Climate Rally in Australia: Stop Climate Change, Save Bangladesh
Dear Friend, Bangladesh is extremely vulnerable to the effects of climate change, with manifold impacts on its population though the country contributes very little to the global Green House Gas emissions and other causes of Climate Change. Bangladesh Environment Network (BEN) is organising a rally captioned, ‘Stop Climate Change, Save Bangladesh’ all over the world. BEN is a nonpolitical, grassroots movement towards this urgent cause. The purpose of the rally is to draw attention of the international community to the threat that Climate Change poses to Bangladesh, a large part of which will get submerged, rendering tens of millions of people bereft of homestead and livelihood. Climate Change will also affect Bangladesh through drying up the Himalayan glaciers, intrusion of salinity, increase in extreme weather events, and spread of known and new diseases. The huge number of people affected will destabilize Bangladesh, South Asia, and the world as a whole. On 18 of September the Bangladeshi community and its friends will submit a memorandum to the UN Secretary General voicing the people’s concerns and demands. After the rally, a delegation from the rally will go inside the UN office to hand over the memorandum. Similar programe is chaked out major cities of the world including Canberra, Sydney and Melbourne. This rally to be held at the United Nations HQ on the eve of the UN Summit on Climate Change of Sept 22 (part of the High Level Segment of the 2009 General Assembly Session) is in full swing.
The Sydney rally will be at the Hyde Park, Sydney and Canberra rally will be held at Lyons Shops in Lyons near to regional UN office. For the convenience of those who are working on the day, the rally will start at 4:00pm, for a 4:30 pm handover of the memorandum to the Regional Office of UN in Canberra.
BEN’s sister organization in Bangladesh, BAPA also plans to hold a rally in Dhaka in solidarity with the BEN rallies of Sept 18, so that it becomes a global mobilization of Bangladeshis in protest of climate change. We are expecting a strong contingent of BEN friends of Bangladeshi origin to participate, who is working for the environment and human rights in various cities of the world.
Please join the rally on Sept 18th, do spread the words and encourage your friends and co-workers to join us and let’s make our voices heard for Bangladesh and the world community as a whole.
For planning purpose, please RSVP Kamrul Ahsan Khan (0401683930) and Dr Swapan Paul 0433019377).
The Melbourne program will be announced shortly.
Thank you.
Kamrul Ahsan Khan, Coordinator BEN Australian Chapter
Dr Swapan Paul, Convener BEN Sydney Branch
Dilruba Sahana Convener BEN Melbourne Branch
Visit BEN web https://priyoaustralia.com.au/ben and http://www.ben-center.org
