State Minister for Foreign Affairs, Md. Shahriar Alam, MP attended the Berlin Climate and Security Conference 2019 on the 4th June 2019. During the meeting, State Minister asked for climate justice to be established and demanded compensation and adequate financial and other assistances for adaptation measures. He further mentioned that for the persons displaced due to climate change, migration and relocation are options to consider. He called for more concrete global coordination and insisted that the developed countries and the countries responsible for producing huge amount of green house gases must triple their nationally determined commitments (NDCc) if we want to limit the rise of global temperature below 2 degree centigrade and preferably up to 1.5 degree centigrade. To deal with climate change related displacement, he called for new binding legal instrument as the existing instruments are not adequate and are mostly voluntary.
State Minister described the grave threat of climate change to Bangladesh and explained how, if continued in the same fashion, this will cause extreme devastation to every sector of Bangladesh endangering all the achievements. He mentioned the actions and strategy under the leadership of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina to fight the adverse impacts of the climate change. He said that Bangladesh and similar countries contributed nothing to the issue of climate change but they were the worst victims due to irresponsible activities of some developed and other States.
Shahriar Alam also mentioned the current Rohingya crisis and compared it with global climate change calamity as both of them produce similar devastation. As there was proposals from other participants to refer the climate change and the security nexus to the Security Council of UN, State Minister Alam called for considering the issue necessarily as a development concern which should be covered by all organs and agencies of UN. He demanded true implementation of the Paris Agreement, 2030 Development Agenda (SDGs) and the Sendai Framework and continuation of existing facilities for LDCs after graduation as effective measures to fight climate change.
This annual conference is organized by the German Federal Foreign Office, 2 German independent think tanks namely Adelphi and Potsdam Institute of Climate Research and the German Foreign Ministry project ‘Climate Diplomacy’. The Conference discussed the existential threat to human civilization as a whole due to ever worsening climate change and the grave danger it presents to the physical and political security of different countries and even individuals. President of Nauru, Deputy Prime Minister of Belgium, Foreign and State Ministers of Germany, Sweden, Ghana, Maldives, Malta, Palau, UK, Cote d’Ivoire, Afghanistan, former US Secretary of State John Kerry, Mr. Filippo Grandi, UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Foreign Secretaries of different countries and scores of high officials and academicians from several leading think tanks of Europe participated in this year’s Conference.