Tuesday, November 30, 2010

Bangladesh island protection program struggles for funding

24 Nov 2010 16:09:00 GMT
Written by: AlertNet correspondent

By Syful Islam

DHAKA (AlertNet) - Residents in Sandwip, an island sub-district in southeast Bangladesh, have appealed to the government to fund a multi-million-dollar, three-kilometre-long stretch of concrete and earth wall to curb worsening erosion, which threatens the earthen embankments that protect the island of 400,000 people.

But Bangladesh's government, faced with a surge of similar requests from other threatened regions of the country and limited funds, will struggle to carry out the project, which has been proposed since the 1960s, officials say.

"Fund constraints are a big barrier to development works in Bangladesh," said Mihir Kanti Mazumder, secretary of the Ministry of Environment and Forests.

The proposed "dam," which would connect the island to Urirchar, another island near the Noakhali district mainland, is designed to stem worsening sea erosion, which has dramatically reduced the size of the island, to an estimated 80 square miles (200 square kilometres) today.

High tides have gradually washed away part of the island's eastern protective embankments, leaving a growing number of people homeless, said Jamal Uddin Chowdhury, president of Sandwip-Noakhali Dam Implementation Council, a local organization pushing for the dam.

FAMILIES DISPLACED

"Sea erosion outside the embankment is intensifying," he said. Altogether, a quarter of the island's people are now living on its remaining elevated embankments after losing their land and homes, he said.

Over the last 30 years, nearly 200,000 other islanders displaced by erosion have fled to the Chittagong mainland and elsewhere in the country, he said.

Sandwip residents, most of them fishermen and farmers, fear things may be about to get worse after Bangladesh's government allocated $5.3 million to build a one-kilometer-long dam connecting Urirchar island with Noakhali district on the mainland. The project's aim is to reclaim nearly 600 square kilometers (230 square miles) of low-lying land.

Money for the project is to come from the country's Climate Change Trust Fund, which was created and funded by the government.

But the project may put Sandwip's residents at greater risk if the wall changes sea currents, intensifying pressure on their own embankments, Chowhury said.

Council members said the cost of bridging the full four-kilometer-long gap, which separates Sandwip from Urirchar and Urirchar from the mainland, would be about $21 million.

"Climate scientists say low-lying areas like islands and coastal belts are under threat of vanishing due to sea level rise. There is no long-term solution except to try to save the island through increasing its size by building a dam," Chowdhury said.

REALLY NECESSARY?

However, Ainun Nishat, a climate change expert and vice chancellar at BRAC University, a Bangladesh institution focused on development issues, said islands like Sandwip are unlikely to disappear entirely as most are protected by substantial earth embankments.

Sandwip has a more than 12-foot (3.5 metre) embankment encircling it, he said, which suggests a predicted one-meter (3 foot) sea level rise by 2100 would not lead to the destruction of the island.

But he emphasised the need to properly maintain the embankments to ensure their effectiveness, particularly in standing up to the storm surges that are hitting Bangladesh's coastal belt with increased frequency and intensity.

Sandwip residents have been asking for construction of protective dams since the 1960s without result, despite a series of government promises to help.

Bangabandhu Shekh Mujibur Rahman, considered Bangladesh's "father of the nation", in 1970 pledged help building the dam during an election campaign. The region received another pledge of help in 1979 from President Aiaur Rahman, one from Hussain Mohammed Ershad, who came to election in a coup in 1986, and another from present Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina in 2008.

None of the promises were met, residents say.

Part of the problem has been a lack of funds. In 1984, Holland's ambassador in Bangladesh proposed that two-thirds of the cost of the dam could be collected from the Netherlands and other donor countries, and the rest covered by Bangladesh.

In 1986, five countries including Holland and Canada agreed to provide financial and technical assistance to build the dam. But the project was put off by Bangladesh's government in favour of channelling funding for construction of a bridge over the Jamuna River.

Members of the Sandwip Dam Implementation Council said they were assured in October by Hasan Mahmud, the state minister for environment, and Ramesh Shen, the country's water resources minister, that the project remains under consideration, said ABM Wahidur Rahman.

But because of its high cost, the project cannot be funded by the government's Climate Change Trust Fund, which has a cap of $3.57 million for projects, said Mazumder, of the Ministry of Environment and Forests.

The Urirchar-Noakhali dam was funded by the Trust Fund only after the project was broken into two phases, bringing it under the $3.57 million cap.

The lack of adequate funding is a key reason many climate adaptation projects remain unimplemented, Mazumder said.

Syful Islam is a freelance journalist in Bangladesh. He can be reached at youths1990@yahoo.com.

http://www.trust.org/alertnet/news/bangladesh-island-protection-program-struggles-for-funding-/

Sunday, November 21, 2010

Bangladesh's Aila victims 'have no Eid and no joy'

15 Sep 2010 15:21:00 GMT
Written by: AlertNet correspondent

By Syful Islam

SATKHIRA DISTRICT, Bangladesh (AlertNet) - Still awaiting the rebuilding of broken embankments 16 months after cyclone Aila hit the region, nearly 50,000 people in Bangladesh's Khulna and Satkhira districts are living under the open sky on elevated roads, eating at best once or twice a day.

In this circumstance, Islam's biggest festival, Eid-ul-Fitr, comes to them with little joy or happiness.

The devastating cyclone hit three sub-districts of Bangladesh's southwest coastal region in May 2009, killing at least 300 people and destroying 4,000 kilometres of roads and embankments. More than 87,000 people lost their houses, possessions and traditional livelihoods.

