Bangladesh, Global Warming and Islamic Extremism

[Flintlock]

Bangladesh, Global Warming and Islamic Extremism
Why Cyclone Sidr Should Matter to the U.S. Media





Bangladesh could be ground zero for the geo-strategic fallout from global warming, if some of the nation's best national security minds have it right. And that makes Cyclone Sidr a big glaring warning signal. Shockingly, it's a warning signal that the major U.S. media is ignoring.

Cyclone Sidr is, as I write, churning with Category 4 strength toward Bangladesh in the Bay of Bengal, where nine of the world's 13 deadliest hurricanes have struck. The official forecast, which has proven unreliable so far for this storm, predicts a decrease in strength to Category 1 storm before landfall -- still a formidable force.

The critical issues that will determine the destruction and death visited on Bangladesh and/or northeastern India, as our Storm Pundit points out, is the strength of the storm at landfall and the size of the storm surge. (Other than The Daily Green, the only big names in U.S. media to report on the cyclone are Bloomberg and Reuters, according to a Google News search.)


The frequency and intensity of hurricanes has not been definitively linked to global warming; there's robust scientific debate on that point. The certainty of sea level rise, however, is undisputed; it's just the degree to which, and speed with which, the waters will rise that is debated.

Even if storms don't get stronger, the storms that do hit Bangladesh -- and any other coastal areas -- will cause greater destruction. Simply, there will be more water, closer to people -- and any storm surge rearing up will go higher and farther, and do more damage.

When it comes to global warming impacts, Bangladesh is often a focal point because it is a nation of 142 million people living in low-lying, flood-prone river deltas -- and because it's a predominantly Muslim nation in a volatile, fast-growing neighborhood. Bangladesh is expected to grow in population by a staggering 100 million people in the coming decades -- the same time frame during which those storms that make landfall will be more destructive.

Two think tanks, the Center for Strategic and International Studies and the Center for a New American Security, spent a year producing "The Age of Consequences: The Foreign Policy and National Security Implications of Global Climate Change," which was released just days ago. The title speaks for itself, and Bangladesh figures prominently.

Notably, the report deals with a very immediate time frame: 30 years. In other words, this generation. The overriding point: A child born today will, at age 30, be staring at a very different, and much more dangerous world, thanks to global warming. Further, it considered three scenarios: one that is a near certainty, one likely and one possible. I will only be referencing the scenario considered to be a near certainty, based on the accumulated greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

"It is a scenario in which people and nations are threatened by massive food and water shortages, devastating natural disasters, and deadly disease outbreaks," the relevant chapter reads. "It is also inevitable."

Importantly, the report makes clear that security risks will arise "as much (due to) local political, social, and economic factors as by the magnitude of the climate shift itself."

Back to Bangladesh, which according to the report, "will be threatened by devastating floods and other damage from monsoons, melting glaciers, and tropical cyclones that originate in the Bay of Bengal, as well as water contamination and ecosystem destruction caused by rising sea levels."

Doesn’t sound like a place I'd want to live. And the authors assume many Bangladeshis will come to the same conclusion. In short: Refugee crisis.

That explosive population will look for new homes -- "which will foment instability as the resettled population competes for already scarce resources … Others will seek to migrate abroad, creating heightened political tension not only in South Asia, but in Europe and Southeast Asia as well."

India is already building a 2,100-mile, 10-foot tall fence on its border with Bangladesh. The nation was only born 36 years ago, in a violent schism with Pakistan. Since then 14 governments have come to power and lost it, four of them via military coup. (Read: "local political, social and economic factors.")

That instability is a factor in "rising Islamic extremism," according to the report. And global warming, the report concludes, will help stoke that latent extremism and propel it into new territory.

In other words, Cyclone Sidr matters -- not only to the 142 million in its path. Not only to everyone with a conscience and a concern for human life in an unfamiliar part of the world. It should matter to every American, since by now it's abundantly clear that our fortunes have become tied to the fates of nations around the world with extreme Islamic elements.

