Climate Change: Equity and Sustainability

This chapter endeavours to develop an alternative explanation to the causality of climate change in the backdrop of the existing policy regimes, stemming from orthodox theoretical underpinnings. First, it reveals that there is inequality in the sharing of burden of climate change between developed and developing countries. For instance, Bangladesh, despite playing a negligible role in greenhouse gases (GHGs) emissions, faces severe vulnerabilities resulting from climate change. In this regard, cases of food security, natural disaster and forced displacement have been analysed rigorously as these are major areas of vulnerabilities experienced by Bangladesh. Secondly, the chapter focuses on the issue of cooperation among different countries across the world to reveal that attempts of cooperation have failed due to institutional mismatches among different organisations, authorities and countries. Furthermore, it demonstrates the adverse outcomes of institutional fragility at the national level in Bangladesh that multiplies the country’s vulnerability in the face of climate change. Finally, it develops an alternative understanding of sustainability—a concept interrelated with climate change in particular and natural resource governance in general.