Bangladesh launches community insurance for 2 million fishermen

Tue, 18 Dec 2012

By Syful Islam

DHAKA (AlertNet) - Bangladesh has launched a community-based insurance scheme to provide financial security to over two million coastal fishermen whose work is becoming increasingly dangerous as the number and severity of storms increase and become more unpredictable.

Fishermen have welcomed the scheme, which is being introduced by the state-run Jiban Bima Corporation (JBC) in 15 coastal districts, and a significant number have already enrolled in it, each paying Tk 1,240 ($16) a year for insurance cover of Tk 200,000 ($2,500).

“If any fisherman dies after buying a policy, his family members or nominated person will get Tk 200,000 as compensation,” project manager Dulal Chandra Nandi told AlertNet. “If any policy buyer remains missing for six months, his heirs will get 50 percent of the claim and the rest will be given after another six months if the policy holder remains untraced.”

He said coastal fishermen are very poor and highly vulnerable to cyclones and other disastrous weather events. They are also easy prey for river pirates, and subject to attacks by tigers while fishing near the Sundarbans.

“We found that when fishermen die or go missing, their family members suffer severe financial problems. We have considered their agony while planning the insurance policy,” said Nandi. There are some 2 million members of the National Fishermen Samity (Association) who save some money every month, and the JBC plans to provide all of them with insurance cover eventually.

“The insurance policy is community based. The Samity will pay us the premium direct through banking channels from the fishermen’s savings. Paying only Tk 1,240 won’t be very tough for them, they earn a good sum during the peak season,” he said.

“We have noticed huge enthusiasm from the community,” Nandi added. “We can say that at least one million fishermen will enroll in the scheme in the coming year.”

He said the donor community was not involved in the scheme because the yearly premium was very small. “In India a similar insurance scheme closed down at one stage after donors withdrew their support.”

Rafiqul Islam, president of Satkhira Fisheries Samity on the southwest coast, told AlertNet the community had long wanted a customised insurance policy for fishermen.

“We are a most risky profession. Fishermen are the first to be hit when a cyclone or storm breaks. So their family members need protection, especially financial back-up which the new insurance policy will ensure,” he said.

Islam said dozens of people died and thousands of fishermen remained missing for days when a tropical storm hit the coast in October. The weather office hoisted warming Signal No.3 for the coastal districts but the storm struck with devastating power, more like a cyclone.

He said he believed the cost of the insurance was affordable, even for poor families.

“Even if a fisherman saves only Tk 4 per day he will be able to pay the (insurance) premium easily to get a benefit of Tk 200,000 in case of an incident,” Islam said. “The insurance is very much needed for people like us.”

Fishermen’s lives are at great risk because severe natural disasters are hitting Bangladesh more frequently, he said. And "when a fisherman dies, his family becomes penniless,” he said.

Ziaul Huq Mukta, Regional Policy Coordinator for Oxfam GB Asia, said the fishing community had become increasingly vulnerable because of the larger number of storms justifying a Signal No. 3 warning.

Quoting a study by the Campaign for Sustainable Rural Livelihoods (CSRL), he said the intensity and frequency of storms had increased threefold in three decades. In each of the past three years, Bangladesh has had 10 to 14 storms severe enough for a Signal No. 3 warning. Thirty years ago, just four or five such warnings were issued each year, he said..

JBC managing director Parikshit Datta Choudhury said many fishermen work as bonded labourers for years and their family members face serious financial difficulties if they die or are lost at sea.

Private insurance companies will also be involved in the scheme in the future to provide further benefits to the fishing community, he said.

Joint Secretary of the Fisheries and Livestock Ministry (MoFL) Shamsul Kibria said that nearly 150 fishermen die every year while fishing in the Bay of Bengal.

The premiums the fishermen pay will come down significantly as the number of policy holder increases, he said.

Syful Islam is a journalist with the Financial Express newspaper in Bangladesh. He can be reached at: youths1990@yahoo.com.

http://www.trust.org/alertnet/news/bangladesh-launches-community-insurance-for-2-million-fishermen

Bangladesh resistant rice may not fill food gap - experts

By Syful Islam

Thu, 25 Oct 2012

DHAKA (AlertNet): Bangladesh is about to release five new drought- and salt-tolerant rice varieties to help farmers cope with rising salinity and more frequent droughts - but some scientists and researchers say the yields are little better than those of current types and will not be sufficient to meet rising demand in the face of climate change.

Climate scientist Ahsan Uddin Ahmed, executive director of the Centre for Global Change, told AlertNet Bangladesh is now self-sufficient in rice production but needs urgently to look ahead to 2040-2050 when climate change will have a greater impact on food production and when ensuring food security, particularly for the country’s poorest, will be more difficult.

Ahmed said Bangladesh needs to adopt a long-term food plan very soon, and it must ensure, among other things, that no more arable land is taken for industrialisation or urbanisation.

That will be a challenge as urbanisation continues in the country, including of farmers displaced by climate impacts and pushed into Bangladesh’s cities.

Of the five new rice varieties to be released soon by scientists at the Bangladesh Rice Research Institute (BRRI), four are high-yielding and the fifth is a hybrid. They will increase overall rice output by three million tonnes a year if they are widely adopted, the BRRI director general told reporters.

The research institute has released 61 high-yielding modern varieties of rice since 1970, and 80 percent of the country’s rice-growing land is currently cultivated with BRRI-developed varieties.

Extreme drought and the contamination of paddy fields by salty water as a result of flash floods and storm surges have become very common in this low-lying country, one of those most severely affected by climate change.

Of the new rice varieties developed by the rice institute, hybrid varieties had yields of 6.5 to 9 tonnes per hectare, compared with 4 to 7.5 tonnes per hectare from other varieties. Despite their high yield, Bangladeshi farmers are less interested in growing hybrid varieties because producing and collecting seeds is more complicated.

Experts said the yields of the new varieties is not much higher than that of old types, but their advantage is the lower chance of losing crops because of saline water intrusion or drought, making them a worthwhile replacement for traditional varieties.

That may help keep up harvests in some instances of severe weather, but will not be sufficient to meet growing demand in the country in the face of a wider range of climate impacts, including more temperature extremes, experts warned.

“The yield of newly invented varieties is still not very attractive. So how can they ensure food security when the impact of climate change is adversely affecting us?” asked Atiq Rahman, executive director of Bangladesh Centre for Advanced Studies.

Rahman told AlertNet that climate change would reduce the output and availability of rice in many areas and would affect wheat production in drought-prone areas.

NOT SUFFICIENT FOOD SECURITY

“With the resistant varieties (of rice) we can cover the loss, but we can’t increase production to a level that can ensure food security,” Rahman said. “Adequate production of other crops also matters for ensuring food security,” he said.

Wais Kabir, executive chairman of the Bangladesh Agriculture Research Centre (BARC), however, told AlertNet that drought- and saline-tolerant varieties of rice are helping to keep up production levels despite the increasing impact of climate change.

“It’s one kind of technological backup so that farmers don’t lose their crops and can avoid financial hurdles. Earlier, we noticed paddy plants wither and die before maturity as those were not drought or saline tolerant. Now farmers rarely face the problem, after introduction of these varieties,” he said.

Kabir said rising temperatures particularly affect wheat at the flowering stage. “We develop the varieties taking into consideration all the aspects,” he said. “We are now giving priority to inventing a quick-growing variety so that one Rabi crop (winter wheat crop) can be cultivated between two rice harvests.”

“Since Bangladesh is not at the stage of mitigating the impact of climate change, our effort is to adapt to the changed environmental conditions,” Kabir said. Efforts are also being made to change the cultivation process, for instance by using less water and emitting less greenhouse gas, he said.

Climate scientist Ahsan Uddin Ahmed said part of the challenge was in ensuring an adequate supply of a range of crops to poor people, to ensure overall food security.

