Greetings from Dhaka, Bangladesh. It is a humid 32 degrees here, well after midnight, at the end of a long day on the road with Ed Miliband, Douglas Alexander and their ministerial teams.
After transferring from Delhi, the first impression you get driving through Dhaka is of a lethal combination of poverty and overcrowding. In a country with a population of 143 million-plus, yet no bigger than England and Wales, it is hardly surprising that we drive past cars, buses and even trains with almost as many people riding on the roof as inside.
At the British High Commissioner’s residence, Miliband, the Climate Change Secretary, and Alexander, his cabinet colleague at International Development, launch the British Council’s International Climate Champions Initiative. Then they settle down in the lush garden to be interviewed by, of all people, the Holby City actress Amanda Mealing. (She doubles up as an ambassador for Save the Children.) All three agree that climate change is a problem for the whole world and exchange personal, first-hand accounts of its disastrous potential.
Later, after the ministers have met with the prime minister, Sheikh Hasina, we dine with members of government, other politicians and climate-change experts from Bangladesh. The ministers tell us that climate change and enhanced heat – and foreshortened monsoon seasons – help spread diseases such as chicken pox. This stifles progress being made in agriculture: the country is now self-sufficient in food.
By this stage of their punishing schedule, Miliband and Alexander must be exhausted. But things could be worse: several of the elected officials sitting at the ministers’ top table tell us that in Bangladesh, constituents have their mobile numbers. Each day they have hundreds of missed calls.
Tomorrow – or rather today, in a few hours’ time – we go early on a seaplane to Chaluhara to see close up the implications of climate change, which – unlike the distant problem it seems in the developed west – is hitting the country now. Some of us are slightly nervous about the flight in a tiny plane. Our anxiety has not been eased by an anecdote-swapping session over coffee at the residence comparing scary air trips. Douglas Alexander wins with tales of flying through Afghanistan with mountain-tops visible above him.
Hey ho. I’m off to bed.
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