Jarina Begum has a reputation for being an invincible woman. In her small village in Satkhira district, in southern Bangladesh, she has lived 35 years of her life witnessing, facing, and fighting so many floods and droughts that she has lost count.
Shrimp-breeding cycles disrupted from one year to the next, land rendered water-logged for the whole year with no scope for planting crops, young boys infiltrating the Sundarbans and joining gangs of timber and tiger-skin smugglers, stealing money to pay trafficking agents in exchange for promises of a stable job in what appears to be an inviting, comforting bed in a faraway land called Malaysia -- Jarina Begum has seen it all.
Two days ago, the boy from next-door had come running, shouting that the boat that was carrying her only brother to the faraway land was abandoned by the agents in the middle of the sea, and that everyone in the boat was jumping ship straight to their deaths.
She simply turned her head and got back to work. After all, it made very little difference if Salim was dying in the middle of a sea or living here and dying. Very little.
A growing body of research raises evidence that by 2050, climate change alone will force an unprecedented 250 million people -- the size of the entire population of the US -- to move out of their homes. And scientists see Bangladesh as ground zero for these irreversible changes.
When is the money coming?
The year 2015 is a big year for climate change. In September 2014, the presidents of the US and China, the two global economic powerhouses, agreed to work with each other, and with other countries, to adopt a legal protocol under the UNFCCC during the events leading up to COP 21 in Paris this year.
At this point, it is important to ask if the hand-shaking of the two biggest puppeteers of the entire world will place the parties with slightly less inclination to be as cordial going into slightly unfavourable corners, given the continuing economic recession and the absence of a Fairy Godmother.
It’s probably even more important to ask, in the event of an extremely unlikely incident where a legally-binding agreement is indeed produced in Paris, and the Annex 1 countries agree to pour in the $100bn a year in the climate fund (starting in 2020), when, and in what form, that money will see the light of day in our country, if at all.
Bangladesh, along with the other developing countries of the LDC group, have been promised a combined total of $30bn dollars a year, leading up to 2020. The much acclaimed leadership of the Bangladeshi negotiators among LDC countries, for important adaptation issues such as loss and damage, might signal a favourable stance by the country in achieving a principal share of support at the negotiation tables.
Hypocrisy much?
Questions arise about how a country which has been so vehemently short-sighted (and gluttonous) as to disregard the warnings and dismissal of not only world-class sustainability experts, but also of its very own people, to establish Rampal, a major fossil fuel power plant that is poised to destroy the Sundarbans, our only chance to fight with climate change-induced disasters, is fit to lead the band of major sufferers in a global stage.
Questions also arise about how, in a country that has so openly claimed itself as the “pioneer of solar revolution,” the government can expect to get away with scrappy policies such as making it compulsory for new buildings to include rooftop solar power units with outputs no less than 3% of the building’s total peak load, without taking into account factors such as efficiency, load management, connection to the national grid, and most importantly, the latest technological advancements in the renewable energy field, to deem the approach “holistically sustainable.”
If our own puppeteers can shed their shiny skin for a change and accept the double standards in their own policies -- be it the energy policy or budget allocation -- and manage to keep the pivot balancing on both ends at the monumentally significant upcoming Paris deal, objectives toward climate change adaptation and sustainable development can become a reality for us -- a deal that can save people like Jarina and her family, and give them at least enough social security to earn their livelihoods and live a decent, respectable life.
