesting at scale, both at the household and community level and also through entrepreneurs for livelihood work.
“We are doing a lot of research in salinity-tolerant seeds for different crops. In those barren lands, we have produced a massive amount of sunflowers, which do very well.”
Global warming also leads to the displacement of people, with an estimated 13 million expected to be climate refugees by 2050.
“I think when displacement happens, you’re not necessarily going to be just internal. People are going to cross over the borders,” said Mr Saleh.
“For example, when desperation comes in, they try to take risks. If we cannot stop it, it’s going to create a big regional sort of destabilisation and, in a way, there’s going to be political chaos and there will be a lack of social cohesion.”
Brac hopes more climate adaptation initiatives are carried out by local organisations.
“One of the critical things that we find challenging is that we feel that climate adaptation should be locally led. And money needs to go to the local organisations as well because it’s cost-effective and it’s highly impactful,” said Mr Saleh.
“But right now, the money is mostly stuck in intermediary organisations, which are not getting channelled to local organisations.”
Bangladesh is one of the nations most vulnerable to climate change, with about half its population in high-risk areas