Thanks to the invention of new varieties, Bangladesh is well placed to meet its food needs until 2035, he predicted.

“But by 2015 we have to be prepared for 2040-2050, when the impact of climate change will affect us more adversely and will surpass our present achievement in the crop sector. Food production will be hampered and poor people will face further obstacles in food collection,” Ahmed said.

Syful Islam is a journalist with the Financial Express newspaper in Bangladesh. He can be reached at: youths1990@yahoo.com

http://www.trust.org/alertnet/news/bangladesh-resistant-rice-may-not-fill-food-gap-experts/

Bangladesh trains armed forces, volunteers to face catastrophes

Thu, 11 Oct 2012

By Syful Islam

DHAKA (AlertNet) – As the frequency of extreme weather increases, Bangladesh is preparing itself to face future natural disasters more successfully by training its armed forces and volunteers in better disaster response.

Floods, cyclones, droughts, low rainfall and salinity have become more commonplace in Bangladesh, and the country is also vulnerable to earthquakes. Taken together, these risks threaten the lives and livelihoods of millions in this densely populated and low-lying nation.

Incessant rainfall in June this year in the southeast and northeast of the country resulted in flash floods and landslides that caused the deaths of at least 122 people. Thousands remained stranded in low-lying districts for days. The southeastern city of Chittagong experienced heavy rains on October 4 and 5 that created flooding as deep as three feet (one metre), bringing traffic to a standstill.

“We are training people, both uniformed and non-uniformed, so that they can respond effectively when disaster hits the country,” said Brigadier-General Ataul H.S. Hasan, director of the government’s Disaster Response Exercise and Exchange (DREE) programme.

“Many disastrous events are increasingly taking place in Bangladesh due to climate change,” said Hasan. “People who are trained under the programme will be able act when necessary.”

Hasan credits disaster preparedness and timely actions by both armed forces and volunteers with holding the death toll from Cyclone Aila, which struck Bangladesh in 2009, to only 170 people.

An earlier 1991 cyclone in Cox’s Bazar district, by comparison, claimed 138,000 lives.

TRAINING EXERCISES

The DREE programme started in 2010 with small-scale discussions among the participants about how to respond to disasters. This year, a Field Training Exercise (FTX) was included with more than 2,000 uniformed and non-uniformed participants.

“Thorough the FTX we wanted to identify gaps in preparation to quickly respond when calamity hits,” Hasan said.

Senior coordinator of the DREE exercise, Lieutenant Colonel Mohammad Tawhid-Ul-Islam, said that climate change had caused the intensity of weather-related disasters to increase and also made their impact more devastating.

“We need to remain prepared to act fast,” said Tawhid-Ul-Islam. He said the country had so far improved its resilience to most types of disasters, apart from high-magnitude earthquakes.

To help ease that gap, the Bangladesh Armed Forces Division and United States Army Pacific Command co-hosted a joint exercise on earthquake disaster preparedness in Dhaka in late September.

Participants included representatives from 163 ministries and departments, as well as law enforcement agencies, universities, utility services, civil communities, multilateral donor agencies, and local and international NGOs.

Major M.M. Matiur Rahman, director of the Fire Service and Civil Defence Directorate, said his agency has 6,200 employees and 12,000 volunteers across the country trained to respond immediately to disasters.

AIM IS 62,000 VOLUNTEERS

“We have plans to train 62,000 volunteers to deal with earthquakes in three cities – Dhaka, Chittagong and Sylhet – and other natural disasters like cyclones, floods and tsunamis,” Rahman said.

The first 72 hours following a disaster are a crucial period for response efforts, one key reason to improve the country’s rapid response capabilities, he said.

The government plans to establish a fire service station in each sub-district across the country. Some 48,000 volunteers in coastal districts (in addition to the 12,000 across the country) have been trained to act as soon as they receive a disaster warning, officials said.

According to Ainun Nishat, an environmentalist and vice chancellor of Brac University, Bangladesh is a global leader in disaster preparedness.

“The government has prepared a five-year-long national plan for disaster management where necessary instructions are given on how to act when disaster hits,” said Nishat, adding that many other countries had replicated the plan because of its effectiveness.

However, Nishat said that because Bangladesh is a densely populated country, its natural disasters still tend to result in higher losses than in other countries that may be less well prepared.

The director-general of the Disaster Management Bureau, Ahsan Zakir, said that the country is trying to make the best of its limited resources.

“We are now much (more) resilient to catastrophes like floods and cyclones, but still lacking capacity to face landslides and earthquakes,” he said.

Dissemination of emergency weather information to people via mobile phones has already started on a trial basis, according to Zakir. People can dial in to hear the latest weather forecast.

“By mid-October a cell phone operator will start informing people (in particular danger areas) through short message service (SMS) if the water flow rises to danger level” or approaching storms reach a particular danger level, he said.

“Steps are also there to incorporate the disaster preparedness issue in the school-level curriculum and to regularly carry out earthquake drills in the educational institutions to raise awareness,” Zakir said.

Syful Islam is a journalist with the Financial Express newspaper in Bangladesh. He can be reached at: youths1990@yahoo.com

http://www.trust.org/alertnet/news/bangladesh-trains-armed-forces-volunteers-to-face-catastrophes/

Bangladesh to trial weather index-based crop insurance

Tue, 21 Aug 2012

By Syful Islam

DHAKA (AlertNet) - Bangladesh is planning to introduce crop insurance based on a weather index to reduce farmers’ economic vulnerability to shifting climate patterns and extreme weather events.

The Asian Development Bank (ADB) is helping the South Asian country develop the new insurance scheme. The bank considers climate change and weather variability as a big challenge for the country’s agricultural sector.

Similar insurance products have been launched in East Africa, India and other parts of Asia, but their impact is still being monitored.

In a document submitted to Dhaka, the ADB describes index-based insurance as an innovative tool to boost the ability of rural farm households to adapt to changing climatic conditions.

“The insurance policy will link possible insurance payouts with an index calibrated with the weather needs of the crops being insured,” the ADB report says.

Unlike regular crop insurance, policies based on a weather index assess the likelihood of crop failures based on forecasting. Premiums will be higher if crops are projected to be at risk of failure, and lower if they are not.

Bangladesh has some 7.5 million hectares (18.5 million acres) of arable land, according to the World Bank, but this is declining by around 1 percent each year due to river erosion, urbanisation and other pressures from a growing population.

In many low-lying areas, farmers harvest only once a year, leaving their families exposed to hunger if a natural disaster destroys their crop. It has become commonplace for farmers to lose crops to drought, floods and salt intrusion, especially in coastal districts.

The new insurance programme goes beyond the government’s existing disaster risk management measures, such as emergency relief and credit provision. It will benefit vulnerable groups least able to protect themselves against weather-related hazards aggravated by climate change, according to the ADB.

The bank also says index insurance avoids the weaknesses of traditional agricultural insurance, such as costly and time-consuming assessments of individual farms, and the risk of farmers making fraudulent claims.

Rezaul Karim, managing director of Sadharan Bima Corporation (SBC), a public insurer, said that, in most countries, crop insurance is economically unviable, and often requires government subsidies. SBC’s own crop insurance product, introduced on a pilot basis in 1977, was eventually withdrawn in 1995.

“Our insurance policy had been incurring a 400 percent loss since claims consistently exceeded premiums,” Karim said.

EDUCATION TO REDUCE LOSSES

Following a workshop in July with interested organisations, the ADB is planning a pilot programme for index-based insurance in cooperation with SBC and one or two private insurers. Microfinance institutions, nongovernmental organisations and farmer cooperatives will act as the implementing partners on the ground.

Details, including the amount of land covered and premium levels, are still to be finalised. Karim said the government would subsidise half the cost of the insurance premiums, with the other half borne by farmers.

A controversial feature of the new policy is that it is not designed to cover the losses of individual farmers, but of crops across a specified region.

