Climate change is the biggest disaster in the world now. It is affecting all regions in different ways. The glaciers of the North and South are melting very fast. According to Nasa, the Antarctic ice sheet is melting at an average rate of about 150 billion tons per year and the Greenland ice sheet at an average rate of about 270 billion tons per year, which is gradually causing the sea level rise. Another source says that by the year 2100, more than a third of the world's ice will melt with dire consequences.
Already some regions have started experiencing abnormal changes due to extreme weather variations and heavy rainfall. In some regions, extreme heatwaves, lack of rainfall and severe droughts have made the environment and people's lives unbearable. Global average warming is now about 1.5°C higher than during the industrial revolution in Europe.
Scientists fear that if we are unable to control the rate of global warming then the existence of life on earth may be endangered after 2050. Right now we need to take proper and appropriate steps in climate management, otherwise these impacts will intensify day by day.
Climate change is not limited to increased temperatures and heat waves; a major change in rainfall patterns is also expected. However, some regions are likely to experience more droughts in the future, which may push the region towards desertification.
Other areas are expected to face the opposite problem of heavy rains and increased flooding. Sea level rise has the potential to cause complete loss of agricultural land in coastal areas as well as serious damage of biodiversity, soil, water and marine environment. All these factors related to climate change can seriously affect the production process of agricultural crops, destroy agricultural land and make the struggle for survival more difficult for the farmers.
Survival may become more difficult, especially for small and marginal farmers who produce more than a third of the world's food. According to the UN's World Food Program (WFP) around 333 million people in its 78 member countries has faced acute hunger in 2023, a huge change from 200 million before the Covid-19 pandemic.
However, increasing the number of agricultural production and improving livelihoods in different areas affected by climate change is a major challenge. Bangladesh is a prime example of this in the global context of climate crisis. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) predicts a 15% increase in poverty in Bangladesh by 2030 due to climate change under conditions of low crop productivity. If global warming continues at the current rate then 17% of the country's population will have to relocate forcefully. Even 81% of migrant displacement in the slums of Dhaka City due to impact of climate change.
Not only that, depending on the severity of climate change, it is predicted that 3 million to 10 million people will be internally force displaced in Bangladesh over the next 40 years. According to the World Bank data, if proper measures are not taken to deal with the climate crisis, it will be a cost of Bangladesh $121 billion between 2005 to 2050, or $3 billion annually.
However, the ruling government has created a Climate Change Trust Fund of $400 million in 2009 with its own funding, through which it is claimed that Bangladesh has achieved multifaceted success in disaster management.
According to various global reports, the predictions of possible damage to Bangladesh due to climate change are becoming true one after another. After the wound of Cyclone Sidr in 2007, the entire coastal area of Bangladesh was again devastated by Cyclone Aila in 2009. After a gap of several years, 119 upazilas of 19 districts in the coastal areas of Bangladesh were severely damaged due to recent hit of Cyclone Remal.
About 4.6 million people of 934 unions under the 119 coastal upazilas have been affected and damaged in many ways that has been described by the government officially. Besides, about 175,000 houses were destroyed in two consecutive days of Remal rampage. Among them, 133,528 houses were partially destroyed and 40,338 were completely destroyed. If the Sundarbans was not protect as the natural shield of Bangladesh, what would have been the extent of this damage is beyond imagination.
But recently, Saudi Arabia is facing the multiple threats due to climate change. Specially heat waves, desertification, droughts, wildfires, floods and catastrophic storms and many more. As a result, the cost to the economy in Saudi Arabia – across health, agriculture, minerals, fisheries, infrastructure, tourism and many other sectors – could be higher.
Taking all these situations into consideration, the World Environment Day is being celebrated in Riyadh in Saudi Arabia keeping the slogan “Our Land, Our Future” in front. The country has focused on “Land Restoration, Desertification and Drought Resilience” as the main theme of Environment Day 2024 which has caught the attention of the entire world. Similarly, keeping the main theme of the United Nations Environment Program, Bangladesh is celebrating the World Environment Day nationwide with the slogan of "Korbo Bhumi Punruddhar, Rukhbo Morumoyota - Arjan Korte Hobe Moder Khara Shahanshilata”.
