Impact of climate change in Bangladesh a bigger threat: SK Sunn

A Correspondent

SHILLONG: Independent legislator from Mawphlang, SK Sunn speaking during the special session of the Meghalaya Assembly to urge the Centre to implement Inner Line Permit (ILP) in the State said that climate change in Bangladesh will have a far greater impact on the State’s indigenous population than the outcome from the Citizenship Amendment Act.

Sunn was pointing out to a World Bank report which states that Bangladesh will be the world’s most affected country in South Asia with the temperature rising more than 2-degree Celsius in the next decades.

The report states that Bangladesh is one of more “potential impact hotspots”, threatened by “extreme river floods, more intense tropical cyclones, rising sea levels, and very high temperatures”. A report in The New York Times from a climate conference in Warsaw in November 2014 outlined that there was an emotional outpouring from countries that face existential threats, among them Bangladesh, which produces just 0.3 percent of the emissions driving climate change.

At the conference, Sunn pointed out that some leaders have demanded that rich countries compensate poor countries for polluting the atmosphere.

A few at the conference even suggested that countries should open their borders to climate migrants.

Sunn asked that if millions of Bangladeshis flee the country, where would they go.

“The answer may not perhaps be hard to guess. Its definitely, the neighboring country India,” the Mawphlang legislator said. Bangladesh and India share a 4,096 km-long international border, and fifth-longest land border in the world, with Meghalaya has a 443 km long border.

“This is not a threat; but it is a threat imminent to happen with millions of people from Bangladesh fleeing the country to a neighboring country like India on account of natural calamity thereby, endangering the indigenous population of the State to become a minority unless and until, necessary measures are adopted to protect our indigenous population from such impending danger,” he said.

Sunn said that in order to protect the indigenous population from the danger of losing the identity, the people of Mawphlang constituency along with the rest of the people of the State, feel that implementation of ILP in the State has become absolutely necessary and be adopted.

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