Position Paper

Committee: Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

(IPCC)
Agenda: Sea level rise
Country: Bangladesh
Delegate: Donggyu Kim, GSIS

Climate change is becoming a great threat to the world we are living in right now. From the
studies of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration(NASA), due to the rise of global
temperature, the global sea level has risen 100 millimeters over the past 30 years. This small
amount of units actually produces a huge problem by having to put on more than million people
to be endangered by sea level rise. These dangers are directly pointed towards the lowland or
island countries with strong monsoon seasons, since these places are tempted to face flooding a
lot. It is estimated that yearly trillion dollars are used for damages while millions of people
temporarily lose their homes and migrate to other countries from the reports of the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The studies show that the pre-industrial carbon
dioxide level is at its highest in 2 million years, where it usually was 280 parts per million and
dramatically changed to 420 ppm. Due to this situation, this difficulty would not anymore only
point towards the lowland and island countries, but later on affect the whole nations around the
world.

In 2015, to prevent these impacts of Climate Change, there was an international treaty held in
France, which is known as the Paris Climate Agreement. The goal for this treaty is to reduce the
amount of global warming by 2 degree celsius, where it clearly aims for 1.5 degree celsius. In
addition, this agreement also provides the idea of adaptation on temperature rise around the
world and framework of financial, technical and capacity building. 196 countries signed this
treaty on reducing the amount of gas emissions, including the main countries that produced many
emissions like the United States and China. Other nations also assign this treaty for their
country’s improvement, like for Kiribati to also prevent flooding, since it is an isolated country.
Currently, this treaty is being processed, which can be significantly noticed if the global
temperature is being increased and below 2 degrees celsius, but other countries aren’t proceeding
with this treaty, where many researchers and analysts predict that global warming will increase
by 2.6 degrees celsius by the end of the century. One of the well known non-governmental
organizations that deals with climate change is known to be Greenpeace. This international
organization aims to protect and ensure the environment for a peaceful future. For this to be
done, this NGO provides non-violent protests and researches on communicating to the world of
environmental issues, where climate change is the big one. They’ve been spreading the idea of
climate change by holding many campaigns, like Saving Arctic or Fighting Global Warming.
One of the biggest achievements Greenpeace has done is alarming the use of fossil fuels in
China. From their research on the air qualities around China, it was noticed that those cities
produced lots of pollution which led to the global temperature to increase rapidly. This research
allowed the authorities to expose the idea of the Airpocalypse, where China produced lots of
greenhouse gas emissions.

The People’s Republic of Bangladesh believes that the impacts of Climate Change are getting
worse everyday. Even though the country doesn’t produce many greenhouse gas emissions by
0.56%, due to its geographical condition of lowland and typical rainy season, strong floods have
occurred oftenly, leading them to be ranked as the seventh most vulnerable country to climate
change. Since the country faces flooding every year, it leads to many disasters to the condition of
the country. The well known floods in Bangladesh happened during the following years, 1954,
1998, 2004, 2007 and 2017. One of the most significant floods that occurred in Bangladesh was
in 1998, where it was the most deepest and long lasting flood. It caused 80% of the country to be
underwater, which led to having more than a thousand people presumed to be dead and 30
million people being affected with 83% of them being homeless. Not just the casualties, but
more than 500 thousand hectares of crops being damaged with 20 thousand livestock dead,
which harshly affects our country’s economy since it is highly agricultural rather than being
industrialized. Many of the educational facilities, tube wells, streets and river embankments were
destroyed. However, there was a recent flood which was very impactful to our country. Last year,
the flood in May that also affected India was a huge damage to our country. The flooding was the
worst flooding that the country has faced with costing it to be $8.5 billion announced by the
government. Including India, approximately 7.28 million people were affected due to this
flooding, by losing their houses and being displaced in shelters with more than 100 people
announced dead.

The most important and strongest solution for preventing the world from facing climate change
is very well-known; saving energy. There isn’t anyone around the world who would waste
energy while they aren’t using, so this idea of saving energy should be spread around the world.
The usage of less energy would allow the companies to produce less gas emission, since it isn’t
burning their carbons a lot. Not only the idea of reducing the use of oil would prevent less
climate change, but stop using oil as a source and use renewable energy would be even more
efficient. Even though the nations around the world already might know this solution, those
nations still use oil as their main source since it widely produces energy. According to Euronews,
it turns out that in 2022, the usage of renewable energy saved 230 million tonnes of greenhouse
gas emissions. The usage of renewable energy, especially solar and wind power, allowed the
amount of global warming to be reduced, which is a very significant change. Renewable energy
would not only decrease the amount of gas emissions, but it would also reduce the amount of
currency used, since oil is technically more valuable than renewable energy. Furthermore, the
idea of using electric cars would really help the environment. In 2019, Joe Biden showed a form
of wanting to achieve the goal of zero emissions by encouraging federal, state, local and tribal
governments to purchase electrical vehicles. This led the country to present about 280 million
electric vehicles to drive along the streets of the US in the same year. With all the situation
between Russia and Ukraine, inflation has occurred drastically, where the value of oils were
really affected. Since oils are being too expensive compared to the past, the governments should
convince their people to buy electric cars, because those vehicles would support the
environment.

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