Climate Club Bangladesh

The world is currently facing serious environmental challenges. Developing economies require vast amounts of resources for their people to live healthy and productive lives and to meet the pressure of growing populations. Therefore, it is necessary to follow the path of sustainable development to take care of the current population so that the future generations can face and solve the challenges with less environmental impact and working toward conservation and fair distribution of resources.

The lives of more than 190,000,000 children in Bangladesh are directly at risk due to climate change, according to the United Nations children’s agency UNICEF. For the first time, the United Nations children’s agency UNICEF has released a report on how climate change is affecting the lives of children. “Climate change is creating greater risks for the poorest people in Bangladesh. They can’t feed their children enough to eat, they can’t keep them healthy. Their education is being disrupted,” says UNICEF Executive Director Henrietta Fore. As a result, the possibility of children being subjected to various forms of torture is increasing, according to the UNICEF report. The report says that many families are giving off girl children in quick marriages without being able to take responsibility. It also says that children in twenty districts across the country are most at risk. The report says an increase in severe natural disasters such as droughts or cyclones means affected families are getting poorer. When the families affected by these natural calamities lose their homes, then the children of those families are forced to join some work to earn money.

Bangladesh has a humid, warm climate influenced by pre-monsoon, monsoon and post-monsoon circulations and frequently experiences heavy rainfall and tropical cyclones. Every year disaster strikes Bangladesh, through floods, tidal waves, tornadoes, river bursts etc. Also, recent disasters like earthquakes, fires, and the covid pandemic have been devastating the economic condition of the country, from loss of life to infrastructure destruction, requiring huge chunks of the national budget to recover. As a result, the development of Bangladesh has been seriously disrupted. In addition, the temperature of the earth is increasing at a rapid rate with high levels of deforestation, creating an even greater risk of natural disasters in Bangladesh every year.

Although the government has extensive preparedness to deal with disasters, massive losses still occur, and government alone cannot make a complete difference.  It is also important that people from all walks of life should come forward and get involved, through local community education and initiatives that help everyone be better prepared. At present, about one third of the population of Bangladesh is youth (Directorate of Youth Development). If the young generation is included in climate education and disaster response and recovery programs, they will be better able to respond as a generation to the inevitable crises they will face in the future.

To support this essential youth engagement, the Global Center for Innovation & Learning (GCFIL) has created a new Bangladeshi initiative to develop the climate awareness and disaster readiness skills of secondary and higher secondary students by forming a club called “The Climate Club.”