Braving climate risk: Food security and alternative livelihood hold the key

Editorial, The Daily Star, October 23, 2010

Bangladesh being one of the nations perilously exposed to the threat of climate change, it needs to develop strategies to cope with the unfolding climate change-related calamities like tidal surges, cyclones, floods, droughts, downpours and so on. And since it is the poor who always bear the brunt of these vagaries of nature, the coping or adaptation strategies must place their realities at the centre stage of climate change concerns.

In the circumstances, the coping and adaptation strategies will have to make provisions to reduce the risks the poor are exposed to and build their resilience in the face of the unfolding disasters.

One of the gravest risks to our population that would come in the wake of climate change is food shortage, since traditional farming will be severely affected resulting in crop failures. And with our food security already facing serious challenge from overpopulation, climate change threatens to render the situation more difficult.

Keeping all these complex issues in view, the government and its development partners have been developing various adaptation strategies, especially for the section of the population most vulnerable to the problem.

Recurrent tidal surges, floods, droughts, increasing salinity. etc will force people to change their settlement styles and livelihood patterns. The government organisations and other bodies working to help the vulnerable section of the population will have to provide them with housing facilities that can endure the floods and cyclones and alternative means of living suited to changed farming practices and other livelihood-related activities.

At a recently held workshop organised by a UK-based organisation named ‘Practical Action, Bangladesh’ in the city dedicated to helping the poor develop resilience against climate change, stress was given on food security with diversification of livelihood options through the use of new technologies. And to implement the strategy, community-based activities and involvement of the local government bodies as well as the service providers were given the highest priority.

In fact, the vulnerable section of society needs to be made amply aware of the nature of the dangers they would be facing before they could be effectively mobilised to meet the challenges of climate change. Alternative livelihood will necessitate search for new resource base for sustenance of the population, which at the same time has to be sustainable. And since the different aspects of the challenge are emerging in phases, the approach to tackle them should advisably be a multi-pronged one.

The good news is the people have already proved their resilience in braving the natural calamities that have recurrently struck them. The added burden of climate challenge will only put them through a new test of endurance and adaptation. If the government and others concerned can provide them with the necessary support and know-how to cope and adapt, the people will also be able to take the new challenge in their stride.

10 Satkhira villages flooded as dyke collapses

 

The Daily Star, October 26, 2010

At least 10 villages in Munsiganj and Romjan Nagar unions under Shyamnagar upazila were inundated as water entered the area through the collapsed embankment on the Mirganj River by heavy pressure of water due to violent tide on October 23 night.

The embankment covering 100 yards at Bhetkhali went into the river due to heavy pressure of water caused by high tide.

The affected villagers are trying to reconstruct the damaged embankments on self-help basis but they failed due to heavy pressure of water following violent tide of the river.

The affected villages are Jyotindra Nagar, Chhoto Bhetkhali, Boro Bhetkhali, Tangrakhali, Mirgang, Parshekhali, Romjan Nagar, Dhumghat and two other adjoining villages in Padmapukur union.

Over 5,000 people of the villages in the two unions were marooned and they took shelter on high lands in the areas. Fishes worth Tk 20 crore were washed away as shrimp enclosures on 4,000 acres of land were inundated, Zillur Rahman of village Jyotindra Nagar said.

The vast areas covering 10 villages in the unions were flooded following collapse of the embankments at the point on the Mirganj River by heavy pressure of water due to violent tide, he said.

Executive Engineer Mujibar Rahman of Satkhira Water Development Board (WDB) Division-1 said the embankment was devoured by the river due to strong current.

Local people are trying to reconstruct the collapsed embankments but failed due to heavy pressure of water, they said.

 

Climate Vulnerability: Bangladesh at highest risk

The Daily Star, October  20, 2010

South Asia is the world’s most climate-vulnerable region, its fast-growing populations badly exposed to flood, drought, storms and sea-level rise, according to a survey of 170 nations.

Of the 16 countries listed as being at “extreme” risk from climate change over the next 30 years, five are from South Asia, with Bangladesh and India in first and second places, Nepal in fourth, Afghanistan in eighth and Pakistan at 16th.

The Climate Change Vulnerability Index, compiled by a British-based global risks advisory firm, Maplecroft, is intended as a guide for strategic investment and policymaking.

The barometer is based on 42 social, economic and environmental factors, including the responsiveness of government, to assess the risk to population, ecosystems and business from climate change.

South Asia is especially vulnerable because of changes in weather patterns that result in natural disasters, including floods in Pakistan and Bangladesh this year that affected more than 20 million people, Maplecroft said.