Today, with seawater still flooding many homes and fields, the ill-fated Aila victims remain living on the damaged embankments, surviving the rainy season in huts made of plastic sheets and bamboo. Thousands have little but rainwater or limited supplies of freshwater provided by NGOs to drink.

With the fields under salt water, no shrimp farming or other activities can be restarted, and people have no way to earn a livelihood. Instead they depend on relief aid and try to fish in the nearby rivers.

People say they simply want the broken embankments repaired, perhaps through food for work programs, so they can get on with their lives.

"Once Gabura was tourist spot, as it stands just opposite the Sundarbans, the world's largest mangrove forest. But people here now have no work and are living poorly," said Mizanur Rahman, 45, who lives in a 10-foot-square (1 square metre) hut on an embankment in Gabura Union under the Satkhira district.

Nosiron Begum, 80, is living on the same embankment with her daughter Jarina, 35, a widow who earns her livelihood begging in the nearest villages.

"My house and lands were washed away during cyclone Aila, turning me into a beggar. I never saw such a devastating storm earlier," said the old woman.

Koitori Bibi, 70, the mother of a son and daughter, said her family survives on fish from the nearby river.

"My husband is an old man. He can't work. So we eat once a day," she said.

Zahura Begum, 50, the mother of two grown sons, said, "My sons are married and can't feed their own family members as there is no work. So they can't look after me and my ailing husband."

Asked how they will observe Eid, Begum said, "We are passing the days half starving. We have no money to buy clothes or to buy sugar and vermicelli. We have no Eid and no joy."

Syful Islam is a senior reporter with The New Nation newspaper in Dhaka, Bangladesh.

http://www.alertnet.org/db/an_art/60167/2010/08/15-152112-1.htm

Bangladesh coastal residents at risk from lack of storm shelters

06 Sep 2010 21:22:00 GMT
Written by: AlertNet correspondent

By Syful Islam

DHAKA, Bangladesh (AlertNet) - Elevated concrete storm shelters, built along Bangladesh's coast, have over the decades dramatically reduced the once catastrophic number of people killed by cyclones in the low-lying country.

But population growth, poor maintenance of some of the existing shelters and a lack of funding means the country today has inadequate shelters to protect all 7.8 million Bangladeshis most at risk during cyclones, officials say.

With the monsoon season now underway, people living in disaster-prone coastal districts are worried that if cyclones or other large storm surges hit this year, they could carry huge costs in terms of lives and livelihoods.

"People are at high risk, especially those who live close to the sea. Until and unless adequate numbers of shelter centres are built, they will remain at risk," said Mokhlesur Rahman, the nation's disaster management secretary.

According to statistics from the Ministry of Disaster Management, the country's 16 coastal districts have 2,853 storm shelter centres, 262 of which are now unusable. To adequately protect the coastal population, the country needs another 2,500 shelters, Rahman said.

"It is impossible to give them shelter with the small number of (existing) shelter centres. But we can't build adequate centres due to lack of funding," he said.

New shelters, capable of protecting hundreds of residents each, cost at least $285,000 per shelter, he said, and the government is turning to donor countries for assistance. So far, the country has raised enough funds to begin construction of 482 additional shelters, he said.

Storm shelter centres - large, elevated concrete structures built near the coast and often used day to day as schools or other public spaces - are an essential part of Bangladesh's disaster preparedness, along with early warning systems.

SHELTERS THE ONLY OPTION

In a region where many people, particularly the poorest, live in flimsy one-story structures, the shelters offer the only real chance of surviving serious cyclones, tsunamis and other disasters.

Bangladesh's worst-ever cyclone, in 1991, killed 138,000 people and left as many as 10 million homeless. But the death toll was far less than from a smaller storm in 1970 that killed 300,000 people before the storm shelter network was built.

Since that time, the shelters have dramatically reduced Bangladesh's loss of life from cyclones. Cyclone Sidr in 2007 officially killed 3,447 people, though some aid agencies believe the number may have reached 5,000 to 10,000. Cyclone Aila, which hit southern Bangladesh in 2009, killed 300 people, destroyed the homes of about 87,000 people and wiped out 4,000 kilometres of roads and embankments, many of which are still being rebuilt.

Following the 1991 cyclone, a survey headed Jamilur Reza Chowdhury, a professor at Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology, recommended construction of 4,000 additional storm shelter centres. After Cyclone Sidr hit in 2007, that recommendation was reviewed by another committee headed by the then-secretary of the works ministry. That committee suggested the government construct at least 2,000 more shelter centres. But it has failed to do so, citing a lack of funds.

Residents of the coastal areas most in need of shelters say that failure is putting large numbers of lives at risk.

TOO FAR AWAY?

Ripon Hosen, a boatman from Chalkbara village in Satkhira district - one of the areas hardest hit by Cyclone Aila - said that the nearest shelter centre for his family is two kilometres from their house.

"On the day Aila struck, we ran to the elevated embankments, seeing that the water level was rising unusually. It was not possible for us to reach the shelter centre" in time, he said.

Others, who failed to reach the storm centres or the elevated embankments, "were washed away by the high tide," he said.

The area, with a population of 42,000, currently has six shelter centres capable of holding about 3,000 people, Hosen said.

"We need at least 30 more shelter centres to accommodate all," agreed G.M. Kamrul Islam, a small businessman in Khalishabunia village, in the same area. "Had Aila hit at night instead of in daylight, at least three-quarters of the people here might have been killed."

On that day, "I never saw such water rising in my life. Though the meteorology office reported a danger signal of 12 (high on the scale), we did not take it seriously because we are familiar with storms from childhood. After Aila, now we become scared even if the danger signal is at 3 or 4," he said.

