The fight is a
political one

As the issue of climate change has steadily risen on the global agenda, armed with the scientific legitimacy of the findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change last year, Bangladesh has become a poster child of the climate action cause. The scientific predictions for climate change in Bangladesh are quite depressing: rising sea levels along the coast, an increased frequency and intensity of floods and tropical cyclones, variations in rainfall patterns, and prolonged droughts.
   Meanwhile, the lumbering response to mitigation efforts in the countries of the industrialised North and the adaptations efforts in the countries of the South that are victims of climate change are predictably flagging after a rousing crescendo in 2007. In many cases funds pledged by the countries of the North for adaptation measures in countries like Bangladesh have been dogged by bureaucracy and strings attached, if they were delivered at all, while the legitimate claims of the climate change victims for compensations still remains ignored by the political powerhouses of the North, perpetrating the crime.
   We are told about a sense of guilt being generated in the West as regards its role in wreaking havoc on the climate, we also hear about a series of mandated actions to mitigate carbon emissions, particularly in the context of a post-Kyoto era, but its proclaimed commitment to adaptations measures continues to remain abysmally poor - not to mention its indifference to the demand for compensations. We want to underscore the importance of forward looking measures which seek, in the least, to mitigate emissions by the industrialised world, side by side with adaptations research and funding that provides relief to the millions who are already bearing the brunt of climate change.
   With the special issue on climate change at hand, we have tried to simplify the debate so that it can once more be taken a little beyond the realms of academia and placed in the context where it belongs: that of the affected millions. The testimonies that follow have been gathered from the thirty different agro-ecological zones that comprise Bangladesh, and they tell the story in the words of ordinary people who are struggling to cope with untimely rains, frequent floods, increased pest attacks, and long stretches of drought that are all confounding our traditional calendar of agriculture. On its own, each of these stories provides mere anecdotes only. But taken together, they are an indictment of the ecological damage that the industrialised nations have wrought on the world, and carries on to this day.
   For us, climate change is not merely an environmental issue. It is not just a social or economic issue either. It is all of those, and more. The fight to see action by the industrialised north on climate change is a political one, which cannot be fought, and won, by the NGOs and/or the scientists alone. People at large have to be at the centre of the struggle, while it has to be fought both at the national and the international levels, and that too simultaneously. It is time, the standard bearers of climate change across the world realise that it is a political fight and start mobilising mass support for mitigation, for adaptation, and last but not least, for compensation.
   Nurul Kabir