BD 7th most vulnerable country to climate change

FT ONLINE

The Global Climate Risk Index has placed Bangladesh in the seventh position among countries most vulnerable to climate change in its annual report for 2020, which was released by the think-tank Germanwatch on Wednesday.

According to the report, during the last 21 years since 1999, Bangladesh lost 577 lives, suffered economic losses to the tune of US$1.7 billion (purchasing power parity) and witnessed 151 extreme weather events during the period from 1999 to 2018.

Bangladesh's ranking in the index was decided based on those data, the think-tank said.

In the previous report that examined data between 1998 and 2017, Bangladesh was at the ninth position.

The study looked at four indicators -- death toll, number of events, loss of property of each person and loss of gross domestic product. The CRI 2020 is based on the loss figures of 181 countries, it said.

The data showed that the losses were equivalent to 0.41 percent of the country's gross domestic product.

The list of the 10 countries most affected by climate change is: Puerto Rico (1), Myanmar (2), Haiti (3), Philippines (4), Pakistan (5), Vietnam (6), Bangladesh (7), Thailand (8), Nepal (9) and Dominica (10).

Out of ten countries in the long-term index, seven are developing countries in the low income or lower-middle-income category, two are classified as upper-middle-income countries (Thailand and Dominica) and one is an advanced economy (Puerto Rico).