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