As a nation facing increasing land degradation, desertification and drought, Saudi Arabia is investing deeply in various sectors to address multiple issues. Saudi Arabia continues to work nationally, regionally and globally through the Saudi Green Initiative and the Middle East Green Initiative. As we saw when the “Saudi Presidency Global Land Restoration Initiative” was adopted at the 2020 G-20 summit. Interestingly, two-thirds of the world's population now belong to the G20 countries, which control 85% of global GDP and occupied almost half of the world's total land area.
Another important thing this year is that the 30th “Desertification and Drought Day” will be observed on June 17 after the World Environment Day on June 5. It calls on everyone to unite to protect the land for our legacy and future generations. It should be noted that every second the land equivalent to four football fields is being eroded in the world, which adds up to about 100 million hectares per year. This year, the theme of Environment Day or the demand for land restoration has become a strong demand for Desertification and Drought Day as well.
In short, the climate change crisis is no longer limited to a specific problem, it is now becoming a permanent global crisis. Even the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) consensus is that significant climate change has already occurred since the 1950s and that global average surface air temperatures will likely increase by 0.4-2.6°C in the second half of this century. If you close your eyes and think about the situation of the world then, you can guess it in some extent.
In a 2022 report on Bangladesh, the IPCC pointed out how much economic and non-economic damage Bangladesh is bearing, where about 850,000 households and 250,000 hectares of cropland have been destroyed by climate change-related disasters. Rice prices in Bangladesh increased by 30% between 2014 and 2021 due to crop production failure for the losses of agricultural land.
At the same time, cyclones, floods, river erosion, salinity intrusion and drought are also causing crop failure in the southern part of Bangladesh. Besides, extinction of fish and marine species, loss of biodiversity of Sundarbans, destruction of houses and reduction of alternative sources of livelihood are also making the survival situation of coastal communities more difficult.
On the other hand, since desertification cannot be characterized by any single metric, it is difficult to predict how its rate of degradation may change in the future. In addition, there are numerous socio-economic drivers that will contribute to this change. For example, population growth is likely to increase the number of people directly affected by desertification altogether. By 2050, the population living in drylands worldwide is projected to increase by 43% to 4 billion.
And the impact of climate change on aridity is also quite complex. A warmer climate is generally more capable of evaporating moisture from the land surface - resulting in increased dryness in combination with potentially warmer temperatures. Meanwhile, April 2024 was the warmest April on record for the past 175 years.
Limiting global warming is therefore a key way to put some pause on future desertification. But is there any other solution on the contrary? The United Nations has declared the decade from January 2010 to December 2020 as the “United Nations Decade to Combat Desert and Desertification”. That decade was an ideal opportunity to make effective changes to secure the long-term capacity of drylands for human well-being.
But one thing that is very clear from what the world is going through is that prevention is better than many cheap cure policies. Once desertification occurs, reversing it is very challenging, says Michaelides. This is because once the degradation process starts, it is difficult to stop it.
Stopping desertification before it starts requires taking appropriate measures to prevent soil erosion, prevent vegetation loss, and prevent overgrazing or land mismanagement. All this requires effective policy making with coordinated efforts of people and governments to manage land and water resources on a large scale.
Even small-scale land mismanagement can lead to large-scale degradation, so the problem is quite complex and difficult to manage. So problem solving should include strategies that identify who 'wins' and who 'loses' that minimize claims for compensation or inequality.
However, in the era of increasing climate disasters, who knows how successful the call of this year's Environment Day and the goal of land restoration, desertification and drought prevention will be. Around 33 million people around the world have lost their livelihoods through the systematic violation of land rights by large foreign investors and national level influentials.
And yet the 2.5 billion people have been tending half of the world's land for generations whose identity and existence depend on this land. Despite maintaining and tending this land for a long time, they still have no documented or recognized rights to that land. No one takes their rights into consideration. But their contribution in dealing with every crisis and calamity including climate change is undeniable.
May the goals and objectives of this year's 52nd World Environment Day, organized worldwide including Saudi Arabia and Bangladesh be successful. At the same time, the people in danger of losing their livelihood and losing their land should get back their rights and be more motivated to deal with the future climate disaster.
MM Mahbub Hasan is a banker and development researcher