“If the crop of any area as a whole get destroyed or damaged due to the calamity, then farmers will get the loss covered. If (solely) the crop of any individual farmer is affected, he won’t get the (compensation),” Karim said.

The SBC head acknowledged that this could discourage farmers from buying the policy, and may need to be reconsidered. But SBC, the ADB and their partners will monitor the insured areas closely to try and reduce the likelihood of crop losses as well as unjustified claims, he added.

“Farmers will also be educated with the ADB’s financial help so that they understand what to do in which weather pattern to save their crops,” Karim said.

AFFORDABLE PREMIUMS

Ainun Nishat, a climate change expert and vice chancellor of BRAC University, said that where insured risks are high, premiums will also be high - a problem that led to the failure of SBC’s earlier attempts at providing coverage.

“The success of weather index-based crop insurance will depend on the rate of the premium, the party who pays it, and government contributions,” Nishat said.

He recommended that premiums be kept very low so that farmers can afford them.

Atiq Rahman, executive director of the Bangladesh Centre for Advanced Studies, a non-profit institute for sustainable development, welcomed the new scheme.

“Such an insurance policy is necessary to save the farmers from crop loss when climate change has started biting,” he said.

But initiatives like this often fail at the implementation level, he cautioned.

“Before launching the programme, we have to analyse how much farmers can pay as premium and if they will be able to pay on a regular basis, since most of the farmers here are very poor,” he said.

“There should be a sincere approach, and benefits (for) farmers have to be ensured first,” he added.

Syful Islam is a journalist with the Financial Express newspaper in Bangladesh. He can be reached at: youths1990@yahoo.com

http://www.trust.org/alertnet/news/bangladesh-to-trial-weather-index-based-crop-insurance

Bangladesh sees surge in use of solar energy

Tue, 31 Jul, 2012

By Syful Islam

DHAKA, Bangladesh (AlertNet): As costs fall and incomes rise, power-hungry Bangladesh is seeing a surge in the adaptation home solar energy systems.

Last year, close to 40,000 units a month were installed on average across the country; this year installations have surged to 55,000 a month, according to Ruhul Quddus, head of the Rural Services Foundation, a Bangladeshi charity. His charity is installing 11,000 solar power systems a month, up from 8,000 a month last year, he said.

Altogether, 30 percent more homes are using solar power in Bangladesh than a year ago – a change driven by a rise in purchasing capacity and falling prices.

“Rural people now want to improve their quality of life,” including by trading kerosene lamps for solar and using the latest electrical appliances, said Abser Kamal, chief executive office of Grameen Shakti, a pioneering organisation in renewable energy in Bangladesh.

Per capita income has been rising in Bangladesh in recent years as the country’s growth rate has improved. During the last fiscal year, per capita hit income hit $848 a year, up from $676 three years ago, according to government figures. The country’s growth rate during the last fiscal year was 6.32 percent, and this year the government is targeting growth of 7.2 percent.

Installing solar power in their homes helps families with a variety of tasks, Kamal said.

A RANGE OF BENEFITS

“By using a solar home system they now can work long hours, can keep shops open a longer time, their children’s can study for a longer period, and they also can watch television and recharge their cell phone handsets,” he said.

Kamal’s organisation is responsible for installing about 60 percent of the new solar units being sold in Bangladesh, or about 25,000 a month. By October, the organization hopes to have installed a million units across the country.

Raihan Alam, a rickshaw puller in Nischintapur village in Bangladesh’s southeastern Chandpur district, in April bought a solar home system (SHS) to light his house, paying 20,000 taka (about $250). The money came from earnings from land he inherited from his father and from savings.

“Our village has grid electricity but the government stopped providing new household connections for a long time. So I had no option but to buy a SHS to light my house,” said Alam, the father of two children who attend school.

Before buying the solar system, “my daughters were less interested in studying long into the night by the blunt light of a kerosene lamp and they went to sleep early. Now they are happy to continue studying longer than usual with the sharp light of SHS,” he said.

He said he now also hoped to buy a television set for entertainment in his house.

Alam’s brother Amirul Islam is also saving to buy a solar energy system for his house as his family members are also eager to get better-quality lighting.

Since 2003 the World Bank has provided more than $300 million to support the solar home system program of the Infrastructure Development Company Limited (IDCOL), a state-run organization that promotes renewable energy under the Rural Electrification and Renewable Energy Development (RERED) project.

GRID FALLING SHORT

With only 5,500 megawatts of grid electricity generation, heavily populated Bangladesh can meet scarcely half of its power demand via the grid. Almost half the area of the country still remains in the dark at night where grid electricity cannot reach or is not economically viable.

But that is changing as around 5 percent of the country’s 32 million households now have solar home systems, experts said.

At present, renewable energy sources contribute only 55 megawatts of energy to the country’s energy production. But the government aims to increase that to 500 megawatts by 2015 as part of its social commitment to provide electricity to all by 2020.

World Bank funding has helped make the solar energy systems more attractive to families by cutting their cost by about $28 and supporting payment in installments for up to three years.

Rural households can now buy the systems from non-governmental organizations for a 10 to 15 percent down payment, with the remaining payments made in monthly installments over two or three years. The average price of a 50 watt-peak solar home system is about Tk 25,000 ($312).

“With a 50 watt-peak capacity of SHS, one can light four lamps, one television set, and charge cell phone handsets,” said Ruhul Quddus of Rural Services Foundation, one of the installers of systems.

Helping families adopt solar energy also means they no longer use kerosene oil and candles in their homes, which can save money, Quddus said.

STEPPING UP INSTALLATION

The Infrastructure Development Company Ltd. has a target to finance installation of one million solar home systems by the end of 2012. It has partnered with 29 organisations to install the systems.

Today, more than 1.3 million solar home systems have been installed in rural areas of Bangladesh.

Zubair K M Sadeque, energy finance specialist for the World Bank in Dhaka, told the AlertNet that the bank is preparing now a new project to improve access to clean energy in rural areas and promote energy efficiency.

The proposed project would extend support for another 550,000 solar home systems, and support other renewable energy options for providing electricity in rural areas, including solar mini-grids, biomass gasification and the use of biogas.

The program would also aim to replace 1,500 diesel irrigation pumps with solar pumps, and put in place a million improved cookstoves and 20,000 biogas plants to produce energy for cooking, as well as support replacement of incandescent lights with more energy efficient ones.

“An average 50 watt-peak SHS saves about 6 liters of kerosene consumption per month per household. When the total number of installed SHS is considered, this represents a significant fuel savings. The SHS program is being registered with the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) so that Bangladesh can claim carbon credits for this fuel savings,” said Sadeque.

Syful Islam is a journalist with The Financial Express newspaper in Bangladesh. He can be reached at: youths1990@yahoo.com

http://www.trust.org/alertnet/news/bangladesh-sees-surge-in-use-of-solar-energy/

Experts seek ways to avert water crisis in Dhaka

Mon, 16 Jul 2012

By Syful Islam

DHAKA, Bangladesh (AlertNet) – Bangladesh’s water experts are forecasting a water crisis in the country’s capital, due to its rapidly rising population and overdependence on underground water which is being depleted at an alarming rate.

According to the World Bank, Dhaka is fast becoming one of the world’s largest cities, with its population of nearly 14 million expected to rise to 22-25 million by 2020.

“Every day new buildings are rising up and people from the countryside are pouring (in) here, but no new water sources are created,” said Hasin Jahan, programme director of WaterAid Bangladesh, a development organisation.

According to Jahan, the area of Dhaka city has doubled in size since the 1990s and the population has increased by 1.5 times. Water for drinking is only part of the issue, she said. Large quantities are also consumed by everything from flushing lavatories to gardening, and washing cars to construction work.

At present Dhaka is dependent on underground sources for 87 percent of the 2.2 billion litres of water consumed every day. The balance is collected from surface sources.