“There is growing evidence climate change is increasing the intensity and frequency of climatic events,” the firm’s environmental analyst, Anna Moss, said.

“Very minor changes to temperature can have major impacts on the human environment, including changes to water availability and crop productivity, the loss of land due to sea-level rise, and the spread of disease.”

Bangladesh is rated No1 because of a double whammy. It has the highest risk of drought and the highest risk of famine.

It is also struggling with extreme poverty, high dependence on agriculture — the economic sector most affected by climate change — and a government that is the least capable of coping with climate impacts.

As for India, “almost the whole (of the country) has a high or extreme degree of sensitivity to climate change, due to acute population pressure and a consequential strain on natural resources,” Maplecroft said.

“This is compounded by a high degree of poverty, poor general health and the agricultural dependency of much of the populace.”

China (49th), Brazil (81st) and Japan (86th) were among countries in the “high risk” category.

The “medium risk” category included Russia (117th), the United States (129th), Germany (131st), France (133rd) and Britain (138th).

Norway led the group of 11 nations considered at least risk, which is dominated by fellow Scandinavians as well as the Netherlands, which has worked hard to defend its low-lying land from rising seas.

Maplecroft published a climate vulnerability index in 2009 that placed 28 nations at “extreme risk”, headed by Somalia, Haiti, Afghanistan, Sierra Leone and Burundi.

However, the 2009 and 2010 indices are not comparable, Maplecroft’s Fiona Place said.

The new index, largely reworked, uses three “sub-indices” that focus especially on a country’s ability to respond to climate change stress.

“The most serious vulnerabilities to climate change are found in a group of developing countries with socio-economic systems ill-equipped to address development challenges such as food and water security, in addition to being burdened by unstable economies and weak institutions,” Place said in an email exchange with AFP.

“This is the case for a large number of countries, with southern Asia and Africa of particular concern.”

Our Commons Future Is Already Here

A stirring call to unite the environmental and global justice movement from Maude Barlow

by Maude Barlow, On the Commons

Maude Barlow gave this stirring plenary speech, full of hope even in the face of ecological disasters, to the Environmental Grantmakers Association annual retreat in Pacific Grove, California. Barlow, a former UN Senior Water Advisor, is National Chairperson of the Council of Canadians and founder of the Blue Planet Project. “Every now and then in history, the human race takes a collective step forward in its evolution. Such a time is upon us now.”

We all know that the earth and all upon it face a growing crisis. Global climate change is rapidly advancing, melting glaciers, eroding soil, causing freak and increasingly wild storms, and displacing untold millions from rural communities to live in desperate poverty in peri-urban slums. Almost every human victim lives in the global South, in communities not responsible for greenhouse gas emissions. The atmosphere has already warmed up almost a full degree in the last several decades and a new Canadian study reports that we may be on course to add another 6 degrees Celsius (10.8 degrees Fahrenheit) by 2100.

Half the tropical forests in the world – the lungs of our ecosystems – are gone; by 2030, at the current rate of harvest, only 10% will be left standing. Ninety percent of the big fish in the sea are gone, victim to wanton predatory fishing practices. Says a prominent scientist studying their demise “there is no blue frontier left.” Half the world’s wetlands – the kidneys of our ecosystems – were destroyed in the 20th century. Species extinction is taking place at a rate one thousand times greater than before humans existed. According to a Smithsonian scientist, we are headed toward a “biodiversity deficit” in which species and ecosystems will be destroyed at a rate faster than Nature can create new ones.

We are polluting our lakes, rivers and streams to death. Every day, 2 million tons of sewage and industrial and agricultural waste are discharged into the world’s water, the equivalent of the weight of the entire human population of 6.8 billion people. The amount of wastewater produced annually is about six times more water than exists in all the rivers of the world. A comprehensive new global study recently reported that 80% of the world’s rivers are now in peril, affecting 5 billion people on the planet. We are also mining our groundwater far faster than nature can replenish it, sucking it up to grow water-guzzling chemical-fed crops in deserts or to water thirsty cities that dump an astounding 200 trillion gallons of land-based water as waste in the oceans every year. The global mining industry sucks up another 200 trillion gallons, which it leaves behind as poison. Fully one third of global water withdrawals are now used to produce biofuels, enough water to feed the world. A recent global survey of groundwater found that the rate of depletion more than doubled in the last half century. If water was drained as rapidly from the Great Lakes, they would be bone dry in 80 years.

