Afra Nawar Rahman, Youth Coordinator at Young Power in Social Action (YPSA), delivered a compelling speech as a youth leader from Bangladesh. She powerfully highlighted how climate-vulnerable countries like Bangladesh, despite contributing minimally to global emissions, suffer the most severe consequences of climate change, calling for urgent and equitable global action.
Full speech:
Good afternoon and congratulations for being here. Every second that we hesitate, the world suffers. While we gather here today, another coastline erodes. Another species vanishes. Another family is forced to be displaced from the land they have owned for generations. And in 2020 alone Bangladesh faced such 4.4 million climate migrations accounting for 15% of global migrations. This isn’t just statistics, it’s a clarion call. By 2050, up to 40 million people in South Asia are supposed to be displaced 20 million of which displacements are to happen in Bangladesh. And nowhere is this crisis more personal to me than in Chattogram, my homeland, Bangladesh’s second largest city, an economic hub and home to the world’s longest sea beach Cox’s Bazar.
I Afra like to introduce myself as a global citizen above all the other identities that I have. I like to define myself as the um by the country that I was born in I never chose to become a climate activist. The role was assigned to me. I have seen the crisis unfold with my own eyes. I’ve stood stranded for hours with flood water reaching my hips trapped in my own city. But for many in Chattogram, this is not just an occasional disaster, this is our daily life.
Here seas don’t wait for storms It follows the moon. For half the day people walk through ankle deep water just to go to work to school to buy food and saltwater intrusions destroying our crops. And this is not just flood. This is sea level rising in real time. This is our reality. Climate justice is a global crisis. This does not limit to only Bangladesh, the floods that drown my cities are connected to the droughts that’s happening elsewhere.
Climate change does not recognize borders and thus our solutions should not be divided by borders either. Yet despite the warnings, despite the signs, despite the lived experiences of those in the front line actions remain slow.
Promises are made conferences are held reports are published. Yet the forests keep burning. The floods keep occurring. And our future that we dream of, it’s slipping further and further away. We’re told that change takes time. But time is the one thing that we do not have on our hand.
Young people today are not just witnesses to the climate crisis. We are its inheritors. And we refuse to inherit a planet that’s destroyed. We are not waiting for permission to act at Young Power In Social Action (YPSA) where I work, we have turned our vulnerability into our strength. We are tackling waste management and pollution problems through circular economic approaches. We are working with climate displaced communities to find solutions not just survival.
We youth are proving that actions start with us but that not that does not mean the authorities don’t have responsibilities. We also need leaders who act not just speak. We need policies that serve the planet and not the polluters. We need youth voices at every level from grassroots actions to policy formations because our participation is not optional, it’s a necessity.
So today I stand before you with a simple message. There is no time to waste. Time for discussion is over. Climate change will not pause for our convenience either we rise to the challenge or we watch the world we love slip away. The question is when history looks back on this moment, will it remember us as a generation that stood by or a generation that fought and saved what still could be saved? We still have a choice but only if we act now. Thank you very much.
