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Faruque Ansari witnessed first hand the devastation caused by Cyclone Sidr |
We all share the blame for global warming but only the poor suffer
Councillor Faruque Ansari has just returned from Bangladesh, where he saw first-hand the damage being caused by climate change
I RECENTLY returned from my native country, Bangladesh. I went there in company with two Liberal Democrat MPs – Paul Rowen, the MP for Rochdale, and Mike Hancock, who represents Portsmouth South – to see the work being done to repair the dreadful damage caused by Cyclone Sidr which struck Bangladesh in November.
Paul’s constituency in Lancashire has a large Bengali community, just as we have in Camden, mostly from the Sylhet region.
Mike was formerly a party spokesman on Foreign and Commonwealth affairs, and as a young man I was myself a freedom fighter who helped in the creation of Bangladesh when the country fought for its independence from Pakistan.
Cyclone Sidr killed more than 3,500 people. That was more than double the death toll of the southern USA’s well-publicised Hurricane Katrina. But it was still a mere fraction of the 140,000 who died during the last big Bangladeshi cyclone in 1991.
The lower death toll was largely due to support from the British government in setting up an early warning system and building cyclone shelters. Yet, while claiming relatively few lives, Cyclone Sidr left many more people with their lives in ruins.
Cyclone Sidr’s victims were among the very poorest in what is still one of the poorest and most vulnerable countries in the world.
Whole villages were swept away; half a million homes were destroyed. One and a half million acres of crops were damaged.
But both the United Nations and the European Union were quick to send extra aid, and charities and aid organisations worldwide – Muslim, Christian and secular alike – went to work with a will.
We visited two villages (North Southkhali and Bogi) on the edge of the Sundarbans mangrove forest. The devastation was truly horrific, yet the fortitude and determination of the survivors was hugely impressive.
We saw women working to rebuild roads and fishermen working on restoring their broken boats. Oxfam and local charities were working with the Department for International Development to rebuild these shattered communities.
I will not say that enough had been done. The MPs and I were so impressed with what we saw that we all promised to do some extra fundraising to help some of the villagers we visited buy new boats so that they could get back to work earning a living. We are going to do that with a fundraising dinner at the House of Commons. A new fishing boat costs about £700, but it will support up to five families.
We have to remember that in a very real sense this damage and destruction visited upon Bangladesh was the fault of all of us who are lucky enough to live here in the West.
Bangladesh, one of the poorest countries in the world, where half the population live in poverty and half the children are undernourished, is paying the price for our extravagances. The average Briton produces 48 times more carbon dioxide than someone living in Bangladesh.
We know that it is the West’s excesses that fuels climate change. It is the world’s poorest, as in Bangladesh, who have to bear the disastrous consequences. Bangladesh is trying to do its bit, with strategies focusing on planting forests of trees along the coast, providing fresh drinking water to coastal communities and scientific research and development to protect crops.
But if climate change is allowed to continue there will be more floods, more deaths and natural disasters, less food, and no clean water. Much of Bangladesh will simply disappear because most of the country is less than 10 metres above present sea level.
We have to tackle climate change and global warming seriously. But first, surely, we owe the Bangladeshi people as much help as we can possibly provide in repairing the damage that we have already done.
* Faruque Ansari is a Lib Dem councillor for Kentish Town
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