The global water crisis is the greatest ecological and human threat humanity has ever faced. As Vast areas of the planet are becoming desert as we suck the remaining waters out of living ecosystems and drain remaining aquifers in India, China, Australia, most of Africa, all of the Middle East, Mexico, Southern Europe, US Southwest and other places. Dirty water is the biggest killer of children; every day more children die of water borne disease than HIV/AIDS, malaria and war together. In the global South, dirty water kills a child every three and a half seconds. And it is getting worse, fast. By 2030, global demand for water will exceed supply by 40%— an astounding figure foretelling of terrible suffering.

Knowing there will not be enough food and water for all in the near future, wealthy countries and global investment, pension and hedge funds are buying up land and water, fields and forests in the global South, creating a new wave of invasive colonialism that will have huge geo-political ramifications. Rich investors have already bought up an amount of land double the size of the United Kingdom in Africa alone.

We Simply Cannot Continue on the Present Path

I do not think it possible to exaggerate the threat to our earth and every living thing upon it. Quite simply we cannot continue on the path that brought us here. Einstein said that problems cannot be solved by the same level of thinking that created them. While mouthing platitudes about caring for the earth, most of our governments are deepening the crisis with new plans for expanded resource exploitation, unregulated free trade deals, more invasive investment, the privatization of absolutely everything and unlimited growth. This model of development is literally killing the planet.

Unlimited growth assumes unlimited resources, and this is the genesis of the crisis. Quite simply, to feed the increasing demands of our consumer based system, humans have seen nature as a great resource for our personal convenience and profit, not as a living ecosystem from which all life springs. So we have built our economic and development policies based on a human-centric model and assumed either that nature would never fail to provide or that, where it does fail, technology will save the day.

Two Problems that Hinder the Environmental Movement

From the perspective of the environmental movement, I see two problems that hinder us in our work to stop this carnage. The first is that, with notable exceptions, most environmental groups either have bought into the dominant model of development or feel incapable of changing it. The main form of environmental protection in industrialized countries is based on the regulatory system, legalizing the discharge of large amounts of toxics into the environment. Environmentalists work to minimize the damage from these systems, essentially fighting for inadequate laws based on curbing the worst practices, but leaving intact the system of economic globalization at the heart of the problem. Trapped inside this paradigm, many environmentalists essentially prop up a deeply flawed system, not imagining they are capable of creating another.

Hence, the support of false solutions such as carbon markets, which, in effect, privatize the atmosphere by creating a new form of property rights over natural resources. Carbon markets are predicated less on reducing emissions than on the desire to make carbon cuts as cheap as possible for large corporations.

Another false solution is the move to turn water into private property, which can then be hoarded, bought and sold on the open market. The latest proposals are for a water pollution market, similar to carbon markets, where companies and countries will buy and sell the right to pollute water. With this kind of privatization comes a loss of public oversight to manage and protect watersheds. Commodifying water renders an earth-centred vision for watersheds and ecosystems unattainable.

Then there is PES, or Payment for Ecological Services, which puts a price tag on ecological goods – clean air, water, soil etc, – and the services such as water purification, crop pollination and carbon sequestration that sustain them. A market model of PES is an agreement between the “holder” and the “consumer” of an ecosystem service, turning that service into an environmental property right. Clearly this system privatizes nature, be it a wetland, lake, forest plot or mountain, and sets the stage for private accumulation of nature by those wealthy enough to be able to buy, hoard sell and trade it. Already, northern hemisphere governments and private corporations are studying public/private/partnerships to set up lucrative PES projects in the global South. Says Friends of the Earth International, “Governments need to acknowledge that market-based mechanisms and the commodification of biodiversity have failed both biodiversity conservation and poverty alleviation.”

The second problem with our movement is one of silos. For too long environmentalists have toiled in isolation from those communities and groups working for human and social justice and for fundamental change to the system. On one hand are the scientists, scholars, and environmentalists warning of a looming ecological crisis and monitoring the decline of the world’s freshwater stocks, energy sources and biodiversity. On the other are the development experts, anti-poverty advocates, and NGOs working to address the inequitable access to food, water and health care and campaigning for these services, particularly in the global South. The assumption is that these are two different sets of problems, one needing a scientific and ecological solution, the other needing a financial solution based on pulling money from wealthy countries, institutions and organizations to find new resources for the poor.

The clearest example I have is in the area I know best, the freshwater crisis. It is finally becoming clear to even the most intransigent silo separatists that the ecological and human water crises are intricately linked, and that to deal effectively with either means dealing with both. The notion that inequitable access can be dealt with by finding more money to pump more groundwater is based on a misunderstanding that assumes unlimited supply, when in fact humans everywhere are overpumping groundwater supplies. Similarly, the hope that communities will cooperate in the restoration of their water systems when they are desperately poor and have no way of conserving or cleaning the limited sources they use is a cruel fantasy. The ecological health of the planet is intricately tied to the need for a just system of water distribution.

