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Report on 'State of World Population'

Climate change threatens to widen rich-poor gap

Staff Correspondent
Climate change may reverse the hard-earned development gains of the past and the progress towards achieving the millennium development goals (MDGs), said the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) in its State of the World Population 2009' report yesterday.
The climatic change also threatens to exacerbate the gap between the rich and the poor and amplify the inequalities between the men and women, says the report titled 'Facing a changing world: women, population and climate'.
“The setbacks are likely to result from climate-driven water scarcities, intense tropical storms and storm surges, floods, loss of glacial melt water for irrigated agriculture, changes in food availability and possible health crisis," says the report released worldwide yesterday.
UNFPA Bangladesh Representative Arthur Erken presented it at a discussion at Sonargaon Hotel in the city. The report focused on the link between the population growth, development approach, climate change and
its impacts.
The poor, particularly women and children, will be the worst victims of climate change while large-scale population movements, mostly through internal displacement and to some extent through international migration, will take place, it observed.
The earth's temperature rose by 0.74 degrees Celsius in the past 100 years and is disrupting the planet's ecosystem, he said, adding, “As people are causing it and suffering from it, they have the power to stop or slow it down.”
Briefing on the report, Erken said in this region, the poor households, many of those living in the coastal areas, are especially vulnerable to climate change because their marginal income provides little access to health or safety nets. Women will be affected differently than men for their less access to income opportunities.
“We want the world leaders to have better understanding of population dynamics,” Erken said. The UN population division projects the world population now seven billion will be eight billion by
2050.
The report suggested increased funding of the family planning services and adequate contraceptive supplies, improving sex-disaggregated data related to migration flows influenced by environmental factors and prepare accordingly.
Climate change expert Dr Atiq Rahman said though the population density in the developing nations is more, people in the developed world consumed many more limes causing global warming.
As more and more people will be displaced because of climate change, the developed countries should shelter them in exchange for carbon, he noted.
Addressing the discussion as the chief guest, Health Secretary Sheikh Altaf Ali said it is now time for Bangladesh to fight for just share from the developed countries in the climate summit in Copenhagen.
Rasheda K Chowdhury, former adviser to a caretaker government, and Abdul Qayyum, director general of family planning directorate, also spoke.