Global warming could help make Bangladesh into a new ground zero for extremism, and Americans haven't even seen the warning sign flashing. It says Cyclone Sidr

Print Bangladesh, Global Warming and Islamic Extremism

A few figures:

Bangladesh population: 150 million
Land area: 144,000 sq km
Density of population: 1090/sq km (7th highest in the world)
Rate of growth : 3.1% pa (!!)

 

[Flintlock]

I must say that Bangladesh is one unlucky piece of land. Its got 150 million people on a tiny area which is prone to both yearly flooding and frequent destructive cyclones, and a massive population growth rate.

 

[Flintlock]

In Flood-Prone Bangladesh, a Future That Floats
By Emily Wax
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, September 27, 2007; A01



SINGRA, Bangladesh -- With most of his school under floodwaters, 6-year-old Mohamed Achan pulled his oversize tomato-red shorts up around his tiny waist, placed a tarp over his head to guard against the rain, and sprinted barefoot to the edge of his muddy village. There, he waited for his classroom to arrive -- in a boat.

The boats plying the rivers and canals here in northeastern Bangladesh are school bus and schoolhouse in one, part of a 45-vessel fleet that includes library boats. There are plans for floating villages, floating gardens and floating hospitals as well, in case more of this region finds itself under water.

Like a scene out of the 1995 post-apocalyptic movie "Waterworld," in which the continents are submerged after the polar ice caps melt and the survivors live out at sea, the boat schools and libraries are a creative response to flooding that scientists largely agree has been worsened by global warming.

Melting glaciers in the Himalayas are already causing sea levels to rise here, and scientists say Bangladesh may lose up to 20 percent of its land by 2030 as a result of flooding. That Bangladesh is among the most vulnerable countries on the planet to climate change is a tragedy for its 150 million people, most of whom are destitute.

The need for a Bangladeshi Waterworld, experts say, has never been more urgent.

"For Bangladesh, boats are the future," said Abul Hasanat Mohammed Rezwan, an architect who started the boats project here and who now oversees it as executive director of the nonprofit Shidhulai Swanirvar Sangstha, a name that means self-reliance. "As Bangladeshi citizens, it's our responsibility to find solutions because the potential for human disaster is so huge. We have to be bold. Everyone loves land. But the question is: Will there be enough? Millions of people will have nowhere to go."

Climate change is the latest cause celebre in the West, the focus of Live Earth rock concerts and celebrity-endorsed campaigns to reduce the greenhouse gases that have caused temperatures to rise worldwide.

Fighting global warming in the United States means cutting down on air-conditioning usage or relying more on mass transit. But in Bangladesh, global warming means that children like Mohamed Achan are going to school on modern-day versions of Noah's ark. And, as their villages erode and become smaller and smaller islands, the children and their families may eventually live on a boat.

While Mohammed and his parents have contributed little to climate change -- they have neither a car nor electricity -- it is families like theirs that suffer the consequences of the increasingly violent storms and deadly cyclones that scientists have attributed to global warming.

Bangladesh has always been a world capital for natural disasters. The flat country is barely above sea level and sits atop a low-lying river delta, the world's largest. It's also nestled amid some of Asia's largest rivers, including the Ganges and the Jamuna-Brahmaputra.

While melting glaciers have led to rising sea levels, so too have unusually heavy rains in recent years. Floods are damaging Bangladesh's breadbasket regions in what may be the worst threat of all to a population that depends on small-scale farming for food, experts say.

Scientists in Dhaka, the capital, predict that as many as 20 million people in Bangladesh will become "climate refugees" by 2030, unable to farm or survive on their flooded land. The migration has already started. In 1995, half of Bhola Island, Bangladesh's biggest island, was swallowed by rising sea levels, leaving 500,000 people homeless.