The global water justice movement (of which I have the honour of being deeply involved) is, I believe, successfully incorporating concerns about the growing ecological water crisis with the promotion of just economic, food and trade policies to ensure water for all. We strongly believe that fighting for equitable water in a world running out means taking better care of the water we have, not just finding supposedly endless new sources. Through countless gatherings where we took the time to really hear one another – especially grassroots groups and tribal peoples closest to the struggle – we developed a set of guiding principles and a vision for an alternative future that are universally accepted in our movement and have served us well in times of stress. We are also deeply critical of the trade and development policies of the World Trade Organization, the World Bank and the World Water Council (whom I call the “Lords of water”), and we openly challenge their model and authority.

Similarly, a fresh and exciting new movement exploded onto the scene in Copenhagen and set all the traditional players on their heads. The climate justice movement whose motto is Change the System, Not the Climate, arrived to challenge not only the stalemate of the government negotiators but the stale state of too cosy alliances between major environmental groups, international institutions and big business – the traditional “players” on the climate scene. Those climate justice warriors went on to gather at another meeting in Cochabamba, Bolivia, producing a powerful alternative declaration to the weak statement that came out of Copenhagen. The new document forged in Bolivia put the world on notice that business as usual is not on the climate agenda.

How the Commons Fits In

Season cycle left in chaos: Climate change taking its toll on Bangladesh

Pinaki Roy, The Daily Star

October 8, 2010

It is Ashwin in Bangla calendar, officially autumn in Bangladesh and usually the season of benign sunlight. And so it happened for generations.

But things are different now.

Last week was hot with intense humidity. Profuse sweating drenched people. But yesterday it was like monsoon, drizzling and sometimes pouring down with rain the whole day.

This July was the driest in the decade, said the meteorological office. It prompted some farmers at Ramchandra village in Shadullahpur, Gaibandha to marry off frogs, a rainmaking ritual in the country. Foreign media also covered the event.

Though there are six seasons in Bangladesh, three of them–summer, monsoon and winter–are noticeable. The farmers of the country depend on their traditional knowledge.

Agronomists say the farmers, who have been ever intuitive about weather, fail to predict the rain nowadays.

Monsoon rains normally sweep Bangladesh from June to September, with the country receiving more than 75 percent of its annual rainfall.

In 2009, there were not enough monsoon rains in mid-July to enable farmers to prepare fields and transplant Aman rice. It didn’t rain until the beginning of August that year, which delayed the transplantation even though the seedlings were ready.

The weather is vital to a country where over 60 percent people depend on agriculture, said Zainul Abedin, president of Bangladesh Society of Agronomists, while talking about climate change and its impact on agriculture at a seminer.

Even this year farmers in many parts of the country did not have water in the rainy season to rot their jute, the golden fibre of Bangladesh.

“Farmers from far away, even from other upazila, came to our village to rot their jute. We were lucky that we had water,” said Yunus Hossain, a farmer of Gopalganj, over the telephone.

Not only in Bangladesh, this phenomenon happened in many other parts of the world.

In July, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association (NOAA) of the United States reported that June 2010 was the warmest June on record while 2010 is the warmest year ever recorded.

Meteorology experts observe that it is proven that the mean temperature of the country is increasing.

The Dhaka Met office found a trend of temperature rise in every season analysing 55 years’ weather data between 1951 and 2005. The annual mean temperature also has shown a rising tendency, said meteorologist Shameem Hassan Bhuiyan.

The geographical position of the country is an important factor as the Himalayas is in the North and the Bay of Bengal lies in the south.

“So if the temperature increases, it creates convection clouds that cause long dry spell and short spell of heavy rainfall. It is happening in some parts of the country,” said Shameem.

Besides, the mounting temperature is causing rise in the sea level, which only adds to the sufferings of the farmers, observed agronomists.

Water levels rose by at least 5.6 mm a year at Hiron point, 1.4 mm at Cox’s Bazar and 2.9 mm at Khepupara, they said citing 2008 data from Bangladesh Water Development Board.

In the recent years, extreme natural calamities have caused mammoth loss of life and assets as well as economic losses, said Ainun Nishat at a seminar a few days ago.

“All these are happening due to climate change. The weather is acting weird not only in Bangladesh, but in the other parts of the world,” he said, adding that most unusually the temperature of Moscow, Russia, was more than that of Dhaka this summer.

India, Pakistan, China, the Middle East and many European countries are also experiencing unusual weather events, he said