DHAKA—Earlier this year, a small island in the Bay of Bengal vanished, taking with it a long-running territorial dispute between neighbors India and Bangladesh. The uninhabited sandbar, known variously as South Talpatti and New Moore Island, had been hotly contested since the 1980s. But in March, as the island was submerged by rising sea levels, the dispute quietly resolved itself. The rising waters were "definitely attributable" to climate change, oceanographer Sugata Hazra at India's Jadavpur University, told the Associated Press. "What these two countries could not achieve from years of talking has been resolved by global warming."
While the world's capitals debate the reality and impact of climate change, Bangladesh is already living it. According to recent projections, the sunken island's fate foreshadows low-lying Bangladesh's broader future: to be overcome by rising waters. A 1 meter rise in sea levels could put 17 percent of the country underwater by 2050, the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change estimates. (The capital, Dhaka, lies at the center of a flood plain and could be engulfed by even a "slight rise" in sea level, according to another report by U.N.-Habitat.) Meanwhile, on the land that does remain, this country of 162 million will face cyclones, droughts, and floods with increasing frequency and intensity as the effects of climate change begin to bite.
But if the coming temperature rise spells disaster for Bangladesh, it has also transformed the country into the world's biggest experiment in how to minimize the impact of climate change. The reason for preparedness, however, is less intentional than accidental. Bangladesh began preparing for climate change long before the term was ever known -- simply because the country's geography has always subjected it to frequent flooding and cyclones. No wonder this is one of the few countries that has accepted the inevitability of global warming. As Munjurul Hannan Khan, deputy secretary of the Bangladeshi Ministry of Environment and Forests, told a Dhaka conference in April, "For the North[ern Hemisphere], [climate change] will mean a compromise with lifestyle. For us, it's about future survival."
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Bangladesh's environmental measures began in the 1970s, when the country started developing saline-resistant varieties of rice and other crops. The country built flood embankments to prevent low-lying arable land from being flooded with salt water. And as a result, grain production rose from 9 million tons in the mid-1970s to 28 million tons today, according to government figures. Today, agriculture in Bangladesh is as "climate proof" as anywhere. And more recently, the British-backed Chars Livelihood Program has funded the construction of flood-resistant infrastructure on Bangladesh's riverine islands, or chars, where some 3.5 million people reside.
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