Climate change adaptation: think of it as preparing for an alien invasion (some spaceships have already landed)

Daniel Nelson Freelance journalist, SciDev.Net The opposition street protests that have been damaging Bangladesh’s key textile sector and threatening the forthcoming O and A-level examinations have claimed another scalp: the field trips which were to precede the annual International Conference on Community-Based Adaptation (CBA7). In order to ensure the safety of participants the visits to projects on 19-21 April, which formed half of the seventh conference, were cancelled. This is annoying both to the organisers and the government, because Bangladesh has adeptly positioned itself up as a focus point for conferences and meetings on climate change. Its vulnerability – particularly to sea-level rise, floods and fluctuations in rainfall – are a strength when it comes to first-hand experience of adaptation. “I happen to be sitting in the part of the world that has the biggest advantage on knowing how to tackle climate change,” says co-organiser Saleemul Haq, who divides his time between the London-based International Institute for Environment and Development, where he is a senior fellow, and the Dhaka institution he has established, the International Centre for Climate Change and Development. Climate change is like an alien invasion “The way I characterise this,” he tells me, “is to think of climate change in planetary terms: it’s like an alien invasion coming to planet Earth, which everyone on Earth is going to have to deal with sooner or later. Some of the alien scout ships have already landed. One big one has landed in Bangladesh, and a few small ones have gone elsewhere.



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