A powerful new video made by BRAC and released just before COP28, follows Saleh as he visits some of Bangladesh’s coastal communities where climate change is wreaking havoc on local ecosystems and economies. From the villagers who are forced to move their houses to escape land erosion to the those experiencing a high incidence of cervical cancer and strokes - believed to be linked to the elevated salinity of the country’s groundwater due to rising sea-levels - the people of Bangladesh are on the frontlines of changing weather patterns and extreme temperatures.

“People's hardest attempts to survive here are becoming futile,” Saleh says in the video. And he warns “We need to join their fight and we need to do it very quickly because the climate crisis won't stop at this coast: when it's done here, we are all next.” 

Founded in 1972 by the late Sir Fazle Hasan Abed, BRAC started out as a relief organisation to support displaced people in the newly-independent Bangladesh, but in the five decades since has grown to become the largest – and arguably – most enterprising NGO in the world.

Its programmes span poverty reduction, gender equality, community empowerment, universal access to health care, and pro-poor urban development. A pioneer in microfinance, BRAC also runs 10 social enterprises and has its own insurance company.

The first so-called Global South organisation to launch international operations, BRAC is a major provider of humanitarian support for the millions of Rohingya refugees who have fled to Bangladesh from Myanmar and champions locally-led community responses to development challenges such as climate change. - PA