shiree@work

Thursday, January 26, 2012

Bangladesh’s southern coastal belt is a beautiful and surreal place; trees on either side of the road and beyond them, a completely flat and waterlogged landscape. I had the privilege of traveling to Khulna to see the projects run by some NGOs. The trip left a bittersweet aftertaste. The entire coastal zone is prone to daunting natural disasters; violent storms, cyclones and tidal surges. It is a particularly vulnerable area and the extreme poor beneficiaries there are constantly battling with nature to survive. It is a difficult battle to endure when you have little to begin with.

The first thing I noticed about the beneficiaries, at least the ones we had the pleasure to meet, was that they are very clever at diversifying their livelihoods. Once they received the primary support, they used their profits to start up something else. For example, Milon Pal received Tk.8,000 to start up his clay pot business; he bought the right clay and the utensils needed and was linked up with a good buyer. With the profits from his business, he bought a sewing machine and his wife now sews and sells blankets. Milon has managed to install a sanitary latrine, employ two other people and is now building a brick house on his land.

We also met Naher Begum who received land support; she planted rice and sold it. She then started a business weaving nets, bought hens and ducks whose eggs she consumes or sells, and her days are going well now. She had been destitute and helpless when her husband had left her, but now she is independent and headstrong, sending her daughters to school, determined to secure a good life for all of them.

It was heartening to see that with a little assistance, they were determined and savvy enough to lift themselves out of poverty. It was also interesting to see the reaction of others in the community about the support given to the extreme poor. No one is particularly rich in the area, but they are surprisingly sympathetic to the situation of extreme poverty and understand that the households were especially vulnerable and needed the livelihood support because they were really suffering for food, or their primary income earner became disabled, etc, etc, etc.

But the picture was not so rosy for everyone. To meet the beneficiaries, we went to an area that looked in shambles; broken mud houses and bits of wood everywhere. Around August, sudden flooding surprised an area that usually isn’t hit so badly. Their mud houses were not resilient to flooding, and much of their livelihoodtheir cows, goats, vegetable gardens, fishing pondswas destroyed. For three months afterwards they struggled to survive, living in horrendous conditions with no sanitation, little clean water, under the open sky, dodging poisonous snakes. (Three women from the community had died of snake bites.)

“Words can’t explain the devastation,” said one of the inhabitants of the area. “I would lie awake at night with my arms around my goat so that it wouldn’t drown or run away,” said Zohora, another flood victim who depended on her goat for money. They had to live like animals. It’s hard to imagine how one can go through that for one day, let alone three whole months. The beneficiaries in the area were doing really well with the support given to them, they were on track to graduation as planned … till the floods hit. Though they did receive some training on what to do before and after a disaster, they have been deposited back to their situation of extreme poverty.

As always, reactionary measures were taken to provide relief to the victims. When the floods hit, two NGOs helped households safeguard some of their moveable assets to high land or other protected premises. They installed communal hand tube wells and makeshift latrines and distributed polythene sheets and food packages. Valiant and sincere efforts, but obviously not enough as the inhabitants in the areas were suddenly standing amidst ruins that once used to be their homes, unsure about how to move on.

This brings to the forefront a topic that is much talked about at the moment; precautionary measures and disaster management for climate change. How do we ensure that people living in environmentally vulnerable areas won’t be sent back to the Stone Age every time a disaster hits? There is a lot of talk, but little action and we’re ignoring the urgency of situation. We need to come up with a solid plan to equip people who live in potentially dangerous areas, to make their homes durable or secure capacious places to house them during the floods. Higher level efforts to fix embankments and rehabilitate coastal folks are needed.

Bangladesh will be one of the worst effected countries due to climate change. The fact that areas that were normally safe but were badly ravaged this year is an indication of what is to come.

A World Bank study on the impact of the rising water level states that a 100 cm rise in sea level within the next 100 years will inundate 15% to 17% of the country’s land area, displacing around 20 million peoplemaking them climate change refugees. We’re bursting at the seams as it is; we already don’t have enough land to accommodate our large population. Losing even more land, and so much of it, we won’t be able to accommodate such a large number of uprooted people. The coastal areas have already been facing problems of rising salinity, which is likely to increase due to climate change and the rise in sea level. The floodwaters bring about disease and hunger.

Environmentalists have been screeching the same warnings for the past few years; we are in serious trouble. But it looks like we can’t hear them over the noise of the traffic; because we’re still polluting our rivers, grabbing land and initiating deals that will have adverse effects on our environment. We have a history of acting only when something bad happens. Do we really want to wait for half our country to drown before we decide to take action?

We might not be able to prevent the oncoming of the storms but we can reduce the level of damage they cause by building the capacity of the inhabitants to face the difficult times with the appropriate knowledge rather than being completely devastated by them. There could be better warning mechanisms, cyclone shelters, and initiatives to increase coastal forestation to reduce damage. There are a lot of possibilities, a lot of ideas, a lot of talk, now we just need to take action.

The writer works at shiree. E-mail: shaveena@shiree.org

Source: www.thedailystar.net