* Any views expressed in this opinion piece are those of the author and not of Thomson Reuters Foundation.
As the U.S. climate change envoy arrives in Bangladesh we have a simple request: use your wealth, built on fossil fuels, to help us develop renewable energy
Sohanur Rahman is the founder of YouthNet for Climate Justice in Bangladesh
Dear Special Presidential Envoy John Kerry,
Welcome to Bangladesh, a country in the epicenter of the global climate crisis. We welcome the Biden administration’s decision to invite our Prime Minister to the Leaders Summit on Climate later this month.
I am a 25-year-old climate activist. I started pushing for climate action when I learned how a cyclone killed over 140,000 Bangladeshis in 1991. Thirty years later, my people and my country are running out of time.
By 2050, one in seven people will be displaced by the climate emergency in Bangladesh. People are already losing their homes to sea-level rise, cyclones, erosions, landslides, and flooding. Up to 18 million people will have to move by 2050 because of sea-level rise alone.
In 2020, Super Cyclone Amphan, the most powerful storm to hit South Asia, devastated my country and parts of India, affecting 10 million people and causing an estimated $13 billion in damage.
As climate change accelerates, these cyclones gain in strength. The Paris Agreement was meant to be a global agreement to take urgent climate action. Unfortunately, this has yet to materialize in the way most thought it would. The Agreement does not adequately address the loss and damage suffered in the most affected areas.
Wealthy countries have fuelled the climate crisis through decades of willful negligence and inaction, yet have done very little to help the billions of people in developing countries who suffer the effects of the climate crisis. The US has historically contributed the most to the climate crisis, by its carbon emissions. It continues to be one of the biggest polluters.
Remember when you brought your young granddaughter to the United Nations while signing the Paris Agreement? We are the generation that has to deal with more severe climate impacts than ever and are already bearing its brunt. Our children will face disasters at a scale we have never seen before. As young people from around the world, we demand an end to inaction on climate-induced loss and damage, which endangers our future.
We now are calling on the government of Bangladesh to enact a Green New Deal, keep coal and gas out of its energy transition plans, cancel all coal plant projects and use the land to kickstart new solar energy projects. But we know that for Bangladesh to build renewable energy infrastructure, it will need the support of developed countries like the United States — which is also influential on the international stage.
Based on your President’s commitment to taking meaningful climate action, the new U.S. administration has the potential to mitigate some of this harm — if your country is willing to step up and provide finance and support for the climate loss and damage in our nations. We don’t want empty promises from wealthy countries anymore. We want genuine leadership from the United States. The future of my country, of young people across the globe, is at stake.
All fossil fuel infrastructure built by the United States affects vulnerable countries around the world. The U.S. needs to use its wealth built on fossil fuels to provide reparations to Bangladesh for renewable energy development and climate mitigation. It should also remove barriers for any technology transfer that will help Bangladesh cut down on its own use of fossil fuels. The U.S. must also use its position as a global superpower to influence other wealthy countries to do the same.
We look forward to the leadership of the United States through immediate action. History will remember you either way.
