With only a month to go until COP30 in Brazil, Bareesh Chowdhury, a researcher for CAFOD partner BELA (Bangladesh Environmental Lawyers Association), talked to us about why these climate talks are a milestone, and how the communities BELA works with feel perplexed by the lack of urgent action on the climate.
CAFOD partner BELA (Bangladesh Environmental Lawyers Association) will be attending the COP30 climate talks in Brazil
Bareesh: Bangladesh is recognised as one of the most vulnerable countries to the adverse effects of climate change. BELA often works with traditional livelihood-based communities who follow the changes in their natural environment and are perplexed at why action to prevent the cycle of destruction from climate change seems so difficult to accomplish.
For frontline communities here, climate change is felt in a multidimensional way. It takes form simultaneously as increasing natural disasters such as flooding and cyclones, as well as extreme heat becoming more common year on year.
It can be hard to wrap one's head around how simultaneously a community can be inundated with water and at the same time have no access to clean water.
The issues are further intensified because of a paradigm of development that not only finds itself often oppositional to environmental protection but views it as a necessary and acceptable cost in the pursuit of economic development.
In the end, each decimal degree of warming directly consigns these communities to the role of globally accepted sacrifice zone.
Bareesh: This will be my fifth COP, and it's hard to not let the disillusionment make you cynical about the process at this point.
Globally we are at a crossroads. Much of the optimism around the Paris Agreement has dissipated, and with countries like the United States now pulling out of the agreement, the crisis of trust in the multilateral process seems to be driving us towards a cliff edge.
Adaptation is the urgent need of the hour; mitigation on a global scale can only slow the effects, not reverse what is already happening. And what is happening is causing massive loss and damage, estimated in the billions annually.
This is not to say the process is not valuable! If anything, the increasing interests in the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) process show that climate change is at the forefront of people's concerns about the future of humanity. And while each year at least some modest, if inadequate, gains are made, the complaints of global movements revolve around the lack of urgency.
In this Jubilee year, the UK must play a key role in pushing rich countries to unlock new sources of public finance for climate action in order to support the world’s poorest communities - especially for those countries that are suffering a debt crisis too.
Bareesh: COP30 is of course an important milestone: 10 years of the Paris Agreement and submissions of new national plans to reduce emissions. But it comes at a time when the process is in danger of slipping into crisis.
For me personally, my role is two-pronged. I will be part of the Government of Bangladesh's official delegation and in that capacity will work with our negotiators, especially on adaptation and finance issues.
Secondly, and more true to activist roots, will be part of the congregation of global people's movements demanding climate justice: the concurrent People's Summit that will also be taking place in Belem.
Climate injustices are inextricable from economic oppression. Climate-induced debts are crippling developing nations and, as such, the finance discussions must reflect the reality of the situation and create a framework that is fair, just and upholds the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities.
Bareesh: Do your jobs! You represent the people of your nations, not just the fossil fuel executives.
