SAARC countries unite to combat climate change

DHAKA: Eight South Asian nations have adopted an environmental action plan to mitigate the impact of climate change in the region.Environmental ministers from the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC), an economic and political body, adopted the declaration in the Bangladeshi capital, Dhaka after a three-day meeting.“The SAARC region is the most vulnerable to climate change that is seriously affecting our agricultural production, crippling our vital infrastructures, diminishing our natural resources and limiting our development options for the future,” stated a joint declaration issued at the end of the meeting.Member countries - Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka - will start monitoring the climate, including rises in sea levels and natural disaster trends, as well as share information on a priority basis, the declaration said.Opportune timingThis year’s meeting and venue in Dhaka, Bangladesh’s largest city, could not have come at a more opportune time.As the meeting got under way, large swaths of the city, home to 12 million inhabitants, including its commercial districts and city centre, were knee-deep in water because of heavy rains over the past few days.As the country’s river levels rise due to early monsoon rains, along with melting glaciers in the Himalayas, river erosion continues to have a serious impact.Rich pollutants The Dhaka Declaration observed that climate change was substantively the result of industrialisation in the developed world for more than two centuries and called upon industrialised countries to fulfil their commitments to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change by providing additional resources, as they were the main contributors to carbon emissions in the atmosphere, which resulted in global warming and climate change.According to Raja Debashish Roy, a rise in sea levels was a major concern for low-lying Bangladesh, with the UN-sponsored Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change reporting that the country could lose as much as a third of its landmass by 2100 as a result.More discussion would take place on the modalities of setting up a South Asian fund on climate change at the upcoming SAARC summit in Colombo from 27 July to 3 August, he reported.