Bangladesh faces ‘a rather frightening reality’ of climate change ‘desertification, sea level rise, loss of food security, Environment Minister Saber Hossain Chowdhury told a Irish news platform, EuReporter.com.

He said Bangladesh is one of the world’s “most dynamic, most populous delta”, where the River Ganges and its tributaries reach the Bay of Bengal. “When sea levels rise, people get displaced, you lose land. We’ll lose about 17 percent of our land between now and 2050. There’ll be forced migration of at least 12 million people. That’s huge and that’s in a country that’s already one of the most densely populated in the world,” Chowdhury said during an interview with Nick Powell, Political Editor at the EuReporter.

There is an ‘absolute imperative’ of ensuring that COP29 delivers -and that delivery has to be across all the major themes of mitigation, adaptation, finance, according to the minister. “Those themes include not only getting the planet on track to avoid unsustainable overheating -exceeding 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels -but also meeting the enormous costs of adapting to the reality that humanity faces even if that target is met,”

To make for effective adaptation, there have been pledges of money from the world’s wealthier countries, who have long been the principal beneficiaries of economic growth achieved only at huge ecological cost. But the Minister argues that it’s time ‘to move from the billions to the trillions’ of US dollars, if the world is going to get real about the size of the task.

It’s a cost that is only increasing, he points out that the country is so far away from the 1.5 degrees Celsius target -that needs ‘urgent action’. The idea of a loss and damage fund for countries like Bangladesh, which have played a negligible part in causing climate change but face some of its most severe consequences, was first agreed at COP27 in Sharm el-Sheikh.

The European Union’s support for the idea was decisive in obtaining agreement. At COP28 in Dubai, funds were pledged but only in the hundreds of millions. Saber Hossain said that Bangladesh needs over US$230 billion by 2050 just on account of adaptation. But he told me that there is a crucially next step to make at COP29, even before the amount of money is agreed.

He argues that as the science is very clear and everyone has signed up and agreed to the science, there is absolutely no excuse for further delay. "We have the Mujib Climate Prosperity Plan, which has a very ambitious trajectory. We want to move from vulnerability to resilience and then on prosperity. How many countries in the world, how many prime ministers, have tried to reframe climate change as a potential pathway to prosperity,” added Chowdhury.