Bangladesh tops the Global Climate risk Index

No developed country is on the top 20 list of countries worst affected by extreme weather events.

08/12/2009 15:45 - 600,000 people died as a direct consequence from more than 11,000 extreme weather events from 1990 to 2008, the 2010 Global Climate Risk Index shows.

The report from the climate and development organization Germanwatch was released on Tuesday at the UN climate change conference in Copenhagen, Denmark.

According to the index, Bangladesh is the country most severely affected with natural disasters claiming 8,241 lives and damaging property worth 2.18 billion US dollars a year on average.

Myanmar, Honduras, Vietnam, Nicaragua, Haiti, India, Dominican Republic, Philippines and China are other countries in the top ten of the 2010 index, based on data made available by the world's largest reinsurer, Munich Re.

On the top 20 list of affected countries, there are only four developed countries: Italy, Portugal, Spain and the United States.

"It's really hard to make a climate risk index. Only the number of people killed in natural calamities and losses of properties were counted to make this report... But millions of people, who survived extreme weather events and who are suffering across the globe, were not taken into the account," says Dr Saleemul Haq, chief of the climate change cell of the International Institute of Environment and Development, according to The Daily Star.

He added that some African nations would have been on the list, if the surviving people had been counted.

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Bangladesh asks for 15 percent of any climate fund

Even before any climate adaptation fund has seen the light of day, Bangladesh makes substantial demands.
Rie Jerichow - 08/12/2009 12:15 - If sea levels rise by one meter, at least 20 million Bangladeshis, of a total population about 150 million, would be displaced. If the glaciers on the Himalayas melt due to global warming, the situation is even worse.

"The population of our one coastal district is bigger than the entire population of all island countries and in that consideration at least 15 percent of any climate fund should come to us," State Minister of Environment and Forest Hasan Mahmud told a news conference, according to Reuters.

Hasan Mahmud emphasized that Bangladesh is the most vulnerable country in the world to climate change, Reuters reports.

"We are not begging any mercy from anyone. Rather we want justice as the worst victim of climate change," said Qazi Kholiquzzaman Ahmad, a leading economist, who is also part of the Bangladesh climate negotiation team.

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No doubt: The earth is warming

The British Met Office has released world-wide temperature data into the public domain to give evidence that the globe is warming.
08/12/2009 13:35 - The British Met Office has published station temperature records for over 1,500 of the stations that make up the global land surface temperature record. The data shows that global-average land temperatures have risen over the last 150 years and that global warming has increased since the 1970s.

According to Reuters, the Met Office Hadley Centre has published the data to increase transparency and support evidence that the globe is warming.

The release is a response to the series of leaked e-mails from the University of East Anglia. The e-mails indicated that some climate experts were suppressing others' data to enhance their own, Reuters reports.

The Met Office will continue to put as much of the station temperature record as possible into the public domain. When international approvals are in place, the remaining station records – around 5,000 in total – will be released.

Da United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change