"The economic loss for farmers will just be devastating," said MD Shamsuddoha, a scientist in Dhaka who has studied flooding issues in coastal areas. "We're already seeing hundreds of thousands of climate refugees moving into slums in Dhaka. What will happen when things really get bad?"

The crisis is made worse by Bangladesh's poverty and long history of weak and corrupt governments. Farmers who lose land in flooding often fight with neighbors over what is left and who owns what after the floodwaters recede. As a result, land disputes have backed up the courts in recent years, accounting for 80 percent of Bangladesh's legal suits, said Atiq Rahman, executive director of the Bangladesh Center for Advanced Studies and one of the country's top climate change experts.

"If you're a poor farmer and your village floods, you just can't slap down a credit card and move to Washington. My challenge to the big polluting nations like the U.S., China and India is that for every hundred thousand tons of carbon you emit, you have to take in a Bangladeshi family," Rahman said, only half-kidding as he stood before a map in his office, pointing to land that would be submerged in coming decades. "We have so many things to consider, including learning to live on boats. It will be a huge cultural headache. It won't work for everyone and in some ways is a band-aid to the larger problem. But every last drop and every creative idea will help."

Rezwan, a bookish and energetic man who wears sturdy work boots, has already been recognized for the creativity of his school boats. Former U.S. vice president Al Gore recently presented him with an international environmental award for his use of solar power on the boats.

As a child, Rezwan said, he was always frustrated when school was canceled during monsoon flooding.

"Later in life, as an architect I was asked to design for the rich," he said as he climbed aboard one of his boat schools on a recent rainy Saturday. "But I thought, why can't an architect design exciting things to help the poor in their own communities? I can't tell you how happy I was the day the first boat school took the waters. It was really my dream."

Rezwan started his nonprofit group in 1998 with just one flat-bottomed boat built from local materials and stretching about 30 feet long and 15 feet wide. Today, his boats fit about 60 young people -- 40 on the deck and about 20 on wooden benches set up on the bow.

"At first, I wasn't sure -- go study on a boat?" said Nasrin Sultana, 18, a college student whose classes on dry land have been canceled because of constant flooding this year. "But now I am addicted to the boat library. They have computers, academic books and great novels. People love coming. It's become a community center that people look forward to."

The boat schools are made possible partly by an award of $1 million in 2005 from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, along with funds from the Washington-based Global Fund for Children.

That money helped Rezwan set up hugely popular Internet services -- including live chats with scientists -- and design a solar-powered lamp that he gives out to families so their children can study at night. Without the lamps, parents would have to burn polluting and expensive kerosene.

Along the winding river canals that flow around the mud-hut villages, mosques and rice fields here, 230 miles northeast of the capital, the boat schools are so loved that crowds of children cheer upon seeing them dock.

The boats operate year-round and offer a full primary school education with the same syllabus as classrooms on dry land. They avoid dangerous weather patterns by sticking close to mapped-out routes, typically along more shallow waters near the communities they serve.

The schools serve about 90,000 families in an area covering more than 300 miles, and make three- to four-hour stops six days a week.

"I love the boat so much more than regular school," Mohamed said, swinging his thin legs as he sat on a bench reading a stack of stories. "It's so fun when it comes to your doorstep."

The school boats have also made it easier for girls to attend classes. Before, their parents were reluctant to let them walk long distances to school; now the schools come to them.

Rezwan said he hopes his floating village idea will catch on. He is working on sanitation issues and already trying to develop floating gardens, similar to those in Kashmir. Farmers there found they could build an earth bed of roots and dirt in a lake -- thus enjoying constant irrigation -- and produce huge harvests of vegetables.

Already, villagers say they know their way of life will have to change.

