Dhaka urges global community for legal recognition of water, land, food and environment

Bangladesh Adviser for Environment, Forest and Climate Change Syeda Rizwana Hasan today urged the global community to legally recognise water, land, food and the environment.

Regulating international trade and the transboundary movement of agrochemicals through due diligence in production processes is important as well, she highlighted at the "Formal Statements" session of the ongoing UNCCD COP16 in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

She emphasised urgent global action to combat desertification and achieve environmental justice.

She said public support for financing, technology transfer, and capacity building is vital, but such support should not extend to water-intensive industries or unsustainable agricultural practices.

The adviser said as a lower riparian nation, Bangladesh seeks regional cooperation for river basin management and hopes that UNCCD COP16 will guide global and national political visions towards achieving a land degradation-neutral world.

Focusing on Bangladesh's challenges, she said the country must feed 170 million people with just 14.8 million hectares of land, one of the world's lowest per capita land availability.

Rizwana warned that rising sea levels (SLR) could result in the loss of one-third of the country's land mass by 2050, exacerbating food insecurity.

Excessive use of groundwater and agrochemicals for high-yield rice production has also caused severe land contamination, she said.

The environment adviser shed light on Bangladesh's vulnerability as an active delta.

"Annual river erosion displaces over one million people, while the country loses 2.6% of its forests annually—double the global average," she said.

She said coastal salinity has surpassed critical levels over the past three decades, reduced water flows in 57 transboundary rivers due to upstream diversions and have aggravated water-logging and river flow issues, intensifying the nation's challenges.

Rizwana also urged the global community to act collectively for environmental and climate justice, addressing the huge finance gap in adaptation.

"Recognising the limits to adaptation, ambitious mitigation action is imperative to save the planet and limit temperature rise to 1.5°C," she said.

Bangladesh reaffirmed its commitment to working with the global community for a sustainable future, calling for actionable outcomes from COP16 to combat desertification and ensure climate resilience.