News reports of dying children may nowadays leave us unresponsive. It may not be quite our fault. There are so many such reports that we may have become numb. But perhaps we may still be shocked by strange sights of children at play, ingenious and playful even in the face of disaster.
I had just such an experience when I visited Bangladesh this week, in my capacity as the European Parliament's vice chairman of the delegation for relations with south Asia. The visit was organised by the Committee on Development.
Bangladesh has had 70 climate-related disasters in the last 10 years. It is suffering more typhoons and flooding because of climate change. River banks are being eroded, to the point that they are almost sliced away.
To get a sense of the scale of the floods involved, one should remember a few salient facts about the country's geography. Eighty per cent of the country is flood plain.
Its landmass covers about 10 per cent of south Asia. However, 90 per cent of the sub-continent's water passes through the country during its passage to the sea.
Children have adapted matter-of-factly to this hair-raising, risky environment. They have found a new use for trees: as places they can climb, and store food in, until the floods subside. Trees are the safest place and they stay up there as long as they can.
Meanwhile, their elders stack their crops on platforms so that the waters do not wash their stores away.
Over the next few decades, however, the situation in Bangladesh may become so grave that not even a child could face their daily reality with innocent nonchalance.
Bangladesh is on a list of countries that could experience massive movements of people as a result of climate change. Such forced migration would be the result of the disastrous effect of natural calamities on homes, infrastructure, sources of food and water, and injuries to human and animal health.
Disaster may come even sooner, though, as soon as the next 12 months.
A month ago, the UN's World Food Programme announced that massive cuts to its budget could see a tsunami of hunger and malnourishment sweep across the developing world. Food aid by the world's rich countries this year is at a 20-year low; some are blaming the scaling back on the economic crunch. Yet, it is a year in which aid is needed more than ever (by about 100 million people). In addition to climate disasters, droughts, floods, typhoons and earthquakes, that destroyed indigenous sources of food in Africa and south Asia, many people in the developing world have also been left unemployed because of the economic crisis. In 80 per cent of countries, food prices are even higher than they were a year ago.
In Bangladesh, the World Food Programme's budget may be cut by as much as 50 per cent. The children may never recover from the malnutrition.
Three conclusions follow from this harrowing scenario.
Although Bangladesh, apart from Afghanistan, is the largest recipient of donor aid from the EU and its member states, the full effect of this aid will only be felt when the EU re-evaluates its donor programmes and not just in terms of amounts. There are problems with bureaucracy that prevent aid reaching disaster areas speedily. Otherwise, the consequences of calamities can be made even worse.
Second, the climate-related disasters remind us how important it is to take significant action on climate change at the coming December summit in Copenhagen. Currently, what is on the agenda is not likely to achieve significant progress. When I met the Prime Minister of Bangladesh, Sheikh Hasina Wazed, she had just returned from Stockholm where she was lobbying for support. Like her people, she is a resilient lady who is putting Bangladesh in the forefront for action against climate change. Unbelievably, this country with its limitations has put on the table $100 million in the proposed fund to mitigate the effects of climate change.
Third, it is not just Bangladesh whose fate lies in the balance.
The UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicts that sea levels could climb somewhere between 18-59 centimetres during the 21st century. Many coastal countries could see all or a significant portion of their land lost as a result. Around a third of all such countries have land within five metres of sea level.
Nearly 10 per cent of the world's population is at risk from displacement by climate change, according to the Environmental Justice Foundation. With those numbers, it is not a matter of "There but for the grace of God..." If we do not become climate refugees ourselves, we will have to face them.
Dr Attard Montalto is a Labour member of the European Parliament.