The Dhaka Water Supply and Sewerage Authority (WASA) extracts groundwater using 620 deep tube wells. In addition, more than 2,200 private wells also draw water to serve high-rise buildings and various institutions.

FALLING WATER LEVELS

But the overdependence on groundwater is causing the water table to fall by about one meter (three feet) per year in the metropolitan area. According to Eftekharul Alam of the Bangladesh Agricultural Development Corporation, by 2011 Dhaka’s groundwater level had dropped to 52 metres (169 feet) below mean sea level, compared with 46 metres (150 feet) in 2004.

“The excessive extraction of water by the Dhaka WASA is causing the water level (to) drop,” he said.

Alam, an agricultural, water and environmental engineer, said that the underground water supply used to be recharged with water from nearby Gazipur and Mymensingh districts. But this is no longer happening as the water level in those districts has itself dropped.

Worse, Alam anticipates a serious water crisis in the capital because the aquifers are now being recharged with seawater, he said.

“Saline water is intruding to fill up the space, posing a threat to getting fresh drinking water in the future,” he said.

The only effective way to recharge the aquifers, he said, is by injecting rainwater and river water – but that would first have to be treated to ensure the aquifers don’t become polluted.

Alam said the Dhaka WASA emits 1,000 tonnes of untreated human waste into the rivers adjacent to the city every day, which means river water is unfit for human consumption.

PLENTY OF RAIN

However, WaterAid’s Jahan said the average rainfall in Dhaka is more than 2,100 millimetres per year, and that a significant amount of this could be used to meet water demand and recharge aquifers if it were captured.

The organisation has constructed four rainwater harvesting systems in Dhaka. The water gathered is used partly for flushing lavatories and partly for groundwater recharging.

The Institute of Water Modelling (IWM), a government organisation, estimates that if 60 percent of rainfall falling on the existing concrete rooftops in Dhaka were harvested, it would provide nearly 200 million litres of water to residents each day.

Managing director of Dhaka WASA Taqsem A. Khan said that steps are being taken to gradually reduce the city’s dependence on groundwater because of the declining water table. According to Khan, it is difficult for groundwater to recharge adequately in the city because of the increasing lack of open space for it to collect.

“Artificial recharge of the underground aquifers through injecting harvested rainwater is the only solution,” Khan said.

WASA is constructing four surface water treatment plants in Dhaka at a cost of $1.8 billion, with the aim of supplying 70 percent of the city’s water demand from surface sources.

Water for the plants will be drawn from less polluted rivers 60 km (38 miles) from the city. The plants are expected to produce about 1.6 billion litres of clean water per day.

Conservation of water will be equally important to dealing with growing demand, Khan said.

He thinks that the city’s daily demand for water will not exceed 2.3 billion litres in 2021 if individual consumption can be cut down to 80 litres per day.

“Presently Dhaka (residents) consume 120 litres of water per person per day, which is not usual for people of a less-developed country,” he said.

He said most water waste was the result of a general lack of awareness of the need for water conservation and irresponsible water use by middle-income and rich residents.

Syful Islam is a journalist with The Financial Express newspaper in Bangladesh. He can be reached at: youths1990@yahoo.com

http://www.trust.org/alertnet/news/experts-seek-ways-to-avert-water-crisis-in-dhaka/

Bangladesh flood forecast ignored

Syful Islam

6 July 2012 |scidev.net

[DHAKA] Forecasts of Bangladesh’s current floods were largely ignored by people living in the affected areas, say scientists, exposing gaps in disaster preparedness.

At least 100 people died and 250,000 were left homeless when flash floods and landslides that followed torrential rains in Bangladesh in the last week of June, according to officials.

Ainun Nishat, vice-chancellor of the BRAC university, said both the meteorological department and the water development board had forecast the floods accurately but their warnings were ignored by many local people.

Sajidul Alam, an official at the Bangladesh Meteorological Department (BMD), said, "Days before the recent disaster in Chittagong, we warned people of possible heavy rainfall and flooding."

"We asked people, especially those who live in the mountainous area, to take safe shelter fearing landslides, since the rains were continuing for three to four days. But they did not take the warnings seriously, resulting in a large number of fatalities," Alam said.

Amirul Hosen, executive director of the Flood Forecasting and Warning Centre, Dhaka, told SciDev.Net that currently, the accuracy for 24-hour forecasts is 93 per cent, 88 per cent for two days and 78 per cent for three days.

A low-lying delta that drains major rivers such as the Ganges, Brahmaputra and the Teesta, Bangladesh is one of the world's most flood-vulnerable countries.

The centre is currently working on five-day flood forecasts by including data from India on water levels in the Brahmaputra and Ganges – rivers that the two countries share.

While Bangladesh has emerged as a leader in disaster management in South Asia, there are still gaps in taking prompt action based on flood forecasts, analysts said.

"We are much better than any in cyclone warning. But in flood prediction, we are lacking," Atiq Rahman, executive director of the Bangladesh Centre for Advanced Studies, told SciDev.Net.

He said that while the government was making efforts to disseminate flood forecast information through mobile phones, gaps remained in management such as inadequate shelters and people’s varying response to warnings.

Officials at the BMD said while the government has for the last two years been issuing local advisories to people living in mountain areas, anticipating landslides triggered by heavy rains, poor communities have no flood shelters to go to.

Mountain communities normally flee to the plains below to seek shelter. But, in the latest floods, incessant rains had inundated the plains, depriving them of that option.

http://www.scidev.net/en/south-asia/news/bangladesh-flood-forecast-ignored.html

Bangladesh cuts funds for science research, education

Syful Islam

5 July 2012 | scidev.net

[DHAKA] Bangladesh has cut its funds for science research and education by about a quarter — 27 per cent — compared to last year while hiking up allocation for atomic energy in its latest annual budget.

Funding for key scientific organisations, such as the Bangladesh Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (BCSIR) and the National Institute of Biotechnology (NIBT), have suffered cuts.

In the 2012–2013 annual budget announced last week (28 June), Bangladesh’s finance minister Abul Mal Abdul Muhith announced US$ 46.25 million for the science and technology ministry, down from the US$ 63.75 million allocated in 2011–2012.

The Bangladesh Atomic Energy Commission received the largest chunk of the science budget pie with US$ 15.57 million – up from US$ 14.28 million in the previous year. In contrast, the NIBT will get US$ 662,500 against the US$ 737,500 allocated last year.

In the new fiscal year some US$ 1,750,000 have been allocated for science and technology programmes against last fiscal’s US$1,875,000.

BCSIR will get US$120 million against last year’s US$ 128.75 million. However, BCSIR’s member for finance, Dilip Sharma, told SciDev.Net, "This year’s allocation reduction may not hamper our research activity to a large extent, since the cut was not high."

Scientists say the lower allocation for science could have a negative impact on research(http://www.scidev.net/en/science-and-innovation-policy/r-d/ ) in science and technology and education.

Khandaker Siddique-e-Rabbani, professor at the department of physics at the University of Dhaka, told SciDev.Net: "….you can’t downsize allocation of (science) funds if you really want expansion of the sector."

Ainun Nishat, vice-chancellor of BRAC University, one of Bangladesh’s largest private universities, described the government’s allocation for research and science education as "very meagre". However, Yafes Osman, junior minister for science and technology, contended that the overall allocation for science has not decreased since other ministries are also engaged in science-related programmes.

Osman cited the example of ‘Digital Bangladesh’, a government initiative under the ministry of information and communication to provide free computers to schoolchildren. "So you can’t say that allocation for science education and research has been downsized."

"We are trying to give a laptop and a multimedia projector to every school. So, science is everywhere," Osman added.

http://www.scidev.net/en/south-asia/news/bangladesh-cuts-funds-for-science-research-education.html

Bangladesh wary of 'green economy' agenda at Rio+20

Tue, 19 Jun 2012

By Syful Islam

DHAKA (AlertNet) - Bangladesh will advocate for a “green economy” approach that does not constrain poorer nations’ potential to grow at the U.N. conference on sustainable development in Rio de Janeiro this week.