Khulna and Satkhira districts, considered some of the country's most storm-vulnerable areas, have only 77 and 65 working shelter centres respectively. Bhola, a large southern island, has 417 by comparison, government figures show.

Hasan Mehedi, chief executive of Humanitywatch, a non-profit rights group in Khulna, and someone who works with Aila victims, said the number of storm shelter centres in the region is very inadequate to meet emergency needs.

"None of the storm shelter centres can accommodate more than 500. Most of the coastal people in Khulna need shelter during disasters. So, the existing shelter centres can save only a very small portion of the total population of the region," he said.

Some of the shelters now in place also are suffering from age and lack of repair.

Rashid Ahmed, a villager in Bashkhali sub-district under the Chittagong district, said the storm shelter centre in the Kadamrasul area has developed several large cracks and become unusable after it was not repaired.

He estimated that of 116 storm shelter centres in the area, 60 were not functioning effectively because of lack of maintenance.

Ahmed said that the lack of shelters threatened around 600,000 people in the sub-district. About 42,000 people there were killed during the devastating 1991 cyclone.

Syful Islam is a senior reporter with The New Nation newspaper in Dhaka, Bangladesh.

http://www.trust.org/alertnet/news/bangladesh-coastal-residents-at-risk-from-lack-of-storm-shelters/

Climate pressures leading to rise in Sundarbans 'tiger widows'

26 Jul 2010 11:58:00 GMT
Written by: AlertNet correspondent

By Syful Islam

DHAKA, Bangladesh (AlertNet) - Climate change is driving a growing number of farmers in Bangladesh's southern Sundarbans region out of their fields and into the region's mangrove forests, leading to a rise in tiger attacks and 'tiger widows,' researchers say.

Finding no other jobs to earn livelihoods, people of the region are increasingly turning to the forests to catch fish and crabs or collect wood and honey for sale.

But that has left them vulnerable to attacks by the dwindling number of Royal Bengal tigers that roam the Sundarbans, experts say.

Aleya Begum, 18, of Munshiganj Kolabari village in Bangladesh's Satkhira district, lost her husband Abdur Rouf to a tiger attack when he was fishing near the Sundarbans. Now she lives with her mother, and both are struggling to survive on wages earned as day labourers.

Begum's 5-year-old son has been sent to live with his grandfather, following tradition that children of a marriage belong with the husband's family.

In a society where widows often have low social status and little chance to remarry, the tiger attacks are creating new suffering in a region already struggling with widespread loss of farmland to sea level rise and salt intrusion that has made it impossible for many farmers to continue growing crops.

"The tiger widows in that area are being treated as 'unwanted'. They are unwelcome at their in-laws' house and forced to return to their father's family," said Anwarul Islam, a geologist at the University of Dhaka and chief executive officer of the Wildlife Trust of Bangladesh (WTB).

Tiger-people interactions are age-old in the region, but are now on the rise as farmers who can no longer earn a living from their land venture in growing numbers into the Sundarbans mangrove forests in search of an alternative income.

Some farmers have been able to begin raising shrimp on their fields, hard-hit by sea water intrusion into underground aquifers and salt water driven into even inland fields during cyclone surges.

But shrimp cultivation requires only a small number of workers, leaving many people in the area with no way to earn a living.

"So people go to the Sundarbans and become easy prey of tigers. A tiger or tigress needs to run 10 to 15 minutes at least to catch a deer. But it doesn't need to run to catch a (man)," Islam said.

So far this year, 26 people have been killed by tigers in the region, compared to 34 in all of 2009 and 30 in all of 2008, WTB figures show. Nine people in the area have been injured in tiger attacks so far this year, compared to eight in all of 2009, the group said.

Islam said a recent survey by the wildlife trust found that 80 percent of 400 people questioned had eaten deer meat at least once in their life. That suggests hunting in the mangroves may also be reducing the tigers' access to their normal prey.

A MILLION DEPENDENT ON FOREST

Islam said that about a million people in the area are in one way or another dependent on the Sundarbans mangrove forests.

"I recently talked with many of them who are risking their lives. (But) they said they won't go to the forest if they get alternative ways to earn a living," he said.

Nowshad Gazi, 65, and his son Ismail Hosen, 13, of South Kodomtola village, in Shyamnagar sub-district, were killed in a tiger attack on July 6 while fishing in a canal near the Sundarbans.

A Royal Bengal tiger first attacked the son and dragged him into the forest. When the father entered the forest to rescue his son, the tiger then attacked and killed both of them.

Nowab Ali, 23, another of tiger victim Nowshad Gazi's sons, told AlertNet he is now the only earner supporting a seven-member family.

A crab trader, he said even his business was now suffering because the recent increase in tiger attacks means fewer people are willing to risk their lives fishing in the Sundarbans, at least for a few weeks.

Inevitably, however, they will return, he said.

"People go to the forest to find bread and butter as there is no other job in this area. Only God is with us to feed us, to save us," he said.

Salma Begum, 27, recently saw her husband, Majibur Rahman, seriously injured in a tiger attack after fishing from a canal in the Sundarbans forest.

Rahman had earlier tried his hand at cultivating shrimp on their salty farmland, but because of inexperience lost $700 when the shrimp died in a bacteria outbreak. He then found a job making bricks in a neighbouring town, but that job recently ended, forcing him to try fishing, his wife said.

Now the family is struggling to get by.

"Already Taka 40,000 ($600) has been spent for his treatment. We are eating hardly twice a day. Now I am working sometimes as a day labourer as my husband can't work," said Begum, the mother of three school-age children.

Not only people are being killed as a result of growing tiger-human interactions, Islam said. Tigers, unable to find food in the forest or looking for new territories, sometimes also wander into human settlements and are regularly killed, he said.

