Environmental Degradation
Developed countries are to blame
Workshop told
Speakers at a workshop yesterday said coastal dwellers and urban poor of developing countries like Bangladesh suffer the most from climate change impacts.
They blamed the industrially developed countries for the increased number of natural calamities and ongoing environmental degradation across the world by emitting huge amounts of harmful greenhouse gases including carbon dioxide.
Brac University and the University of Manchester, with the assistance of Water Aid, jointly organised the workshop on “Climate change and Bangladesh: Problems of the urban poor people and way to solution of those” at a hotel in Chittagong city.
Prof Ainun Nishat, vice-chancellor of Brac University, said the United States of America emits 20 tonnes of carbon dioxide per head a year while India and Bangladesh release only two tonnes and 0.2 tonnes of the gas respectively in the period.
The countries responsible for causing negative changes to climate should compensate those people of developing and under developed countries, affected by such changes, he said.
Being affected by natural calamities, the victims tend to migrate to the cities for rehabilitation and in search of livelihood, often accommodating themselves in areas vulnerable to landslides, flood and electrocution, he observed.
Manoj Roy, research fellow of University of Manchester, David Hulme, a teacher of the university, and Ferdous Jahan, faculty member of the public administration department of Dhaka University, jointly prepared the keynote paper.
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