LONDON (AlertNet) Â? Bangladesh faces such "total destabilisation" from climate change by 2050 that it risks becoming a failed state, a retired Bangladeshi general has warned.
The low-lying river delta nation of 156 million is expected to lose up to 17 percent of its land area to rising seas by 2050, displacing at least 15 million people, according to a U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report.
But it is Bangladesh's other risk factors - the lack of a social safety net, a weak government with a history of corruption, a fast-growing population and neighbours hostile to the idea of accepting refugees - that threaten to turn an international environmental crisis into an international humanitarian and security disaster, said retired Maj. Gen. Muniruzzaman, president of the Bangladesh Institute of Peace and Security Studies.
Bangladesh "will become a humanitarian catastrophe beyond comprehension," he warned in a telephone interview. "The ability of the state to manage such a crisis does not exist. The capacity of the institutions of the government is very limited. When theyÂ?re faced with a problem beyond their abilities, we could see a state collapse," he said.
Bangladesh, a south Asian nation widely seen as among the most vulnerable to climate change, has in recent years become the focus of a range of security studies and war game role-playing scenarios at military institutes, universities and think tanks around the world.
Most look at the potential security implications if tens of millions of displaced Bangladeshis try to surge into already overcrowded neighbouring India, which is now in the process of completing and electrifying a 2,500-mile-long barbed wire fence it is erecting along the border of the two countries.
"India is not in a mood or a position to absorb a climate refugee population. It will quite naturally end up in conflict," Muniruzzaman warned.
MILITARY PLANNING
Such potential crises are being increasingly incorporated into military planning around the world, including at NATO. Starting on Thursday, climate issues are expected to have a high profile during The Security Jam, a Brussels-based international web conference on security issues hosted by the Security and Defence Agenda, a Brussels-based think tank.
"The security dimensions of climate change are only now beginning to sink into peopleÂ?s heads," said Muniruzzaman, who only uses one name. "Up to now it has been a humanitarian issue."
Climate-driven displacement is already well underway in Bangladesh. Rising seas and worsening storm surges have permanently submerged half of Bhola Island, a formerly 6,400-square-kilometre delta island at the mouth of the Meghna River, and displaced an estimated half-million people.
Many have ended up in the overcrowded slums of Dhaka, the national capital, competing for scarce jobs. Open land is now so difficult to find in Dhaka that many slum-dwellers live crammed into rickety huts erected on poles over the capital's waste-choked rivers.
As more and more migrants push in to join them, "it is creating a problem of social pressure, law and order," Muniruzzaman said. "People are so vulnerable to poverty, lack of nutrition, lack of economic opportunity. They become unemployed and homeless. That's dangerous in any situation."
In a nation with no social security net, "the capacity of the state to manage such a large refugee population does not exist," he said.
POPULATION TO DOUBLE
Bangladesh, one of the most densely populated nations on earth, has made huge strides in recent years in curbing its birth rate, reducing its total births per woman by half. But even a small rate of increase in an already huge population, means the nation is expected to see its population double to 300 million by 2050.
That suggests "we may be creating a climate refugee population of anything from 25 to 30 million, and that may be a modest figure," the retired general said.
India - with its long historical ties to Bangladesh - is a natural destination for those refugees, the general said. But India's government, already struggling to provide for what it says are 20 million Bangladeshi economic immigrants now living in India, has made clear it cannot accept climate refugees.
"Our Indian friends are very categorical. They say we are not in a position to accept anyone across the border and I don't think they have the capacity to accept them," Muniruzzaman said.
Perhaps most troubling, Bangladesh's government - troubled by a decades-long history of corruption charges and elections marred by allegations of vote-rigging - has limited capacity to manage the coming crisis, Muniruzzaman said.
"The political elites don't have a comprehension and understanding," he said. "They're looking at how to hold onto power the next five years. We need visionary long-term thinking."
What it all suggests, he said, is that "we could very easily see a state collapse. The international community has to factor in such scenarios."
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