“We are concerned the green economy path will hamper our economic development. How effective will it be for poverty eradication?” Quazi Khaliquzzaman Ahmed, convener of Bangladesh’s climate change negotiation team, told AlertNet. “Unless poor countries get adequate funds from the major polluter (nations), it won’t be possible for them to green their economy.”

Ahmed added that Bangladesh, like other countries in the G-77 grouping of developing nations, wants to shift its economy onto a greener path, but only if it can control when and how that happens.

Some developing-country governments are concerned, for example, that if they fail to meet renewable energy targets, they could be penalised on international markets, curbing their export and growth opportunities.

Or their agricultural production might be limited if they do not get access to the environmental technologies they need to boost yields in a changing climate.

“The approach for transforming to a green economy should be country-driven, offering opportunities to improve the integration of economic and social development with environmental sustainability without hampering social development, economic growth and environmental conservation,” says the Bangladesh country position paper to be presented at the June 20-22 Rio+20 conference.

“Green economy policies should respect the national right to development, objectives and priorities based on national circumstances, including eradicating poverty, education, health, food, water and energy for the basic wellbeing of people with regard to the three dimensions of sustainable development,” it adds.

The Rio summit comes 20 years after the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), and 10 years after the 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) in Johannesburg.

Rio+20 aims to secure renewed political commitment to sustainable development, assess progress and remaining gaps in implementing the outcomes of the previous two major summits, and address new and emerging challenges.

The two key themes of the 2012 gathering are the green economy in the context of sustainable development and poverty eradication, and the institutional framework for sustainable development.

FINANCE AND TECHNOLOGY NEEDED

Atiq Rahman, executive director of the Bangladesh Centre for Advanced Studies (BCAS), said development should be the top priority for poorer nations including Bangladesh.

“First they have to ensure peoples’ basic needs for life, which include adequate food and nutrition, safe water, electricity, adequate energy, hygienic living, education and social security. But the process they have to follow should be extremely sensitive about the environment and social justice,” he said.

“The polluters who are responsible for increased greenhouse gas emissions must give the victims (poor countries) adequate funding and environment-friendly technology,” Rahman said, before heading to Rio de Janeiro.

Fahmida Khatun, head of research for the Dhaka-based Centre for Policy Dialogue (CPD), told AlertNet that the green economy concept will be a contested issue at Rio+20.

“Developing and least developed countries, including Bangladesh, are concerned that the term ’ green economy’ will replace ‘sustainable development’ as the key theme in the environment-development nexus,” she said in an email interview.

The expert, who is attending the preparatory meeting for Rio+20 with the Bangladeshi government delegation as a civil-society representative, warned that the “green economy” agenda could be misused by richer countries for trade protection purposes, aid conditionality and debt relief.

“Bangladesh is not giving the green economy concept high status and insists that the term should only be one of several other concepts and tools that can be used to achieve sustainable development,” she wrote, adding that it should not be introduced as an international framework to prescribe policies.

“In order to follow a green development path, Bangladesh needs additional and new financial and technological support without any conditionalities,” she added.

The Bangladesh country paper states that the transformation to a green economy should be supported by an enabling environment and well-functioning institutions, with a leading role for governments and other concerned groups in society.

A green economy approach should avoid giving rise to trade measures that could lead to arbitrary or unjustifiable discrimination, or disguised restrictions on international trade, the paper says. It should also contribute to closing the technology gaps between developed and developing countries, and support the livelihoods and development of people in vulnerable situations, it adds.

Environment and forests minister Hasan Mahmud said Bangladesh will seek financial commitment from the developed world at the Rio+20 summit to help achieve the embryonic Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The U.N. secretary-general has called on political leaders attending the meeting to agree to define a new set of targets that will supersede the Millennium Development Goals, which expire in 2015.

“We won’t compromise on pursuing equitable growth based on environmentally-friendly means,” the Bangladeshi minister said.

Syful Islam is a journalist with The Financial Express newspaper in Bangladesh. He can be reached at: youths1990@yahoo.com

http://www.trust.org/alertnet/news/bangladesh-wary-of-green-economy-agenda-at-rio20/

Hit by growing disaster losses, insurers set limits on coverage

Fri, 1 June 2012

By Syful Islam

DHAKA, Bangladesh (AlertNet) – The growing number of natural disasters linked to climate change has pushed global and local insurers to put a cap on their liability, leaving policy holders vulnerable to financial losses in the event they suffer major destruction.

Recent catastrophes such as flooding in Thailand and Australia, earthquakes in New Zealand and the tsunami in Japan have caused enormous losses to global insurers and reinsurers.

In response, reinsurers announced recently that they will limit their future liability in any disasters in Asia to 1.5 billion Bangladeshi taka (about $18 million) per event for each insured party.

Following suit, Sadharan Bima Corporation (SBC), Bangladesh’s lone state-owned reinsurer, imposed the same condition for renewing reinsurance treaties with local insurance companies for the fiscal year 2012-13. SBC underwrites almost 80 percent of the country’s billions of dollars of insurance coverage. The cap came into effect in April.

According to the assistant general manager of SBC, Jakir Hossain, the country’s insurance companies provide coverage of some 60 billion taka ($731 million) for natural disasters such as earthquakes, floods and cyclones. The increasing frequency of cyclones and flooding in Bangladesh is believed by experts to be a consequence of climate change.

Bangladesh’s insurance companies worry that the reinsurers’ decision has put them in peril, since a major disaster that causes large-scale destruction could leave them with huge financial losses.

“The event limit of protection given by the SBC is 100 to 150 percent of the respective treaty capacity (i.e. up to 1.5 billion taka), though the exposure of the individual company against catastrophe perils is in billions of taka,” said Nasir A. Chowdhury, chief executive officer of Green Delta Insurance Company Ltd., which is based in Dhaka,

“If any such event, especially an earthquake, occurs in Bangladesh, the liability of each insurance company shall be billions of taka, which they may not be able to pay because of limited reinsurance protection by SBC and other reinsurers,” Chowdhury said.

WORSENING DISASTERS

Catastrophic flooding is a commonplace occurrence in Bangladesh. Flooding occurs during the monsoon season every year, and in the past quarter-century the country was particularly devastated by flooding in 1987, 1988, 1998 and 2004.

The 1988 flood affected more than 75 percent of Bangladesh, and in 2004 two-thirds of the country went underwater, causing widespread destruction to property and infrastructure valued at nearly $7 billion.

April of this year brought a tsunami watch to countries bordering the Indian Ocean, including Bangladesh. Heavy rains and thunderstorms have already struck the country as summer begins, claiming at least 20 lives in April, and cyclone warnings have been posted several times.

“The intensity of cyclonic wind in the Bay of Bengal has increased significantly in recent years, which we noticed in cyclones like Sidr and Aila, both of which caused a lot of damage,” said Ainun Nishat, vice chancellor of BRAC University in Dhaka.

“The frequency of disastrous events is likely to rise further,” he said.

SBC’s Jakir Hossain conceded that major destructive events are likely to hit insurance companies with huge losses.

“But we can’t go beyond the limit as that will go against our capacity. The protection limit is introduced globally,” Hossain said.

Saifuddin Ahmed Chowdhury, additional managing director of Bangladesh General Insurance Company Ltd, maintained that for events like floods and cyclones, the agreed limit of coverage by the reinsurance companies would be adequate.

“But for a massive earthquake event the coverage agreed by the reinsurer is very much inadequate which has raised the vulnerability of both the insurance companies and insured.”

The country has experienced more than 30 earthquakes of 1.5 to 6.0 magnitude on the Richter scale in the past year, according to Syed Humayun Akhter, a seismologist and supervisor of Dhaka University’s Earth Observatory. Akhter is concerned that a major earthquake may be imminent in Bangladesh.