The size of the Sundarbans forest had fallen by half in 100 years, from its original 12,000 square kilometres, Islam said.

Modinul Ahsan, programme coordinator of the WTB, noted that conflict between tigers and people in the Sundarbans is centuries old. Quoting a survey carried out by researcher Adam Barlow in 2009, he said that from the year 1881 to 2006, an estimated 3,615 people had been killed by tigers in the area, or an average of 51 a year.

Syful Islam is a senior reporter with The New Nation newspaper in Dhaka, Bangladesh.

http://www.trust.org/alertnet/news/climate-pressures-leading-to-rise-in-sundarbans-tiger-widows/

Land disputes choke up Bangladesh's courts - is help at hand?

08 Jul 2010 09:32:00 GMT
Written by: AlertNet correspondent

By Syful Islam

DHAKA (AlertNet) - Land disputes have choked Bangladesh's courts for decades prolonging the suffering, especially of the poorest, but the government hopes new steps to bring justice will succeed where others have failed.

More than 1.9 million legal cases are languishing in the judicial system, and of these more than two-thirds are disputes about land.

Land ownership is a longstanding source of conflict in this low-lying river delta nation, where shifting rivers, an antiquated land records management system and corruption have all contributed to an ever-growing legal backlog.

It is a race against time to unclog the system before the country of 160 million people has a new wave of land disputes to deal with, as is expected.

Climate change is raising sea levels, and scientists predict this will swallow up to 12 percent of the country's land by mid-century, causing mass displacement with millions of people looking for land to live on.

The government said recently it was moving to address the problem by digitising land records and redistributing some government farmland to landless peasants.

That may help, but now, as before, it is Bangladesh's poor - vulnerable to illegal land grabs and with few resources to defend themselves - who are usually hardest-hit.

"Our judiciary system is unfriendly to the poor. People who possess huge money win in the cases and the poor become victimised," said Shamsul Huda, executive director of the Association for Land Reform and Development (ALRD). "Maybe less than 5 percent of people get legal support from government and NGOs. It has to be raised."

In a nation where a century-old land registration system is only now being updated, forgery of land documents is common. Land owners regularly find that their property has been sold to others without their knowledge, and are forced to initiate court cases in an attempt to get their land back.

With cases usually taking years to be heard, families are often forced to spend huge sums to try to recover property, which they may have to find by selling other property. In this way, families are regularly set on the road to becoming landless.

"Appropriate land reform and its effective enforcement is a must to help ensure the land rights of disadvantaged, weaker and minority people," Huda said.

History is not on their side.

In 1950, when Bangladesh was still a British colony, the ceiling for individual land ownership was fixed at 33.33 acres - a measure no government has enforced. The country's wealthy ignored a demand to hand over excess property to the state.

In 1984, a Land Reform Act further reduced the ceiling for individual ownership of land to 20 acres. Again, the rule was ignored, as was a subsequent effort to carry out agrarian reform and divide the country's land more evenly.

Instead, influential elites expanded their holdings by grabbing 1.3 million hectares of government-owned land, Rezaul Karim Hira, Bangladesh's land minister, said recently.

Finance Minister A.M.A. Muhith has told parliament that the country would now digitise land records.

Liaquat Ali Siddiqui, a professor at the University of Dhaka, said: "Modernisation of the land record system can help minimise the complications."

He added that if land documents for a piece of property were forged, it could take a long time for the genuine owner to prove ownership, largely because the records system is antiquated.

In 2000, Bangladesh's government passed a legal aid act intended to help the country's poorest in legal cases, but few people have so far received support. A more effective way to address the problem, Siddiqui suggested, would be to introduce a 'no-win-no-fee' type legal aid system using private lawyers, as in the United States and Britain.

Right now, "70 to 80 percent of people do not go to the court system, fearing further loss of properties", said Adilur Rahman Khan Shuvra, an advocate and secretary of Odhikar, a Bangladesh rights organisation. "Access to justice is very far from poor people's reach."

Shuvra said families who have lost their land to river erosion are forced to go to the cities and live in overcrowded slums.

And as well as pushing sea levels up, climate change is aggravating storm surges and seawater intrusion into drinking water and farmland, making ever larger regions of the country's coastal belt uninhabitable.

Syful Islam is a senior reporter with The New Nation newspaper in Dhaka, Bangladesh.

http://www.trust.org/alertnet/news/land-disputes-choke-up-bangladeshs-courts-is-help-at-hand/

Climate change threatens to slash Bangladesh rice crop, report warns

30 Jun 2010 13:35:00 GMT
Written by: AlertNet correspondent

By Syful Islam

DHAKA, Bangladesh (AlertNet) - Without adequate intervention, rice production in Bangladesh could see a dramatic decline by 2050 due to the impacts of climate change, even as population is projected to continue rising, researchers say.

"Bangladesh faces formidable challenges to feed its population in the future," note the authors of a new report on adapting Bangladesh's agriculture to climate change.

And the problems may extend well beyond the densely populated, low-lying South Asian nation.

"The present climatic variability is taking its toll in a lot in countries where temperatures are high," said M. Asaduzzaman, research director of the Bangladesh Institute of Development Studies and one of the authors of the study, titled, "Investment in Agriculture for Higher Growth, Productivity and Adaptation to Climate Change".

Rising temperatures, salt intrusion into agricultural fields, drought and other climate-related issues are threatening rice production, he said, and the problems may lead to falling rice harvests in other Asian nations as well, including India and Indonesia, and in some African countries.

Among the worst-hit areas in Bangladesh is the southern Khulna region, at the Bay of Bengal, which is suffering increasing sea water intrusion into fields due to sea level rise. But Bangladesh's higher northern region also is suffering worsening drought, Asaduzzaman said.