"I'll be ready if this housing project on water works," said Samsun Nahar, 30, a mother with a baby on her hip who came to a boat recently to recharge her solar lamp. "We're so worried about the floods spoiling our crops that we are ready to do anything. Even live on water."
In Flood-Prone Bangladesh, a Future That Floats - washingtonpost.com

 

[Flintlock]

Shafiq Alam, Agence France-Presse
Barguna, Bangladesh, November 18, 2007
First Published: 13:00 IST(18/11/2007)
Last Updated: 20:33 IST(18/11/2007)
Bangladesh cyclone death toll hits 3,000, millions destitute The death toll from a massive cyclone that smashed through impoverished Bangladesh was 3,000 and continuing to rise Sunday with millions left homeless, hungry and without medical help.

Three days after the disaster, rescue workers were still fighting their way to remote areas where entire villages on the coast of the Bay of Bengal were flattened by the fury of Cyclone Sidr.

Traumatised survivors said they too would soon die unless help arrived. "I lost six of my family members in the cyclone. I am afraid that the rest three of us will die of hunger. We are without food and water for the last few days," said a 55-year-old farmer, Sattar Gazi.

"For the corpses, we don't even have clothes to wrap them in for burial... we are wrapping the bodies in leaves," he told AFP in a village situated on the Bay of Bengal coast and smashed by a six-metre (20 foot) high tidal wave.

Abdul Zabbar, a 50-year-old teacher, said the situation in the area -- already one of the poorest places on earth -- was unbearable.

"There is no food and drinking water. The whole village is unlivable. Bodies are still floating in the rivers and paddy fields," he said, adding the rice harvest -- or four months of food -- had also been washed away.

Victims told an AFP correspondent who managed to reach this coastal area that they had not seen any aid workers -- let alone even seen or heard a plane or helicopter.

Officials said the humanitarian situation in coastal districts like Barguna, 200 kilometres (130 miles) south of the capital Dhaka, is the worst in decades.

"I have never seen such a catastrophe in my 20 years as a government administrator," said district official Harisprasad Pal, adding that millions were living in the open and aid was reaching only a tiny number of people.

The private ATN Bangla television network put the toll at 3,000 confirmed dead. The relief and disaster management ministry put the figure 2,217 and rising.

There has also been no word from a string of islands off the coast, which would have suffered the full wrath of Thursday night's storm.

Aid efforts were being hampered by roads blocked by fallen trees and the sheer scale of the devastation. "In the remote areas it is slow-going, they are almost chopping trees as they go along," said Douglas Casson Coutts of the World Food Programme, adding that officials were working with the military to organise air drops to the most inaccessible districts. Red Cross and Red Crescent workers said they were using their network of volunteers to distribute dried food and plastic sheeting for temporary shelters, but that many helpers were themselves victims.

Assessment teams were also yet to piece together a wider picture of the devastation that is needed to coordinate a major relief effort.

Army helicopters were also dropping supplies from the air while five navy ships were distributing food, medicine and relief materials, the government said.

"Our estimate is that 900,000 families are affected," said Red Cross official Shafiquzzaman Rabbani. That figure amounts to roughly seven million people in a country where families tend to be large.

In many places, villagers said, the dead were quickly being buried in mass graves. Most of the deaths were caused by the tidal wave which engulfed coastal villages, as well as flying debris and falling trees that crushed flimsy bamboo and tin homes -- all that most people in Bangladesh can afford.

A stunned 25-year-old woman, Jahanara, recounted to AFP how she managed to cling to a tree as the storm ripped away everything around her, including her husband, two sons and mother, and even the clothes on her back.

Experts, meanwhile, said they feared for the wildlife and ecology of the world's biggest mangrove forest, home to the endangered Royal Bengal tiger.

"The cyclone has inflicted an ecological disaster," said Shanti Ranjan Das of the government's livestock department.
The vast mangrove forest, listed as a World Heritage Site by the UN cultural organisation UNESCO, is a natural barrier that stands between much of southern Bangladesh and the Bay of Bengal and offers some protection for the low-lying country from the bay's many less-serious tidal waves and cyclones.

HindustanTimes-Print
© Copyright 2007 Hindustan Times

 

[Always Neutral]

Bangladesh has to develop better relations with India since its land locked by India. It can allow central india to get better access to North East India and charge for that access.

