Opinion
Cllr Rabina Khan: 'What Bangladesh can teach us about climate change'
Cllr Rabina Khan, Shadwell ward
Flooding on Cambridge Heath Road - Credit: Mike Brooke
Everyone in the borough would be constantly talking about nothing but climate change if they thought there was an imminent danger that it might kill them tomorrow.
As it is, we tend to complain about the weather as usual and ignore it.
In Bangladesh, climate change is not just being talked about, it is being actively tackled and has been for some years - because adapting to climate change for Bangladeshis is literally a matter of life or death.
Cllr Rabina Khan predicts Bangladesh will be exporting climate change knowledge to the west - Credit: Archant
Massive flooding every year, a drought every five years and the occasional typhoon does concentrate the mind.
The sad - if predictable - thing is that far too many people living in the west think they are the climate change experts. They are not.
You may also want to watch:
Bangladeshi farmers are adapting to changing weather patterns by diversifying farm production from wheat and rice to a range of vegetables, raising road levels, building homes with much higher foundations and creating new drainage channels.
The large Bangladeshi community in Tower Hamlets are acutely aware of this.
Most Read
- 1 14 charged with alleged drug dealing and money laundering offences
- 2 19 arrested and cash seized in East End dawn drug raids
- 3 Police officers save lives in two sperate emergencies on same shift
- 4 'Utterly horrific': Tower Hamlets MPs react to Sir David Amess stabbing
- 5 £18,000 awarded to Bethnal Green church to bring loo up to scratch
- 6 Lock-up garage space in Spitalfields used for social housing
- 7 Prison sentence increased for 'violent and dangerous' man
- 8 Man, 19, charged after alleged sexual assaults in Tower Hamlets
- 9 Volunteers patrol streets after Isle of Dogs fatal stabbing
- 10 Volunteers thanked for running East End food bank for 70 weeks
With this practice comes expert knowledge accumulated over many years. It may be that soon Bangladesh will be exporting climate change knowledge to the west.
