What did Prof Saleemul Huq tell me during our last interview about climate impacts on Dhaka, Chattogram?

On Monday, it was the second death anniversary of renowned climate scientist Prof. Saleemul Huq. He was the chair of the Expert Advisory Group for the Climate Vulnerable Forum (CVF) and also a senior adviser on Locally Led Adaptation with the Global Centre on Adaptation (GCA). He devoted his whole life to climate-related issues. I am fortunate that I got his mentorship directly. I did some work under his supervision. In 2022, I was working on a cross-border investigation project, The Sinking Cities Project, a global cross-border investigation examining how sea-level rise impacts major cities and how their governments respond to the climate crisis's consequences.

I met with him for a formal interview on July 25, 2022, at his ICCCAD in Dhaka to talk about the impact of climate change in Dhaka and Chattogram. Here is the details interview in which he discussed the impact of climate change in Dhaka and Chattogram.

Here he told about migration, cities host populations, and our preparation. He also focused on the unfulfilled commitment of the developed countries to provide $100 billion a year, which is still unfulfilled, yet the second UN climate conference is going to begin on November 11, 2024, in Baku, Azerbaijan.

Climate change impact on Dhaka

Dhaka is the fastest-growing megacity in the world. It is definitely one of the cities that is having a problem with the submersion of the soil for verities of the reasons.  One of that drawing groundwater to supply drinking water for our inhabitants as a result the groundwater table is going down a result the city is submerging.  There is subsidence of the soil in the Dhaka city. 

Another reason is that we have paved over many of our wetlands. So, the wetlands that used to be part of the areas of Dhaka have shrunken very considerably over the last 20-30 years. As a result, the water that used to be recharging the groundwater is no longer recharging the groundwater. It increases the speed of the city of subsiding. 

The main struggle of Dhaka is a drainage nightmare. When water comes—when raining during the monsoon they cannot get out of the city. They cause flooding during the monsoon period from heavy rainfall even though we have pumps, we have sewerage pipes; they simply do have not enough capacity to take water out when it comes.    

What would be an alternative for migrants instead of Dhaka and Chattogram? 

Dhaka and Chattogram are the two biggest cities in Bangladesh. Chattogram is the major port of Bangladesh. Dhaka is not a coastal city, so Dhaka does not suffer from coastal erosion but it does suffer from river erosion. Chattogram has coastal erosion as well from the sea and is similar to Dhaka. Both these are major commercial centres – they attract migrants coming from the rural areas of Bangladesh. One of the strategies we need to think about it. We are thinking about it is how we get migrants to not come to Dhaka and Chattogram. We have to give them an alternative. We are looking at alternative towns where we can get them to create jobs for the migrants to go to and avoid them not preventing them and avoiding them to Dhaka and Chattogram. 

There are many thousands of migrants coming to the cities every day. Arriving in the Dhaka city and increasing the population of the city. That's why we are trying to avoid it, if we can reduce the numbers of incoming migrants particularly those who are being forced to migrate because of climate change then we can put the pressure off Dhaka city. In a way, the way to reduce pressure on Dhaka is to invest outside Dhaka, in other towns, so people don't have to end up in Dhaka.

Why water-logging in Dhaka?

Bangladesh is a very vulnerable country to the impacts of climate change. Almost every place in Bangladesh is vulnerable to some impacts of climate change. Dhaka city in particular is susceptible to flooding. There is river flooding from rivers so that we can build embankments, we already have protection from river flooding particularly western part of the city.  The other solution is improving our drainage through our wetlands but again unfortunately we have been doing the opposite of what we should be doing we have been building over the wetlands. That causes- the rainwater that comes over Dhaka to stay in the city and not get drained out water into the wetlands. We are suffering more and more, heavy downpour-related flooding in the city.   Usually, it is temporary, it for some hours or a day or two but it causes a lot of suffering.

Why good policies are not working?

Unfortunately in Bangladesh, we do have good policies. Everything I described, we have policies to protect nature but we don't obey our own policies. Neither the government obeys it, they break their own policies and the private and public sectors also break policies and get away with it. 

Although in paper we have good policies, in implementation we are very bad, and we cannot implement our own policies. 

Does Bangladesh involve people in policy-making?

We promote locally led adaptation- it means people themselves need to be involved in the decision-making on what needs to be done on their behalf. Unfortunately, in all countries, but certainly in Bangladesh decision is making is very top-down. The top-down decision-makers decide what is best for everybody and implement it and it doesn't necessarily turn out to be what is needed or appropriate. 

One of the improvement set we want to promote is to make sure that people themselves are involved in planning, decision making and then implementation of the decisions. If people get involved in the planning then they will implement their decisions. If they are not involved they won't implement the decision.     That what's we are saying now. 

Does Bangladesh is doing enough in climate change planning? 

Bangladesh is actually very advanced in terms of climate change planning. More than 10-year ago we developed a climate change strategy and action plan. We have been investing in that considerably over the last 10-20 years. We are going up a learning curve, so there are hundreds of projects on adaptation all over the country including for Dhaka city but they are not enough the problem is much bigger. We are only able to sketch to the surface. We need to enhance the magnitude of the funding for the projects and also focus on the implementation of the plans which as I said we are good at planning not implementation. We need to improve our implementations. 

The good news is Bangladesh is investing quite a lot. Bangladesh has a national climate budget every year it is now currently about 8% of the total national budget is spent on climate activities which is very good but even that is not enough.  And so we need to enhance the amount of funding that we put into our national budget to tackle climate change because it is a big problem and it will be a bigger problem in future. 

How Bangladesh is preparing for migrants? 

Bangladesh has two major problems of climate change the first one—is sea level rise which is already occurring with salinity in the coastal areas. Right now millions of people are suffering from salinity intrusion in the coastal zones of the country that's the number one hotspot. The second hotspot is: The big cities like Dhaka and Chattogram where we have not prepared ourselves. The population is too big is very difficult to accommodate them.  Infrastructure is already in place, changing Infrastructure is not easy, and retrofitting is not easy but we have to do it; there is no choice.

Every city has host populations who have been there for a long time and then migrants are coming in, this is worldwide everywhere in the world that's how city have grown. Whenever migration there migration comes from outside the city there is a conflict with the host population and the migrant populations. 

In Bangladesh we are fortunate that the migrant population are ethnically, religiously and linguistically the same, we can tell by looking at them. For example in the US when Asian immigrants come they can tell who is the migrants but in Bangladesh, we cannot tell by looking it is a good thing. But there is still tension between the host population and the incoming migrants that's a prefectural problem we have to deal with.
The best way to deal with it, it is to ensure that the people get to know each other, they understand each other; they allow the incoming migrants to become fully pledged citizens of the city over time and that is what we have to achieve.      

Do developed countries commit $100 enough? 

At the global level – we have a commitment from the developed countries to provide $100 billion a year; they haven't reached the $100 billion yet, hopefully, they will within a year or two. But that's never going to be enough. The $100 billion for the whole world's developing countries is not enough. 
We cannot depend on global funds; we have to use our own national funds in every country including Bangladesh.