AN 18 PERCENT PRODUCTION DROP FORECAST

The threat varies by the type of rice, with production of boro rice - a variety the report calls "the lifeline for Bangladesh" - most at risk. Harvests of the water-loving winter variety, which requires irrigation, could fall by 18 percent in the Khulna region by 2050.

High yielding boro rice today "accounts for the bulk of the rice grown in the country," the report said. Making up any fall in production with other varieties could also be difficult, as they are also vulnerable to climate-related pressures, particularly droughts and flooding, the report said.

Overall, rice production in Bangladesh is expected to fall by about 3.9 percent a year in the decades leading up to 2050, unless action is taken to counteract the effects of climate change, the report said.

Increasing climate variability is already costing Bangladesh's economy $3 billion a year, and the financial toll could hit $121 billion for the 2005 to 2050 period, the report said.

Curbing the problem and keeping food production at adequate levels will require more than relying on international assistance, Asaduzzaman warned.

"We have to work on our own instead of totally depending on the international community," he told AlertNet.

BANGLADESH A CLIMATE MODEL?

"The government has already taken different steps for adaptation of climate change affects. If the works goes on at its present pace, very soon Bangladesh will become a model in adjusting to climate variability," he predicted.

Bangladesh's Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has urged developed countries to come up with technical and financial assistance to help Bangladesh cope with the challenges of climate change, a problem Bangladesh had virtually no role in producing.

But the government is also providing subsidies to the country's agricultural sector in an effort to increase production and improve food security, she said.

Addressing the coming problems, the report said, will require better planning in how to manage water resources, including both groundwater and surface water, and making efforts to use cheaper surface-water irrigation instead of costly groundwater irrigation where possible.

Improving water use efficiency, developing new crop varieties, improving crop diversification, reducing post-harvest losses and overhauling the country's agricultural extension system could also contribute to easing climate-related problems, the report said.

Syful Islam is a senior reporter with The New Nation newspaper in Dhaka, Bangladesh.

http://www.trust.org/alertnet/news/climate-change-threatens-to-slash-bangladesh-rice-crop-report-warns-/

River flooding, erosion hitting earlier than usual in Bangladesh

14 Jun 2010 13:27:00 GMT
Written by: AlertNet correspondent

By Syful Islam

DHAKA, Bangladesh (AlertNet) - Hundreds of people in Sirajganj district, northwest of the capital city of Dhaka, lost their homes and crops to unusually early flooding and river erosion this year, a development experts believe is linked to climate change.

"Usually such flooding comes in late May. But this year the flood and river erosion took place at least one and half months before. This is bit unusual," said Ainun Nishat, a senior climate change adviser with the International Union for the Conservation of Nature in Dhaka.

"If you look at the history, you will hardly get any examples of such early flooding and massive erosion," he said.

This year, the Jamuna River at Sirajganj was flowing two meters higher than normal the first week of May, when it is usually much quieter, he said.

People in Sirajganj district said the early flooding brought much faster erosion than in previous years. Already this year, 300 people have lost their homes and crops to the problem, said Fazel Khoda, a local journalist.

Parts or all of six villages, as well as hundreds of acres of farmland, have been lost to the Jamuna so far this year, he said, and many more villages are at risk.

Each year, the number of people losing land or homes to river erosion in the district is rising by about 100, he said.

Abu Mohammed Golam Kibria, chairman of a Sirajganj sub-district, told Alertnet that the early flooding and erosion is the worst seen in 25 years.

EROSION NOW THREATENING EVEN FLOOD SHELTERS


Kibria said the erosion has become such a big problem that it now threatens not only villages but some of the public flood shelters built to help people affecting by flooding, as well as primary schools and mosques in the southern part of Sirjgani district.

Kibria said some people, after losing their land and homes, are migrating to Dhaka to find food and shelter. Others are going to nearby towns to try to find alternative sources of income, he said.

Akter Hossain, 40, a resident of Boro Piarir Chak village, told AlertNet that he lost two acres of rice and peanut fields to the early erosion.

"My family had 35 acres of land, most of which we have lost to river erosion. In 1996, I lost my house to erosion and since then I have lived on an elevated road built by the government," he said.

With virtually all of his land now gone, "I support my family by pulling a rickshaw and doing some works as a day labourer," said Hossain, a father of four.

Shahidul Islam, 55, of the same village, said the river took two of his remaining three acres of rice fields this year, as well as his house.

Like Hossain, he now lives on an elevated road with six members of his family. He fears the Jamuna is now poised to take his remaining bit of farmland.

"Now we eat once a day," he said. "We have not had any help from the government to recover our losses."

Atiq Rahman, executive director of the Bangladesh Centre for Advance Studies, said the water level at the Jamuna bridge in Sirajganj from April 27 to May 9 hit 10.9 metres, compared to 7.5 metres in 2009, 8.1 metres in 2008 and 9.3 metres in 2007.

The very high river flows came despite no rainfall in Bangladesh over the period, Rahman said, though some of the water came from unusual heavy rains in the neighbouring Indian state of Assam in early May.

"Normally the April-May period for Bangladesh and India is drought season. There was no such flood earlier," he said.

Syful Islam is a senior reporter with The New Nation newspaper in Dhaka, Bangladesh.

http://www.trust.org/alertnet/news/river-flooding-erosion-hitting-earlier-than-usual-in-bangladesh/

Salt killing crops, driving migration in storm-hit southern Bangladesh

13 May 2010 22:18:00 GMT
Written by: AlertNet correspondent

By Syful Islam

DHAKA, Bangladesh (AlertNet) - Worsening sea water storm surges and overuse of irrigation have left fields, wells and ponds in parts of southern Bangladesh too salty to grow crops, leading to a growing exodus of farmers from the region.

