This week, Equator's Mohsin Hamid talks to the award-winning writer Amitav Ghosh about how Western NGOs and climate experts have focused their apocalyptic thinking on Bangladesh -- often to the detriment of the Bangladeshis themselves.

Two-thirds of Bangladesh is less than 15 feet above sea level, making it highly exposed to the rise of oceans, coastal flooding, tropical cyclones and the salination of the soil, all of which threaten homes and food security. Over the centuries, Western development experts have brought their own experiences of Europe and America to bear on the environment of Bangladesh. But as Amitav wrote in an essay for Equator, they have routinely failed to heed local knowledge or local patterns of living and sustenance. If their solutions are destined to fail, it is because of the presumptive and high-handed methodologies behind them. 

Mohsin and Amitav also discuss how these NGOs and aid organisations prize the Western notion of individualism over collaboration and collectivism. That notion can end up clouding our vision for the future, preventing us from finding innovative solutions to climate change and other pressing issues.

Read Amitav’s essay, Beyond the Apocalypse.