By IANS
Dhaka : Linking its plea to the UN conference on climate change in Indonesia, Bangladesh has sought international help in evolving and funding long-term measures to fight natural calamities.
Dhaka Monday formally urged the international community to take a long-term holistic approach in helping it confront natural disasters that “continue to grow in severity and frequency under the impact of climate change”, the New Age reported Tuesday.
“An internationally created problem like climate change demands an internationally supported suitable solution for those worst affected as in Bangladesh,” Chief Advisor Fakhruddin Ahmed told a meeting of ambassadors of various countries, UN donor groups and heads of development partners of Bangladesh.
Ahmed said his country was doing its best to rebuild the coastal areas on the Bay of Bengal that were hit by Cyclone Sidr Nov 15, killing over 3,000 people and uprooting a million people.
Ahmed had discussed the issue with Indian External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee when the latter came calling Monday.
“We believe the time has come for us to take a long-term view of Bangladesh’s frequent trysts with nature’s whim. After two consecutive floods during the monsoon and then Cyclone Sidr, we need a new resolve to shape our destiny,” he said.
Ahmed said Bangladesh could no longer afford to merely respond to a crisis, count on relief and rehabilitation and wait for the next blow to come, the daily said.
“We must be ambitious in our approach and firm in our resolve in thinking of a large-scale, long-term solution to contain the fury of mother nature on a sustainable basis. We need to commit ourselves to pre-empting and preventing disaster, not just react to them,” he said.
Ahmed placed before the international community a rough estimate of fund requirements amounting to $1 billion for rebuilding cyclone-devastated infrastructure.
The estimates include $250 million for rebuilding a network of coastal embankments, $150 million for a reforestation programme, $200 million for constructing 2,000 cyclone shelters and $100 million for rebuilding schools, the United News of Bangladesh (UNB reported.
Envoys of 23 countries, including the US, Britain, Japan, Pakistan, India, Saudi Arabia and Australia, attended the meeting.