During Cyclones Sidr and Aila, in 2007 and 2009, sea water was driven into ponds and rivers in Khulna, Bagerhat and Satkhira districts in southern Bangladesh, and some fields remained flooded by sea water long enough to raise levels of salinity in the soil and in underground aquifers used for irrigation.

Now farmers on hundreds of thousands of acres in the region are watching their rice crops wither and die before reaching maturity. In some cases, farmers have sown rice plants several times in a season but seen none survive.

Binoy Singh, a farmer in Surigati village in Bagerhat district, recently lost nearly his entire 10-acre rice crop to salt contamination.

"The pond, the river and the groundwater contain excess salt. Salinity in the land has risen too much. The plants became red and dried up after some days of cultivation," he said.

"Some two years back we were cultivating rice with water from the river and deep tube wells. But now the salinity of the water from these sources has gone above the permissible level for rice production," he said.

CROP REDUCED 90 PERCENT

Last year Singh got a ton of rice from his land. This year he may get less than a tenth of that amount.

"I am very much worried how I will feed my family members this year," he said.

Worsening storm surges and sea level rise linked to climate change, as well as overuse of irrigation, threaten to make soil salinity a worsening problem across broad areas of southern Bangladesh, a vast and heavily populated river delta region that sits barely above sea level.

In the Tala, Debhata and Kaliganj sub-districts under Satkhira district, salinity in wells 70 to 80 feet deep is now 10 times higher than the tolerable limit for rice cultivation, researchers say.

That poses a grave threat to food security in southern Bangladesh, and is driving displacement as farmers migrate in search of other work to feed their families.

"This is really unfortunate for the people of that area who go hungry many days a year in the absence of food," said M.A. Rashid, a scientist at the Bangladesh Rice Research Institute in Dhaka.

Institute researchers are installing wells in some of the worst hit areas in an attempt to find out whether there is water suitable for irrigation still available deeper underground. In many areas, farmers now have to dig wells at least 500 feet deep to get water that is safe for irrigation. Earlier such water was available at 200 to 250 feet.

Now "water available at 200 to 250 feet deep is risky for irrigation. If rain water or fresh water is not supplied in the fields after cultivation, rice plants will die after a few days," Rashid said.

Akmal Sheikh, Abdul Khaleq and Abul Kalam, farmers in Bagerhat district, said they are now losing a second season of crops to salt contamination.

"Last season we experienced a similar problem. We could not cultivate rice in all of our lands and got less output. This time, in the case of Boro rice (produced in the January to May season), the situation is disastrous. Almost all the plants died in the early stage," they said.

The men said they had spent about $350 to cultivate each acre of land. Most of the farmers in the area depend on loans from private sources with a high rate of interest. Normally, they repay the loan after selling their crop. Those who lose their crops, however, usually have no choice but to sell some of their land to repay the loan.

MIGRATION GROWING

As excessive salinity makes more crops fail, thousands of farmers are becoming landless and migrating elsewhere within or outside of Bangladesh, residents said. Many farmers tell of neighbours who have left for Dhaka, Bangladesh's capital, or for neighbouring India over the last six months to a year.

Some have fled rather than face legal prosecution for failing to repay loans, or have spent time in local jails, Singh said.

Iftekhar Alam, an engineer and salinity expert with the Bangladesh Agriculture Development Corporation, said excessive use of groundwater for irrigation is also driving the worsening salinity problem in the area.

Overuse of well water for irrigation, he said, is reducing the underground pressure that holds back sea water, allowing it to seep into aquifers.

"This movement of saline water into the mainland through the aquifer is increasing alarmingly. That is why the farmers are getting excess salt in the groundwater," Alam said.

"Within the next few decades, major parts of the southern reaches of the Padma River may experience underground saltwater intrusion," he warned.

His organization has so far installed 80 test wells across the country to better understand the reasons behind increasing salinity in groundwater.

Over the last 25 years, sea water from the Bay of Bengal has pushed 40 kilometres inland throughout underground aquifers, replacing fresh water, he said.

Syful Islam is a senior reporter with the New Nation newspaper in Dhaka, Bangladesh.

http://www.trust.org/alertnet/news/salt-killing-crops-driving-migration-in-storm-hit-southern-bangladesh/

Solar pump promises higher crop yields in power-hungry Bangladesh

12 Apr 2010 10:21:00 GMT
Written by: AlertNet correspondent

By Syful Islam

DHAKA (AlertNet) - Farmers in Bangladesh's northern Naogaon district are anticipating higher yields thanks to a solar-powered pump that will irrigate around 50 acres of land in area that previously had no access to electricity.

In Ashrand village, scarce water and a lack of power meant farmers could harvest only one crop a year from their land. They hope the new solar pump will make their fields more productive.

"The area where our lands are situated is a little bit higher than the lowlands, so getting water here is very tough other than in the rainy season," explains Alauddin Mahalat, president of the local farmers' group.

"There was no pump in this area, not even a diesel-run pump, so we had no choice but to produce one crop and to wait for the rainy season to cultivate our lands."

Only around half of Bangladesh's population receive government power supplies, and in rural areas that do have access to grid electricity, frequent and prolonged power cuts are common due to the wide gap between supply and demand.

This is a key reason why renewable energy is becoming popular very fast, particularly among rural communities where solar, wind and biogas are the only source of power.

In Ashrand, farmers are now looking to harvest two rice crops and one vegetable crop annually, says Mahalat, who also teaches agriculture at a local madrasa, or religious school.

