Bangladesh ‘cannot wait’ for help with climate action: PM

Bangladesh must take climate adaptation matters into its own hands and “cannot wait for assistance”, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has said.Bangladesh has received “many promises” but “very little” international finance to tackle climate change, Hasina said at the Overseas Development Institute, a London-based think tank on Tuesday.“So we have to do something for ourselves,” she said.Among the measures the government was taking, she said, was building schools “that can double up as shelters in case of a cyclone”, constructing storm-resilient homes, and improving health and sanitation conditions in refugee camps.Bangladesh is hosting hundreds of thousands of refugees from neighbouring Myanmar in crowded camps in Cox’s Bazar District where they are threatened by flooding, disease and landslides with the monsoon season scheduled to start in the coming weeks.The environmental advocacy group Germanwatch ranked Bangladesh sixth out of 182 countries most affected by extreme weather events between 1997 and 2016.About 60% of deaths caused by cyclones around the world in the last two decades occurred in Bangladesh, according to the World Bank.Hasina told the event it was “unfortunate” that countries like the United States that were “very eager on climate change” were scaling back their climate ambitions.US President Donald Trump has decided to pull his country out of the Paris climate deal, and questioned the scientific consensus that global warming is dangerous and driven by human consumption of fossil fuels.Bangladesh in talks with UK for Tarique extradition: Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has said the government was holding talks with the British government to extradite opposition BNP leader Tarique Rahman from London to face justice in the home country.Now heading the BNP from exile, Tarique is convicted of money laundering and corruption in two separate cases in Bangladesh.He is also being tried in many other cases, including one on charges of attempted assassination of Hasina.After delivering the keynote at a programme in London’s Queen Elizabeth Centre on Tuesday, the prime minister took questions from journalists.Asked whether her government took any initiative to bring Tarique back, she said the UK should have faced the question instead.“The UK is a free country, anybody can take shelter and refuge…that’s true. The crime that the person committed …and already he is convicted,” Hasina said.“And I don’t understand how UK enjoys keeping a convicted person,” the prime minister added.“So it’s better you ask this question to the UK people.”The prime minister also said her government was “definitely eager” to take Tarique back.“He should face the court,” she said.“Well, we are talking to the British government about it and definitely one day we will take him back,” she added.BNP senior vice-chairman Tarique, in London for a decade, is standing in for his mother Khaleda Zia who was jailed for five years for corruption on February 8.He has also been sentenced in absentia to 10 years in prison in the same case. He had earlier got a prison term of seven years for laundering money.