brad brace contemporary culture scrapbook

COX’S BAZAR, Bangladesh – A bolt of lightning struck a tea shop killing at least six villagers in southern Bangladesh on Saturday, a hospital doctor said.

Three men died on the spot when lightning hit the straw-and-tin tea stall in Cox’s Bazar, about 295 kilometres south of Dhaka.

Three others died on the way to hospital, hospital official, Dr. Monir Ahmed Chowdhury, said.

Masuma’s home is a bamboo and polythene shack in one of the hundreds of slums colonising every square metre of unbuilt land in Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh.

Masuma is an environmental refugee, fleeing from the floods which have always beset her homeland but which are predicted to strike more severely with climate change.

She has found her way to the city from the rural district of Bogra – a low-lying area originally formed from Himalayan silt where the landscape is still being shaped by the mighty Brahmaputra river as it snakes and carves through the soft sandy soil.

“In Bogra we had a straw-made house that was nice. When the flood came there was a big sucking of water and everything went down,” Masuma says.

“Water was rising in the house and my sister left her baby upon the bed. When she came back in, the baby was gone. The baby had been washed away and later on we found the body,” she recalls.

‘Climate refugees’

Masuma’s story is already commonplace in Dhaka, the fastest-growing city in the world. Its infrastructure is creaking under the weight of the new arrivals. Climate change is likely to increase the risks to people like her.

Climate modellers forecast that as the world warms, the monsoon rains in the region will concentrate into a shorter period, causing a cruel combination of more extreme floods and longer periods of drought.

They also forecast that as sea level rises by up to a metre this century (the very top of the forecast range), as many as 30 million Bangladeshis could become climate refugees.

“Climate refugees is a term we are going to hear much more of in the future,” observes Saleem-ul Huq, a fellow at the London-based International Institute of Environment and Development (IIED).

He says many Bangladeshi families escaping floods and droughts have already slipped over the Indian border to swell the shanty towns of Delhi, Bombay and Calcutta.

“The problem is hidden at the moment but it will inevitably come to the fore as climate change forces more and more people out of their homes.

“There will be a high economic cost – and countries that have to bear that cost are likely to be demanding compensation from rich nations for a problem they have not themselves caused,” Mr Huq predicts.

It is a problem that incenses informed politicians in countries like Bangladesh, which are at the sharp end of climate change.

Environment Minister Jafrul Islam Chowdhury demands that rich nations should take responsibility for a problem they have caused.

“I feel angry, because we are suffering for their activities. They are responsible for our losses, for the damage to our economy, the displacement of our people.”

The UK government is taking something of a lead in helping Bangladesh try to cope, by conducting a review aimed at ensuring that its international aid programme takes account of a changing climate.

The Department for International Development (DfID) believes that up to half its aid projects in the country could be compromised by climate change.

Tom Tanner, climate and development fellow at the Institute of Development Studies, Sussex, UK, is in Dhaka reviewing UK aid.

“We estimate that up to 50% of the (British) donor investment in a country like Bangladesh is at risk from the impacts of climate change,” he says.

Shifting sands

DfID is already starting to modify some aid programmes for the poorest of the poor who make their homes on shifting silt islands in the great rivers of Bangladesh.

The islands – known as choars – last on average about 20 years. Then the inhabitants are flooded out, and need to seek new land created elsewhere by the highly-dynamic rivers.

Locals say siltation levels appear to have diminished, so less new land is being created.

We have nothing left, but we have to survive, so we’ve had to build our house from reeds
Pulmala Begum

For Pulmala Begum, who lives on an embankment on the Brahmaputra, rebuilding has become commonplace; but each time she loses more. She has been displaced by flood waters six times.

“We used to have a house and cattle and now we’ve got no land where we can move to. This time we don’t have any money to make another start, or to educate our children,” she laments.

“We have nothing left, but we have to survive, so we’ve had to build our house from reeds.”

The UK government is the biggest donor to Bangladesh, but its current annual aid package of £125m cannot hope to tackle the scale of the challenge now, let alone the problems that will come.

I understand that a review by Sir Nicholas Stern, commissioned by the UK’s prime minister and chancellor to look at the economics of climate change, will conclude that rich nations need to do far more to adapt to the inevitable consequences of climate change.

