A sea of tears: the flooded people of South Bangladesh

With ocean levels rising, and shrimp farms proliferating, villages in south Bangladesh are being flooded by the sea. There is no water to drink, so people must search for it daily, writes Tahmima Anam.

Guardian, June 20, 2009

If you look at a map of Bangladesh, you will see that the southern coast has a meandering, indistinct border. This is the home of the Sundarbans, the world’s largest mangrove forest, with its strange, submerged trees, its Royal Bengal tigers, and its mythical figures such as Bon-Bibi, goddess and protector of the forest. It is where the delta ends and the sea begins.

Water has been the making and unmaking of Bangladesh. It is the reason the rice grows thick and fast, why the rivers ripple with fish, why the land is carpeted with green. But the water is also cruel. Every year, torrential rains flood villages and farms; rivers break their banks, swallowing great chunks of land, destroying the homes, and the dreams, that are built upon it.

Now, through disasters both man-made and natural, water is wreaking a new kind of havoc. Due to rising sea levels in the Bay of Bengal, and because the government has encouraged the unchecked growth of shrimp farms, the villages scattered along the south-western coast are being flooded with salt water. Large tracts of land, previously green with paddy, are now hot and stagnant pools, hospitable only to the cultivation of shrimp. The shrimp farms are lucrative, but they employ fewer people than the rice farms they have supplanted, leaving many households without an income. The briny water also has ruinous effects on the ecosystem. Nothing grows in these districts any more: the fish have died, along with the birds that depended on them. The cows have nothing to eat, so there is no milk; the tigers are fleeing inland and attacking humans. Worst of all, there is no fresh water to drink.

Munem Wasif’s photographs capture the desperate search for drinking water that has become a daily struggle for the villagers of southern Bangladesh. Their wells and fresh water sources contaminated, they spend the better part of their days in the search for water. Women make the long trek to the nearest source, kolshi flasks heavy on their hips. Children are taken out of school to help with water collection. Some villagers have taken collective action: every day, they lead small boats through the forest, gathering water and supplying their entire village. Others have no recourse but to pray – to the skies, to God, to Bon-Bibi – for the sweet, life-giving water that once coursed abundantly through this land.

• Munem Wasif visited Bangladesh with the support of Prix Pictet, which aims to communicate issues of global significance through photography, and WaterAid, which manages clean water and sanitation projects in the developing world

Increased salinity changes vegetation pattern

Pinaki Roy, back from Dakop, Khulna, The Daily Star, July 14, 2008

Geowa plants are abundant on the banks of Khalsi canal. Most of these species are less than a decade old; many others are growing for only couple of years. Not only geowa, some golpata (nypah) and other saline-tolerant plants are visible here and there along the canal.

The canal is named after Khalsi village in Dakop upazila in Khulna where the residents are mostly Hindus.

During a stroll around the village it was seen geowa is the main tree there. Locals say vegetation pattern of Khalsi has entirely changed in just 20 years. Just two decades ago, like other typical Hindu majority villages, Khalsi was full of Tulsi, joba, sheuli and coconut, banana, mango, wood apple and other fruit trees essential for worshipping the Hindu gods and goddesses.

But now concentration of salt has become so high in the land that only saline tolerant plants can survive it.

“We had 45 coconut trees. But those started dying slowly since saline water entered the village. Now we have some other fruit trees with no produce,” said housewife Mira Ray.

During the 80s when shrimp farming was becoming popular, influential people forced small farmers to lease out their land for the venture. A number of the farmers started shrimp farming at will, but many others were forced into the business flooding their cropland with saline water.

Initially, shrimp farming yielded a good profit. But soon it became a losing concern due to virus infection and the farmers realised that producing crops was a better option.

“I remember just immediate before first shrimp farming we got 1,000 mounds of rice from 60 bighas of land. Now our land has increased to 94 bighas and produce comes down to only 100 mounds,” said Dr Achintya Bhowmik, principal of a local graduation college.

Krishna Pada Mandal echoed the same. He cultivated rice in 10 bighas and harvested only 11 mounds rice whereas a farmer from saline-free land got over 100 mounds from the same quantity of land.

Now villagers want to get rid of saline water and saline water-based shrimp farming like those of Bazua who have successfully rid their cropland of saline water and are making huge money cultivating rice, watermelon and pumpkin.

But influential shrimp farmers want to continue the business anyhow. The villagers allege an influential businessman from Dhaka is producing shrimp taking lease of their land at Tk 1,000 yearly for per bigha.

The villagers say the businessman cultivates shrimp on only 40 acres of land through irrigating saline water from the Kazibachha river. But about 700 acres of land around is getting increased amount of salinity.

The villagers say local civil and police administration is working for the influential shrimp cultivators, who are also leaders of major political parties. These leaders are filing cases against marginal farmers and police are taking bribe from them, they claim.

A farmer who is protesting against the salinity aggression said if someone wants to cultivate rice in an acre of land, they have to spend Tk 21,000 for power-tiller, Tk 2,400 for seeds, Tk 3,000 for labours and Tk 1,000 for irrigation. 

In the end, they will possibly get around 45 mounds of rice from single-crop land which is worth no less than Tk 40,000 at current market price. And in this area farmers can grow three crops annually. 

But now farmers who have one acre of land are hardly getting only Tk 5,000-6,000 a year.

SUCCESS OF BAZUA VILLAGE 
Locals of Bazua union, just three kilometres down from Khalsi have successfully got rid of saline water and are cultivating crops there. Vegetation pattern is different there as geowa and other saline water varieties are hardly visible. 

The farmers in Bazua said they get around Tk 75,000 by selling watermelons in one acre of land in addition to Tk 25,000 from over 30 mounds of rice.

Parimal Mandal from Bazua said they are doing fine cultivating sweet water varieties. 

Gouranga Prasad Roy, convener of salt-water prevention committee in Bazua, said the small and landless farmers protested against the shrimp farming.

“Commoners and landless people don’t want shrimp farming as it only makes the rich people richer. But by cultivating watermelon and rice the marginal farmers are making some money themselves.”