"We will be able to get two to three crops a year from our lands with irrigation from the pump," says the father of two sons who also runs a fish-farming business and will soon receive training in vegetable growing in India.

Fazlur Rahman is one of the village's richer farmers with children in secondary and higher education. He hopes irrigation from the pump will enable his three acres of land to produce up to 12 tonnes of rice a year as well as vegetables.

MITIGATING CLIMATE CHANGE

The pump and the village's new solar system - which has a capacity of 11.2 kilowatts - have been set up by Grameen Shakti, a non-profit company that is pioneering the provision of renewable energy to rural Bangladeshis through micro-finance. It has so far installed 326,500 solar home systems with a monthly installation rate of 12,000 panels

At present the pump lifts 400,000 litres of water each day from 100 metres below ground, which will increase to 500,000 litres during longer summer days. It allows farmers to irrigate their lands for a reasonable price.

"We have plans to set up 10 pumps across the country where farmers can't cultivate their lands due to lack of water and there is no electricity coverage," says M. A. Gofran, a biogas consultant who works for Grameen Shakti.

Grameen Shakti, which was established in 1996 and has won two Ashden Awards for sustainable energy, also plans to introduce a drip irrigation system that will prevent wastage of water.

In Bangladesh's coastal belt, which is vulnerable to extreme weather and rising sea levels, the organisation is working to introduce a solar drier for fish, which will help fishermen work more efficiently. And in areas devastated by Cyclone Sidr in 2007, it has distributed 15,000 improved cooking stoves.

Gofran says the organisation is ready to launch a mini solar-power grid that will provide electricity to 100 households affected by river erosion in Mankganj district, some 65 kilometres from the capital city of Dhaka.

The clean energy specialist notes that Grameen Shakti's work is supporting low-carbon development in Bangladesh by offering alternatives to the use of fossil fuels, which produce carbon dioxide when burned. "Our solar and biogas projects are helping offset climate change," he says.

Syful Islam is a senior reporter with the New Nation newspaper in Dhaka, Bangladesh.

http://www.trust.org/alertnet/news/solar-pump-promises-higher-crop-yields-in-power-hungry-bangladesh/

Migrants flooding Dhaka slums face 'inhuman' conditions, doctor says

09 Mar 2010 15:18:00 GMT
Written by: AlertNet correspondent

By Syful Islam

DHAKA, Bangladesh (AlertNet) - As families displaced by climate change push into Dhaka's already overcrowded slums, shacks are crowding up against the city's railway lines with disastrous results.

Rupa, 3, the granddaughter of a climate migrant from Barishal in southern Bangladesh, recently lost all her fingers on both hands when she fell under a train while living in a hut along the railway lines in Khilgaon, a Dhaka slum.

"People are living in an inhuman situation. They don't have minimal facilities and they are suffering from various medical complications but don't get proper treatment," said Dr. Hans Dieter Langer, a German physician who volunteers for a few weeks at a time in Dhaka's slums.

Cities like Dhaka face being overwhelmed both with new migrants and with demands for services as erosion, intensifying storms and sea level rise slowly swallow homes and farmland in the heavily populated country's southern coastal reaches.

Migrants, after losing their land and homes, are flooding into Dhaka but increasingly struggle to find jobs, schools for their children, adequate food, medical care or even places to build shacks.

The number of beggars in Dhaka has recently risen so high that the government now bans begging in the streets and threatens up to a month in jail for those caught in the practice. The order has had little effect, as new arrivals have few other options to survive.

BEGGAR RANKS SOARING

Around 150 beggars last month were arrested on Dhaka's streets and transported 55 kilometres outside of the city, according to police reports.

Aid organizations attempting to help slum dwellers most in need say the problems they face are daunting.

Sharmin, 5, lost both hands to a train last year. Her mother left her alone at their hut in order to find work and returned to find her maimed. Now the young girl sits along the rail line, eating rice with the stumps of her wrists.

Many others endure chronic health problems.

"These poor people live in a dusty environment. Most of them suffer from bronchitis, pneumonia, malaria, coughs and colds or fever," Langer said.

Dr Brigitte Mutschler, another German doctor providing medical treatment in Khilgaon, said many people work very hard so they have pain in their muscles and joints.

"Babies here always suffer from diarrhea. Those are very much malnourished. We provide a feeding programme for these sick babies, which helps them improve their conditions."

The aid group that the doctors work for, German Doctors for Developing Countries, runs a medical camp staffed by occasional volunteers from Germany, schools in four Dhaka slums and vocational training efforts for the migrants as part of the Glory Friendship Social Welfare network, a local non-profit organization that coordinates private welfare efforts in the slums.

SERVICES OVERSTRETCHED

Residents say the help is vital, not least because government health services are overwhelmed and because they struggle to afford private services.

Amena Begum, 65, who has lived in Dhaka's slums since 1970, said the visiting doctors "are providing good treatment and medicine free of cost. We are happy getting the service that we don't get from government hospitals."

Rashid Mollah, 50, a formerly resident of Barguna district, called life in Dhaka "very tough."

"There is no work other than rickshaw pulling or begging. In our huts there is no electricity, gas or water connection. Life is really miserable here," he said.

Aminul Hoque, the country director of German Doctors for Developing Countries, says he knows first-hand the struggles slum dwellers face, as he grow up in Mohakhali, near Dhaka's Korail slum.

"I know very well how helpless poor people are. I understand that in this economic situation none of the slum children will be able to study without help from others," he said. His program aims "to provide them some basic service."

In Korail slum, where half a million people live crammed into a 100-acre parcel of land, the group provides medical services once a week and runs a school for poor slum children. Both services cost the organization about $6 a month per student or patient, Hoque said.