 

[Flintlock]

Bangladesh has to develop better relations with India since its land locked by India. It can allow central india to get better access to North East India and charge for that access.

The ground realities are pretty much opposite...India is building a wall along the borders to prevent the lakhs of bangladeshis from crossing over.
Already, the demographics of some states like Mizoram and Tripura are changing, and the indigenous tribes are becoming minorities in their own lands

 

[HK-47]

maybe we should go for dredging.or immigrate to India or Canada haha.heck some of lands are drifting towards the Indian side through river erosion and I think the reverse is also true.more than a 1000 sq km of land has been lost already.
40 to 50 percent of our land is expected to go under water within the next decade.
BTW,BD is not really that small.It simply has a huge population and population density.
I mean ROK is smaller than BD.

 

[Flintlock]

maybe we should go for dredging.or immigrate to India or Canada haha.heck some of lands are drifting towards the Indian side through river erosion and I think the reverse is also true.more than a 1000 sq km of land has been lost already.
40 to 50 percent of our land is expected to go under water within the next decade.
BTW,BD is not really that small.It simply has a huge population and population density.
I mean ROK is smaller than BD.

Dude the Japanese can help. They are experts at managing huge populations on small pieces of land.
Bangladesh, in effect, will have to create huge megapolises to house its people. There really isn't any other alternative...people can't live on water....and land can't be reclaimed.

Also, perhaps a one-child policy like China will help. (though I am pretty much sure that this won't work in a muslim country...)

 

[Spring Onion]

Also, perhaps a one-child policy like China will help. (though I am pretty much sure that this won't work in a muslim country...)

On lighter note it did not even worke in Not a Muslim country like India where poverty rein

To HK we are grieved at loss of life in Bangladesh and all the Pakistanis equally share the pain and we are with out Bangladeshi brothers and sisters.

May Allah be with us all.
You will overcome it Inshallah

 

[Flintlock]

On lighter note it did not even worke in Not a Muslim country like India where poverty rein

Oh yeah...and I forgot that there's no way to make it work in a democracy....so either way B'desh is gonna grow at 3 percent...not good.

 

[Spring Onion]

Oh yeah...and I forgot that there's no way to make it work in a democracy....so either way B'desh is gonna grow at 3 percent...not good.

Would it not be better if Indian also think over and suggets over their own problems too.

 

[HK-47]

and land can't be reclaimed.

the river beds?the rivers are widening and also the beds are rising.
and we got only 133,000 sq km of land and probably now down to 130,000 sq km .
there is also ideas of floating cities;yup only ideas,will be needing some WB help to implement them.Japanese are nice to us and they got the brains too.

education is the only way to reduce population growth.All these "God gives and God takes care of them" notions drove the population growth during the 70s, 80s and 90s.

Would it not be better if Indian also think over and suggets over their own problems too.

Indians are lucky they got lots of land which are not prone to disasters as ours are.

 

[Flintlock]

Would it not be better if Indian also think over and suggets over their own problems too.

Sure...but not on this thread.

 

[Sam Dhanraj]

Perhaps none have taken Maldives case seriously too when it comes to Global Warming.

Come to think of it, With a maximum elevation of only 8 feet (2.4 meters), any rise in sea level is likely to engulf currently inhabited ground.

80% of this country's 1,200 islands had experienced tidal surges earlier this year, most of which are no more than one metre above sea level.

The U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change estimates sea levels to rise between 18-59 centimetres by 2100. Since 80 percent of the Maldives' 1,200 islands are about 1 metre above sea level they could be partly submerged by the end of the century.

I read in National Geographic that In response to this impending threat, the city has built a seawall around the capital with Japan's help and partial funding.

But as Analysts say this could be the first nation to disappear because of global warming.

the major polluters (Be it Western Countries, India or China) have a moral responsibility to take them in or/and do something about it before it disappears. This is a paradise faced with extinction.