Bangladesh wants climate change negotiations to focus on human rights

Bangladesh has asked global players to bring human rights into the focus of climate change negotiations since the issue hits the poorest of the vulnerable countries.

Foreign Minister Abul Hassan Mahmood Ali made the call to the international community at a UN Human Rights Council’s climate change discussion in Geneva on Friday.
 
He argued that climate change robs one’s right to life, food, housing, and many more.
 
Mahmood Ali said in the vulnerable situations which often transcend borders, “individuals suffer also because of poor resilience and inadequate response ability to climate change”.
 
“At the same time, there are countries or people who have much less coping capacities or resources,” he said, pointing out the countries of the Pacific and the Maldives.
 
“For those countries and low-lying riparian countries like Bangladesh, climate change poses ‘existential threat’,” the foreign minister said.
 
From those perspectives of millions of ordinary farmers, fishermen, artisans, women, he said, “an interface of ‘climate change – human rights’ should ask us to re-look at the elements of injustice, dignity, wellbeing that forms the basis of Universal Declaration of Human Rights”.
 
Ali also presented the Bangladesh case where he linked climate change with the human rights.
 
He said climate change continued to affect millions of lives and their livelihoods and for them it was “not merely an issue of development”, but their “survival”.

The sufferings and vulnerabilities varied from country to country and the challenge was to reach resources and support measures “fairly, equitably and with dignity” to them.
 
Millions of people live at the ‘bottom of development pyramid’ in LDC, and African countries are most exposed to climatic shocks in so many ways, he said.

Bangladesh loses an estimated 2 to 3 percent of GDP to climate change-related impacts.
 
“More importantly, much of the precious social and economic developmental gains run at risk (due to climate change impacts),” he said.
 
“This clearly threatens the effective and full enjoyment of a range of human rights like the Right to Life, Right to Food, adequate housing, safe and adequate water, access to health and education,” he said, while arguing why climate change negotiations should focus on human rights.
 
Ali highlighted Bangladesh’s efforts to reduce greenhouse emission, though it was not responsible for global warming. Yet, it is one of the most vulnerable countries.
 
“We have installed around four million Solar Home Systems, one and a half million improved Cook Stoves, and developed stress-tolerant crop varieties.
 
“Being an LDC, we have mobilised $385 million from our own resources for adaptation and mitigation interventions,” he said.
 
This was because, he said, due to Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s commitment to pursue a low-carbon growth path.
 
“We remain actively engaged in the global climate negotiations as also in the Human Rights Council,” he said, mentioning that Bangladesh, being an LDC, makes a $5,000 contribution to the office of the UN rights chief’s office.
 
“What we are doing is not as a matter of ‘choice’, but out of our commitment to ‘shared responsibility’ for ‘a shared prosperity’.
 
“It is to raise voice of 160 million people,” he said.
 
President of Kiribati Anote Tong moderated the session. Special Envoy of the US Secretary General Mary Robinson was also present, among others.