Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina today called the global community for tackling challenges of climate change together to make the world a harmonious abode and leave a better planet for the next generation. "Let us embrace one another's responsibility, burden, prosperity, and live in harmony within our planet capacity… . . let us leave a better world for our children and their progeny thereafter," she said.

The prime minister was addressing the Plenary on Climate change: The road to Copenhagen and beyond on the occasion of the European Development Days-2009 at Stockholmsmassan, Victoria Hall in Stockholm Saturday afternoon. "Let us reject all myopic, self-centred discords and reject the culture of excess and waste as climate change is our common threat that needs common action as delay would only increase cost of adaptation and mitigation," she said.

At the outset of her speech, she expressed gratitude to the European community for its unflinching support for her return home from forced exile and for holding of a free, fair and credible election leading to the return of true democracy in Bangladesh. Sheikh Hasina said though the emission of greenhouse gas from our country is negligible; Bangladesh has been seriously affected by the fallout of climate change because of its topography as a low-lying, deltaic country in the shadow of the Himalayas. She said the world is also experiencing an onslaught of unprecedented and extreme natural disasters affecting the rich, developing and least developed countries alike due to climate change.

The prime minister said the South Asian countries, particularly Bangladesh, have been experiencing colossal tidal surges, unreasonably high level of monsoon rainfall lately, landslides and heavy river erosions. Besides, in dry season, absence of seasonal rain has been causing desertification in the north, and shrinking water flow of rivers resulting in salinity intrusion in the south, she added. She said the International Strategy for Disaster Reduction has thus placed Bangladesh as most vulnerable to floods, third most to tsunamis, and sixth most to cyclones, in terms of human exposure.

Sheikh Hasina said scientific findings indicate a meter rise of sea level due to global warming would inundate a fourth of Bangladesh, including the world's largest mangrove forest, the Sunderbans, also an UNESCO World heritage site. Giving a grim picture of climate change consequences, the Bangladesh premier said most alarming is the rapid melting of Himalayan glaciers by as much as 23 meters annually affecting over two billion people of South Asia, China and Indo-China. This scale of meltdown has increased frequency of floods and would cause rapid climate shift resulting in acute water shortage in long term, she said adding with this trend, most of the region`s rivers would eventually die, change agricultural production pattern and end some of the world's great cultures.

Sheikh Hasina said such a situation would swell Bangladesh's cities, causing social disorders, infrastructural crisis, increase poverty and will lose the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) gains. She said already climate change conditions are costing the country's economy 0.5% to 1%. The prime minister said Bangladesh would seek COP 15 in Copenhagen to adopt a new legal regime under the UNFCCC Protocol ensuring social, cultural and economic rehabilitation of climate refugees.

Explaining her government's plans for adaptation to climate change that included capital dredging and maintenance dredging of major rivers, rising and fortifying riverbanks, transformed into green belts and modernising disaster management system, she said Bangladesh is a resilient nation adapting to climate change. She said Bangladesh has established a $45 million Climate Change Fund with own resources and a Multi-Donor Trust Fund of $150 million with the support of the UK.

Sheikh Hasina said Bangladesh also has approved National Adaptation Program of Action with 15 action plans, Bangladesh Climate Change Strategy and Action Plan (BCCSAP) with 119 action plans and has designated authorities for Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) projects. She said Bangladesh strongly feels adaptation for self-preservation, and worldwide interest on global adaptation, calls for establishment of an International Adaptation Centre under UNFCCC.

-Daily Star