NO ABILITY TO GET LOANS

Meanwhile, businesses that have taken out insurance against natural disasters are concerned the lack of insurance will cause problems even in day-to-day business.

Abdul Awal Mintoo, chief executive officer of Multimode Group, whose businesses include textiles, shipping, seeds, software and banking, said that if the insurance companies fail to give risk coverage to the insured, companies may not be able to access loans.

“Unless the insurance companies can provide risk coverage to our establishments, no banks will lend to us and our business will face trouble,” he said.

Against this backdrop, the country’s insurance companies are now planning to create a pool of disaster insurance funding in order to provide full coverage to their policy holders.

“We have asked all our members to inform us of their liability in case of flooding, cyclone or earthquake,” said Molla Nurul Islam, secretary-general of the Bangladesh Insurance Association.

Islam said the association would work to find ways to cover the liabilities of its members in the event of a disaster.

“We are legally bound to give full insurance coverage to the insured,” he said.

Syful Islam is a journalist with the Financial Express newspaper in Bangladesh. He can be reached at: youths1990@yahoo.com.

http://www.trust.org/alertnet/news/hit-by-growing-disaster-losses-insurers-set-limits-on-coverage

Community radio cutting disaster risk in coastal Bangladesh

Tues, 22 May 2012

By Syful Islam

DHAKA, Bangladesh (AlertNet) – New local dialect community radio stations in Bangladesh’s coastal districts are warning residents about cyclones and helping farmers cope with erratic weather patterns.

The new radio stations are part of an initiative to reduce loss of life and damage to livelihoods from natural disasters and unpredictable weather.

“The radio (stations), run with the active participation of local people, have already gained popularity and are telling people how to adapt to climate change impacts,” said A.H.M. Bazlur Rahman, chief executive officer of the Bangladesh NGOs Network for Radio and Communication.

Approval was given for 14 community radio stations in coastal and inland areas in April 2010, and six are now broadcasting from coastal districts. A further 22 applications have been filed with the government. The stations are mostly funded by non-government organisations and individuals.

The radio programmes focus primarily on disaster risk reduction and climate variability, Rahman said. He attributes their growing popularity in part to programmes being broadcast in local dialects.

ACCESSIBLE TO THE ILLITERATE

“People in the countryside, most of whom are illiterate, can easily understand weather bulletins and other instructions” when they are provided in local languages, he said.

During a tsunami watch in early April, in countries bordering the Indian Ocean including Bangladesh, the new radio stations transmitted national weather forecasts in local dialects, said Manir Hossain, station manager of Lokobetar community radio, based in Barguna district in the south of the country.

“Through our programmes we advised people what they needed to do for their safety during the emergency,” Hossain said.

Although no tsunami took place, heavy rainstorms have struck Bangladesh as the rainy summer season commences, claiming at least 20 lives in April in different parts of the country.

Eunus Ali Hawlader, a Lokobetar listener who makes his living fishing at sea, said, “The station suggests carrying a radio set with us so that we can hear weather bulletins and start returning in time to avoid any danger.”

Lokobetar also broadcasts plays, songs and talk shows to raise awareness about climate change impacts and issues such as education and health services, said Hossain, who strives to ensure that programming is relevant and approachable.

“We have also included community people, the fishermen, boatmen, farmers and other locals in our programmes,” he added.

In Khulna district in the country’s southwest, Sundarban community radio warns people to send women and children to elevated storm shelters immediately when cyclones approach, and to keep adequate stocks of dry food.

Tarun Kumar, head of Sundarban community radio, said the station plans to provide a free solar-powered radio to each cyclone shelter so people can receive government instructions during disasters.

Kumar is also concerned that climate change is causing rivers in the area to dry up, threatening the livelihoods of fishing communities.

“Through our programmes we advise fishermen (on how) to find alternative livelihoods, and draw the attention of policymakers to take steps so that fishing communities do not remain unfed,” he said.

AGRICULTURAL ADVICE

Sharif Iqbal, station manager of Barguna’s Krishi radio, said his station’s main goal is to help people with disaster preparedness and risk reduction, but that offering agricultural advice is also important because of the difficulty of farming on land vulnerable to flooding from the sea.

“For the farmers we broadcast expert opinions on what steps they need to take, and when, to get a better yield,” he said. “We suggest to them what types of seeds they should choose and which one will be suitable for saline-affected lands.”

Real-time information is vital for farmers, according to Iqbal, because land in the area only allows for a single harvest each year.

“If they lose the crop, they will starve,” he said.

Amal Babu, a farmer and listener of Krishi radio, has no illusions about the difficulty of making a living, and believes the broadcasts could help.

“This area is prone to disaster. The crop yield is comparatively good here but salinity, drought, flooding and cyclones destroy (it),” he said. “If the farmers can get advance information on calamity and advice about farming tools they will be able to get a good yield.”

Babu has already taken the advice of a programme broadcast on Krishi Radio about a salt-tolerant variety of rice paddy which can survive more than three weeks under water.

“Farmers have started to cultivate the variety and are now less worried about losing crops,” said Babu.

The convener of Bangladesh’s national climate change negotiation team, Quazi Khaliquzzaman Ahmed, agreed that community radio can play a significant role in explaining how to adapt to the effects of climate change and helping people improve their preparedness for disasters.

“In Bangladesh there are 45,000 volunteers ready to act when disaster hits. The community radios can inform them as well as (other) people ... what to do before and after the disaster strikes,” he said.

Syful Islam is a journalist with the Financial Express newspaper in Bangladesh. He can be reached at: youths1990@yahoo.com. This story is part of a series supported by the Climate and Development Knowledge Network.

http://www.trust.org/alertnet/news/community-radio-cutting-disaster-risk-in-coastal-bangladesh/

Coconut and mango waste could help power Asia

Syful Islam

22 March 2012

SciDev.net

[DHAKA] Researchers in the United States say agricultural waste from coconut and mango farming could generate significant amounts of off-grid electricity for rural communities in South and South-East Asia.

Many food crops have a tough, inedible part which cannot be used to feed livestock or fertilise fields. Examples of this material — known as 'endocarp' — include coconut, almond and pistachio shells, and the stones of mangoes, olives, plums, apricots and cherries.

Endocarp is high in a chemical compound known as lignin. High-lignin products can be heated to produce an energy-rich gas that can be used to generate electricity.

The researchers identified high-endocarp-producing regions of the world – and noted that coconut and mango agriculture account for 72 per cent of total global endocarp production. Coconut production alone accounted for 55 per cent.

Most coconut endocarp comes from South and South-East Asian countries, including Bangladesh, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Thailand, and Vietnam.

They then overlaid these findings with energy consumption data to identify communities with little access to electricity, who could benefit from endocarp-based energy.

"We noticed that production was unevenly distributed around the globe, which could make a very significant contribution to the energy budget in some countries like Sri Lanka, Indonesia, and the Philippines, [as well as] regions of India," Tom Shearin, co-author and a systems analyst at University of Kentucky, United States, told SciDev.Net.

Writing in the Proceedings of the National Academies of Sciences (February 21), the researchers said endocarp bioenergy could meet up to 30 per cent of total energy needs in Sri Lanka, 25 per cent in the Philippines, 13 per cent in Indonesia, and 3 per cent in India.

Shearin said endocarp was preferable to crop-based biofuels as it had no value as a food item. "Its exploitation as energy source does not compete with food production," he said.

Wais Kabir, executive chairman of the Bangladesh Agriculture Research Institute, told SciDev.Net that most of the country's agricultural waste, including non-edible by-products, was already used to generate bioenergy.

"I don't think that supply of adequate volumes of coconut shell, [for example] to run a power plant, is possible at this stage until we go for its production in a planned way," he said.

