Climate change and its challenges for the marine environment with special reference to ecological aspects in Bangladesh

Abstract

Climate change is predicted to have an extremely destructive effect on Bangladesh. Natural disasters may take place even more frequently and be greater in magnitude. A rise in sea levels could submerge a considerable proportion of the country. The legal regulations per specific aspects of maritime law are the priority of lawyers as natural risks like rising sea levels, storm surges, or tsunami waves, the pollution of the marine environment all represent a severe threat to coastal inhabitants. Global climate change will thus not only cause environmental degradation but will drive massive social changes as innumerable people migrate from devastated areas. This might further overstretch inadequate infrastructure and governance mechanisms and will lead both to a collapse in living standards and a rise in social disorder. Thus, the article contributes to the expansion of the current regime whereby using the bay water cooling atomic energy plants prevents its use for fish farming purposes, or an oil spill on the high seas pollutes beaches that are essential for tourism within the coastal zone. Such activities destroy our natural climate and change the water level, and promote ocean acidification, ocean stratification, coral bleaching, change species; distributions and make other biological changes to the sea and littoral including the discharge of ballast wastewater which may carry alien invasive species.