At the school, Jhumur Akter, 7, the daughter of a climate migrant from Madaripur district, gets free books, tuition-free study and meals twice a week.

Morom Ali, a slightly older student, said his father is a day labourer and can't bear the costs for his son to study in any other school.

"So, we study here, and also get medical care free of cost," he said.

His brother and sister work in garment factories to help his father earn the family's living costs, he said.

Other than health and school services, the doctors' organization provides vocational training in skills like tailoring, sewing and beauty services, aimed at making slum children and youths financially independent.

Syful Islam is a senior reporter with The New Nation newspaper in Dhaka, Bangladesh.

http://www.trust.org/alertnet/news/migrants-flooding-dhaka-slums-face-inhuman-conditions-doctor-says/

Dhaka in building boom to accommodate climate migrants

12 Feb 2010 17:12:00 GMT
Written by: AlertNet correspondent

By Syful Islam

DHAKA, Bangladesh (AlertNet) - A building boom in rickety new huts is underway in Korail slum, the biggest temporary residence of landless people in Bangladesh's capital.

A growing flood of landless poor, many displaced by climate-related problems, are moving into the canal-side slum, which lies adjacent to Gulshan, one of Dhaka's poshest areas.

Everywhere, people are busy building new makeshift rooms - in some cases multi-story shanties of bamboo and wood - to accommodate the arrivals.

Bangladeshi researchers estimate that about half a million people each year are pouring to the capital city after losing their homes and livelihoods to problems linked to climate change, including land erosion, worsening storms and sea level rise.

At present around 10,000 people live crammed into each square kilometer in Dhaka, where finding open land has become very difficult. The city, built for a million people in the 1960s, now accommodates more than 12 million and is one of the most densely populated on earth.

Bangladesh is ranked by the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change as one of the countries most at risk from climate change. Models suggest the low-lying nation of 156 million people could lose 17 percent of its land to rising seas, displacing 15 million people by 2050.

FEW RESOURCES TO SPARE

Providing for the needs of ever-increasing numbers of climate migrants is proving difficult in a country with few resources to help them.

Dhaka already suffers widespread poverty and unemployment, and offers limited opportunities for new migrants. The country has no social safety net to assist those who cannot find work for themselves, and competition for jobs is increasing with each new arrival.

Most of the people living in Korail are beggars, day labourers, boatman, rickshaw pullers or roadside hawkers, said Abul Miah, 40, who lives with his family of four in a 10-foot by 10-foot hut.

"I could not afford schooling of my children, so they are working in garment factory and roadside shop to help me," he said of his adult son and younger daughter.

Osman Mia, 70, formerly of Bangladesh's southern Borguna district, became landless when the Payra River in southern Bangladesh claimed his property. He now earns a living by pulling a rickshaw in Dhaka's bustling streets.

The Korail slum, with its bamboo and tin shacks, has no permanent toilet facilities, so residents construct hanging toilets over the adjacent canal, polluting its water.

MUD STOVES, NO WATER

The slum also has no piped water from the Dhaka Water Supply Authority. In exchange for monthly payments, some musclemen supply water through illegal pipelines in exchange of monthly payments.

Inhabitants cook on stoves made of mud, burning huge amounts of wood and bamboo since there is no gas supply in the slum, which lies just across the canal from the homes of some of Dhaka's richest families.

Hasen Molla, 60, is one of the canal's boatmen. He lost his village home in Chaulakathi, in Bangladesh's Barishal district after the Kochar River claimed his family's land.

"My family moved to my granny's house as we lost all the properties to river erosion. Since then two of my brothers are living there and I left for Dhaka to find my bread and butter," he said.

Nearly a third of his $65 a month income goes to rent.

"My son and daughters are also working, as I can't bear all the expenses. There is no scope for anyone here to live without work, no matter if you are adult or not," he said.

For those without work, the outlook is particularly bleak.

Rohiton Nesa, 60, who has no children and whose husband left her, now begs in the street and at bus stops to pay for food and a place to live. She lost her family home and land in Noakhali district to erosion from the Hatiya river, she said.

The situation is the same in Dhaka's Mogbazar slum, home to about 10,000 climate migrants living in 1,200 shanties.

Amiron, 65, who like many Bangladeshis goes by one name, lives with her two sons, daughter-in-laws and grandchildren in an 80-square-foot room made of plastic sheets and bamboo. The room has a wooden platform where her children sleep, while she and the grandchildren sleep nearby on the floor.

Mogbazar has some piped-in water. But Amiron feels shy to shower in an open-air bathroom the Dhaka City Corporation has built.

"It's very tough for women to bath under the open sky," she said.

Her daughter-in-law Monwara, 22, who lost her own parents to flooding, said starting over in Dhaka's slums is a huge challenge for families who have lost everything and can afford nothing better than a basic hut.

"We are very poor. We lost all the things to the river. I lost my parents, too," she said. "We have no way to find a better place as buying food twice a day became a big challenge for us."

The slum presents other perils as well. Devastating fires regularly break out among the bamboo and wood structures. Hanif Mia, 75, was narrowly saved by his daughter last December when a blaze raged through his slum area, burning nearly all of the huts.

"My leg was broken in mid-November. I had no capacity to move. God saved me from burning as my daughter took me out," he remembered.

Now, "we built this hut again taking loan at high rate of interest from private lenders. I don't know if I will be able to repay the loan," he said.

Syful Islam is a senior reporter with The New Nation newspaper in Dhaka, Bangladesh.

http://www.trust.org/alertnet/news/dhaka-in-building-boom-to-accommodate-climate-migrants/