The researchers acknowledged that efforts to scale up infrastructure to deliver decentralised bio-energy in developing countries would face economic, technical and social challenges.

Advocates of an endocarp-based energy sector would also have to persuade investors that it would be financially viable.

Abser Kamal, managing director of Grameen Shakti, a renewable energy firm in Bangladesh, said: "We have to check if these are cost-effective or not".

Islam Sharif, CEO of the Infrastructure Development Company Limited (IDCOL), a state-run renewable energy financing firm in Bangladesh, said IDCO would encourage investment in endocarp-based energy production if it was found to be financially viable.

"Bangladesh needs more energy sources to meet its power needs," Sharif told SciDev.Net.

http://www.scidev.net/en/climate-change-and-energy/renewable-energy/news/coconut-and-mango-waste-could-help-power-asia.html

Scientists identify genetic vulnerability to arsenic-related cancers

Syful Islam

7 March 2012 | SciDev.net

[DHAKA] People at greater risk of developing debilitating or fatal diseases related to arsenic exposure could be prioritised for treatment, following a study by Bangladeshi and US researchers.

Exposure to arsenic through contaminated drinking water is a major public health issue affecting millions of people, mostly in South Asia.

A previous study had linked as many as one in five deaths in Bangladesh to arsenic exposure, and the WHO has called the phenomenon "the largest mass poisoning" in history.

The new study — published in PLoS Genetics last month (23 February) — looked at why some people are more susceptible to arsenic poisoning, with a view to establishing whether there is a genetic basis to their susceptibility.

Researchers studied the entire genomes of 3,000 people in Bangladesh and found that those who developed arsenic-related skin lesions shared a common area of their genomes. Such lesions are an indicator of overall susceptibility to other arsenic-related diseases.

The researchers said their findings suggested that up to a third of the Bangladeshi population carries the genetic variation.

"The precise risk estimates are being investigated," said lead author Habibul Ahsan, an epidemiology professor at the University of Chicago, United States.

Ahsan told SciDev.Net that the discovery could inform the design of targeted screening programmes to identify those most at risk of developing arsenic-related illness.

"Since millions of exposed people can't realistically be treated, our findings will help identify susceptible sub-groups that can be provided with specific medical treatments," Ahsan said.

At present, he said, people with the genetic disposition have no alternative but to avoid contaminated water, although he acknowledged this was not always possible.

But he added that a range of treatments are being investigated, including low-cost therapies using vitamin E, selenium and folic acid, all of which are in clinical trials.

Once treatments become available, Ahsan said, those with the genetic susceptibility could be prioritised for treatment.

"We know from Chile and Taiwan that the risk of arsenic-related cancers and death remains high for the rest of [the lives of arsenic-affected people] — even after the exposure [risk] is removed by the provision of safe water," he said.

The researchers plan further large-scale studies, with a view to persuading the Bangladeshi government to engage more actively with the issue.

"This will help our doctors in curative and preventive management of arsenic-exposed patients," said Sudhir Kumar Ghosh, superintendent engineer at the Department of Public Health Engineering, in Bangladesh.

http://www.scidev.net/en/health/genomics/news/scientists-identify-genetic-vulnerability-to-arsenic-related-cancers.html

Climate migrants cause baby boom in Bangladesh's urban slums

02 Mar 2012

By Syful Islam

DHAKA, Bangladesh (AlertNet) – Climate and economic migrants to Bangladesh’s urban slums are contributing to a population boom that is creating social strains in this tiny and impoverished country of 160 million people.

“Lack of awareness and education, unavailability of contraceptives, absence of a social safety net and uncertainty over the future are among the reasons behind the baby boom of the slum refugees,” said Ainun Nishat, an environmentalist and vice chancellor of Brac University.

Bangladesh is suffering increasingly frequent flooding from cyclones and from heavy rainfall that experts believe is associated with climate change. Its coastal plains are particularly at risk, but many who live in the country’s interior are also vulnerable to river bank erosion – or conversely to drought.

When flooding and erosion displace families, and in many cases leave them landless and penniless, they often take refuge in urban areas, and have little option but to live in slums. There, lack of education about family planning, poor access to birth control and worries about financial security combine to result in large families.

“These unlucky people feel that in old age they will have to depend on children to secure a living. So, they prefer to take more number of children to be sure that at least one of them will take care of the parents,” Nishat said.

HIGH SLUM FERTILITY RATE

According to the 2006 Bangladesh Urban Health Survey, the total fertility rate – the average number of children born to a woman during her lifetime – is 4.5 in urban slums, far higher than the overall national rate of 2.5.

Bangladesh’s total fertility rate has plummeted over the past five decades from a peak of more than 7. But the country’s population density, the increasing frequency of natural disasters, and heavy migration to cities mean that the higher fertility rate among slum dwellers is set to create growing economic and social pressures.

Hamid Mia, 50, is a father of five who works as a boatman near the Korail slum in Dhaka, the country’s capital, where he has lived for 20 years. He lost his village home in Chaulakathi, in the southern district of Barishal, after the Kochar River claimed his family's land.

Mia’s two sons are rickshaw pullers while his three daughters work in garment factories to help the family.

“My sons and daughters are also working, as I can’t bear all the expenses of a seven-member family,” he said.

The World Bank estimates that nearly 42 million Bangladeshis, somewhat more than a quarter of the country’s population, live in urban areas. According to Nurun Nabi, a professor in the University of Dhaka’s Population Science Department, around 40 percent of urban residents live in slums, and they contribute three-quarters of live births in urban areas.

“Every couple (of child-bearing age) in the slums has around five to six children, while the other city dwellers have on an average two to three babies,” said Nabi.

“I do not know if all the slum dwellers are climate refugees but most of them have come from the countryside as they lost living places due to river erosion (or were) displaced due to natural calamities and lacked somewhere to live,” he said.

ENVIRONMENTAL MIGRANTS

The International Organization for Migration (IOM) said that about 70 percent of slum dwellers in Dhaka have experienced some kind of environmental disaster. By some accounts, half a million people move to the city each year, mainly from coastal and rural areas.

Ahsan Uddin Ahmed, executive director of the Centre for Global Change, a non-governmental organisation, said that the capital contributes 31 percent of the country’s GDP, making it attractive to people displaced by climate change and disasters and looking for jobs.

Ahmed and fellow researcher Sharmind Neelormi estimate that erosion, soil salinity and waterlogging of soil alone have the potential to displace about 100,000 rural residents annually. But population migration due to flooding is on a far greater scale.

Tahera Akter, a researcher with Unnayan Onneshan, an NGO, found that during the period 1970-2009, Bangladesh suffered major floods every three years on average, and that each occurrence displaced an average of a quarter of the country’s population. Akter predicts that as many as 78 million people could be displaced by floods, cyclones and droughts by 2020.

Dhaka’s population has grown to about 12 million since the nation’s independence in 1971, and the city’s slum population has increased from 275,000 in 1974 to 3.4 million in 2005, according to the Centre for Urban Studies, a Bangladeshi think tank.

Ahmed said that many slum residents are illiterate and do not understand that a big family can bring burdens for society as well as for themselves. To stop the population boom, he said that ensuring education of girls and women is crucial.

EDUCATING WOMEN KEY

International studies show that educating women and providing health care to ensure their children survive is one of the surest ways of reducing birth rates.

M.M. Neazuddin, director general of the government’s Family Planning Directorate, said that while family planning activities outside cities are meeting with success, the lack of adequate health services and awareness programmes in slum areas is causing the population boom in urban slums.

Neazuddin said that his office will implement a crash programme within a year to try to bring down the fertility rate in city slums.

In Korail slum, Hamid Mia said that some health centres run by the city corporation did exist.

“Health workers there offer family planning advice but I think those are not enough to reduce population growth. Providing contraceptives free of cost as well as motivation may help,” he said.