It will also say developed countries must cut emissions immediately to minimise the effects.

Engineering solutions

Sir Nicholas’ approach is criticised by some economists who argue that as climate change is beyond human control we should continue to maximise economic growth so we will be able to afford to pay for adaptation in the future.

In a recent article for the Spectator magazine, former chancellor Lord Lawson argued: “Far and away the most cost-effective policy for the world to adopt is to identify the most harmful consequences that may flow from global warming and, if they start to occur, to take action to counter them.”

Lord Lawson suggests that a Dutch dyke-building engineer might solve the problems of Bangladesh.

The Stern review is likely to insist that both mitigation and adaptation are necessary, and will argue that economists have under-estimated the costs that climate change will impose and over-estimated the costs of cutting emissions.

The Dutch government itself rejects the optimistic view taken by Lord Lawson. A spokesman for the Dutch Embassy in Bangladesh told BBC News that it would be impossible to protect Bangladesh in the way Holland had been protected.

He said there were 230 rivers, which were much more dynamic than Holland’s rivers, consistently undermining attempts to channel them through the sandy soil.

Mr Huq goes further: “It is ridiculous for people who know nothing about Bangladesh to make pronouncements on how much of it can or cannot be saved.

“Bangladesh is extremely vulnerable, and there is a major moral issue because this is not a problem that people here have caused,” he said.

New Delhi, Sept 13, IRNA
Bangladesh-Proverty-Seminar
Speakers at a seminar in Dhaka Tuesday observed that the country’s poverty ratio has increased in the last few years due to adoption of the World Bank and IMF prescriptions.

In 1972 about 50 million people used to live under the poverty line. But the figure rose to 70 million in the year 2005 which, they said, resulted from the adoption of various suggestions made by the two international lending agencies, although aids from them increased by 63 percent during the same time, Daily Star reported from Dhaka.

The observation came at a seminar dubbed `Interest of World Bank and International Monetary Fund: Policy Making, Condition and Sovereignty’ organized by the Alliance for Economic Justice (AEJB), a platform of 36 organizations, including the Campaign for Good Governance, held at the National Press Club.

The seminar, chaired by Hoque Mukta, director for research and advocacy of Karmojibi Nari, was held prior to the 50th summit of the WB and IMF, due to take place in Singapore from September 14 to 20. Zakir Hossain and Rashed Al Titumir of Unnayan Onneshan were also present at the seminar.

“The government has failed to monitor the domestic market by following WB and IMF prescriptions. As a result, poor people suffer more due to sky rocketing prices of commodities,” said Mousumi Biswash of the Campaign for Good Governance.

She said: “By adopting WB and IMF prescriptions, about 20 million people fell under the poverty line during the last few years.” Abdullah Al Mamun of Karmojibi Nari said: “As the national budget and other economic policies are usually formulated by following WB and IMF suggestions, the ratio of poverty alleviation has come down.”
Although the country’s GDP has gone up 5 percent in the last 15 years, poverty has been reduced by only one percent, said Monwar Mostafa of Unnayan Onneshan.

He said: “If we continuously follow the donors’ prescriptions instead of our own homegrown policy, it would not be possible to remove poverty from the country.”

Bangladesh police fired tear gas and used batons to stop thousands of opposition activists trying to march to the Prime Minister’s office on Tuesday to demand electoral reforms, witnesses said, reports Reuters.

At least 100 people were injured in the clashes that erupted in Dhaka after opposition members tried to break past barbed-wire barricades around Begum Khaleda Zia’s office.

Protesters also exploded crude bombs at several places in the city, but there were no reports of any casualties or damage, witnesses said. Several police vehicles were attacked with stones.

“The violence has been widespread, with protesters fighting police and attacking vehicles,” one witness said.The government did not make any immediate comment on the violence in the city.

The opposition had planned to lay a siege around the prime minister’s office to force her to accept reforms for a free and fair national election in January 2007.The opposition wants the chief election commissioner and his deputies removed, accusing them of a pro-government bias.

The parties also want a say in choosing the head of a caretaker administration that will supervise the election.Khaleda has rejected the demands, saying the opposition was trying to destroy democracy and push the country into anarchy.