Bangladesh fears climate change will swallow a third of its land

Bangladeshi Foreign Minister Dipu Moni warned Thursday that rising oceans from climate change could swallow up to a third of her low-lying country and urged other nations to take action at an upcoming environmental summit to mitigate the damage.

“We are working with very limited resources, and we need support from the international community. We do have expectations for Copenhagen,” she said of the upcoming global conference on climate change.

Without any action “one-third of our land could go under water,” forcing 20 million people to flee their homes because of rising sea levels and increased flooding, she told editors and reporters at The Washington Times.

President Obama will address the United Nations next week at a special one-day session focusing exclusively on climate change, his first speech to the world body.

That session, organized by U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, is intended to lay the groundwork for the Copenhagen conference three months later to draft a successor to the 1997 Kyoto Protocol.

“The very fact that more than 100 leaders from all around the world are gathered in one place - have you ever seen in climate-change negotiations that such a large number of heads of state are gathered together at one place at one day?” Mr. Ban told reporters Thursday in New York.

The climate session is scheduled one day before leaders begin delivering broader policy messages at the annual session of the 192-nation General Assembly.

Bangladesh “will be one of the worst victims” of climate change,” Ms. Moni said.

The World Bank released in July a list of the main environmental threats linked to climate change, many of which apply to Bangladesh. It is one of the most populated and poorest countries in the world, often subject to severe flooding, tornadoes and sea-level rises that are likely to worsen.

During her visit to Washington, Ms. Moni met Wednesday with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton to talk about trade and environmental issues.

“We had a very positive discussion. I believe that people are now more aware, and with the Obama administration there has been changes in the way people think about climate change,” Ms. Moni said.

The Bangladeshi government has initiated projects to fight the rise in sea levels, such as green belts around the coastal area and land reclamation on the sea. “We are too densely populated; we need to create space for people to live.”

Silt deposits flowing from rivers such as the Ganges and the Brahmaputra help mitigate the threat by creating more land in the Bay of Bengal.

Bangladesh is growing annually at a rate of 7.7 square miles, according to the Dhaka-based Center for Environment and Geographic Information Services.

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