Brac University’s Nishat said that in the past health workers had supplied free contraceptives door to door, which had helped reduce population growth.

“But the government, on the World Bank’s advice, has stopped the door-to-door service and made it health-centre based,” he said. The problem is that the health centres are often far from people’s homes, and as a result, “people feel discouraged to avail themselves of the facility,” he said.

Syful Islam is a journalist with The Financial Express newspaper in Dhaka. He can be reached at: youths1990@yahoo.com.

http://www.trust.org/alertnet/news/climate-migrants-cause-baby-boom-in-bangladeshs-urban-slums/

Model to predict cholera outbreaks earlier, better

Syful Islam

14 February 2012 | SciDev.net

[DHAKA] A newly developed cholera prediction model can help warn against possible outbreaks of the water-borne disease 11 months in advance.
The model, tested by a team of scientists from Bangladesh and the US, was reported in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences last month (23 January).

Scientists now have a tool that can even predict the severity of a cholera outbreak, Mohammad Yunus, senior scientist at the International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research, Bangladesh, and a co-author of the report, told SciDev.Net.

The model classifies areas into no cholera, low cholera and high cholera zones and understands the dynamics of outbreaks as related to floods and other weather events in each location. Cholera is caused by the bacterium Vibrio cholerae and symptoms include watery diarrhoea and vomiting.

While the scientists have tested the model for use within the city of Dhaka and in hospitals in the administrative sub-divisions, using it on a nationwide scale would require highly trained mathematicians and personnel with computer modelling skills, Yunus said.

Yunus added, however, that "some form of the model could be implemented for prediction using user-friendly software."

While the basic science for a model to predict large cholera epidemics with an 11-month lead time has been devised, “an operational cholera prediction system would require developing tools that allow other scientists to input data for a particular area," Yunus explained.

"At present there are no prediction tools. So, scientists would need to replicate the study for either a different year or time," Yunus said. "If prediction model software tools are developed, and if scientists have the proper input data, then they could do the prediction themselves."

Yunus said the research group was also studying the model's effectiveness in predicting other diarrhoeal diseases. "We are doing the research in collaboration with our colleagues in Michigan (University of Michigan) and have plans to develop the software jointly. "

"The model needs to be validated with more studies using real time data," observed Mahmudur Rahman, director of the Institute of Epidemiology Disease Control and Research and National Influenza Centre, Bangladesh.

"If the group is successful, this model can help predict large cholera outbreaks," Rahman said.

http://www.scidev.net/en/south-asia/news/model-to-predict-cholera-outbreaks-earlier-better.html

Resilient homes to help coastal Bangladeshis withstand cyclones

17 Jan 2012

By Syful Islam

SHYMNAGAR, Bangladesh (AlertNet) – Rizia Akhter doesn’t look forward to what the coming storm season may bring, but for the first time in years she feels secure.

Akhter, 45 and a single mother of five children, lost her home in Ardasha Gram village when cyclone Aila struck Bangladesh’s southwest coastal region on May 25, 2009. The storm killed at least 300 people and destroyed 4,000 kilometres of roads and embankments. More than 87,000 people in the region lost their houses, possessions and livelihoods.

But Akhter is now one of 43 families in her village living in a newly constructed house - one that has been built to withstand the increasingly strong storms that experts say may be linked to climate change.

“When the warning about Aila was given, we didn’t understand how devastating the storm would be. We were not even sure whether the cyclone would hit or not. So we stayed at home. Within a few minutes of the cyclone hitting, a water surge washed out our house,” Akhter said.

The home that Akhter lost was made of iron sheets. Following the cyclone, her family had to live in a hut made of bamboo, straw and plastic sheets.

ELEVATED HOUSES

But her new house is built of wood, with brick roof tiles. Most important, it stands on four concrete pillars two metres tall to protect it from rising waters.

“The height offered is enough to deal with the expected rise in sea level and growing storm surges,” said Aminul Islam, assistant director of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in Bangladesh, which built the new houses in partnership with BRAC, a Bangladesh-based non-governmental development organisation.

The 170 square foot (15 square metre) homes are designed to withstand winds of up to 240 kph (150 mph).

Akhter and one of her daughters survived the 2009 cyclone by grabbing hold of a piece of iron roof sheeting that was floating past. She believes that if her family had been living in a sturdier elevated house, like her new one, they would not have been washed out and their lives endangered.

The Disaster Resilient Habitat (DRH) project aims to build safer settlements in Bangladesh coastal villages affected by cyclones or tidal surges, so that families can survive future cyclones.

COMMUNITY DESIGN

Community participation was an important element in designing the houses, and architects from BRAC University consulted with villagers before coming up with a design.

“The project’s innovative approach ensured that solutions came from within the community rather than being imposed from the outside,” Islam said.

One villager, Fatema, said that community members had originally asked that the walls and roofs of the houses be built with brick and iron rods to make them more resilient, because they feared the wooden walls and brick-tile roofs would be less strong.

But Ainun Nishat, vice chancellor of BRAC University and a climate change expert, said that even as built the new houses should be able to withstand 150 mph winds, and that using local materials such as wood helped keep costs low so that the structures could be replicated in the future.

The fact that much of the area devastated by Aila is still covered in saltwater also posed a challenge to other types of construction, according to Nishat.

“Had we built the walls and rooftops with (local) bricks made of salt water and mud, there was a significant chance of the structures being ruined within five or six years” because of the salt content in the bricks, he said. Bricks used for the roofs were brought from a distance away, workers said.

The project has also focused on creating local jobs, a key element because many livelihoods were wiped out by the cyclone.

“The whole process of developing the DRH concept offered employment opportunities for different sections (of society), including the families targeted,” said the UNDP’s Islam.

The $1,750 cost of each home was covered by UNDP, while the new residents helped with the construction.

Many in the area have to travel significant distances to find work in brick-making, while for those who want to stay closer to home, like Rizia Akhter, there is little employment available other than fishing or cutting mud to build embankments as a protection against storm surges.

The UNDP now plans to expand the construction of storm-resistant houses to villages affected by Aila in the Dacope sub-district of Khulna district.

“These villages are getting cyclone-resistant homes which will have solar energy, rainwater harvesting and (cyclone) early warning systems, and livelihood support,” said Islam. The additional homes are due to be ready in March, and the UNDP is seeking donors to underwrite further expansion of the programme.

AGING SHELTERS

Although Bangladesh’s 16 coastal districts have more than 2,800 storm shelters, which have dramatically decreased deaths from cyclones in recent decades, a growing number of the shelters are now unusable, according to officials from the Ministry of Disaster Management. Adequately protecting the coastal population will require building 2,500 new shelters, they said.

Some of the existing shelters also are located too far from villages to be of much use in a sudden disaster, NGO worker say. Part of the problem is that cyclone warnings are often disregarded because they have not always been accurate in the past, and the delay in seeking shelter can cost lives.

Gareth Price-Jones, Bangladesh country director for Oxfam, said storm-resistant houses will help save lives as long as they are adapted to villagers’ way of life. According to Price-Jones, mobilising the community to assess disaster risks, agree on the most vulnerable households and design practical action plans is crucial.

“The key issue that has arisen in the past is that these kinds of structures have not been genuinely owned by the community. Too many ... have sat unused after initial success in the past. (But) it looks in this case as though the community has been very much involved, which is a really positive sign,” he said.

Nevertheless, the wider problem of worsening extreme weather events, including cyclones, remains.

“Without a serious global effort to address climate change, then it’s almost inevitable that these communities will see increased risks, decreased resilience and deterioration in their living conditions over the next few years,” Price-Jones warned.

Syful Islam is a journalist with The Financial Express newspaper in Dhaka. He can be reached at: youths1990@yahoo.com. This story is part of a series supported by the Climate and Development Knowledge Network.

http://www.trust.org/alertnet/news/resilient-homes-to-help-coastal-bangladeshis-withstand-cyclones/