Water crisis in Bangladesh

from the Guardian

The Guardian is running an International Development Journalism competition. This is an excerpt from one of the semifinalists. - Kale

by Luke Tredget

On an expanse of muddy beach in the Chittagong region of Bangladesh, a twisted mess of metal and concrete stands alone and adrift from any human development, as if a relic from a lost civilization. This is the brutalised remains of what only 10 years ago was a bold symbol of humanitarian development in the area.

One of dozens of Red Cross anti-cyclone shelters built throughout the acutely vulnerable coastal regions, the stilted concrete structure towered proudly over a village and offered potential shelter to 1,000 people. Before it was built people had to battle tropical storms by clinging to trees while the scattered remains of corrugated iron shacks blew around their heads whilst their livestock drowned below. Now the shelter lies ruined, and the village it served has disappeared completely, its inhabitants forced to join the growing number of "climate refugees" that have helped make Dhaka the second fastest-growing city in the world. The beached shelter, once a symbol of progress, exists now only as a stark reminder that the best efforts of aid agencies and the international community to alleviate poverty in Bangladesh could well be completely overshadowed by the effects of climate change.

Eight years on from the declaration of the Millennium Development Goals, Bangladesh may well have stood as an example of the ability for preventative action to seriously blunt the severity of mass human suffering. Nowhere in the world are large-scale disasters more frequent, varied and devastating. Since independence in 1971, the country has endured almost 200 disaster events that have caused more than 500,000 deaths and adversely affected approximately 500 million people - so many of its 140 million population will have experienced multiple disasters. Bangladesh suffers cyclones, storm surges, droughts, tornadoes, earthquakes, epidemics, famines and floods. Unsurprisingly, exposure to these multitudinous risks are not distributed evenly but are heaped on the 60 million Bangladeshis that live in extreme poverty, and in particular the women, children and elderly.

As well as problems, Bangladesh does not lack the presence of organisations intent on providing solutions. Although a burgeoning export industry has allowed the country to shrug off its aid-dependant label, it remains something of a hearth for the agents of international development. Of the 13 UK-based charities that make up the Disasters and Emergency Committee, 12 have major projects in the country, and these are joined by dozens of other bodies from across the world that are committed to tackling the constant threats that hang over the Bangladeshi people.

Given the abundance of problems and committed agencies it seems reasonable to imagine that serious inroads would have been made into the levels of poverty and acute suffering, but the opposite is the case. Any analysis of the complex interchange between aid, development and poverty alleviation in Bangladesh points to the same worrying conclusion; that the progress made on several fronts stands to be completely overshadowed by successive problems that have their origin not in the vicissitudes of politics but in the insurmountable power of nature.

Although estimates differ, there is a degree of scientific consensus that Bangladesh is rapidly disappearing into the sea. Increasing world temperatures are causing sea levels to rise and eat away at the southern mouth of the Ganges delta at a rate that will inevitably lead to the displacement of millions of people. A single degree celsius increase in world temperatures - which many predict over the next 50 years - would distort the shape of Bangladesh beyond recognition, but already the effects of rising sea levels are rendering coastal regions inhospitable. The salinisation of farmland caused by tidal surges have made the growth of rice - the traditional staple both in trade and sustenance - impossible. Salt is also seeping relentlessly into fresh water supplies, intensifying scarcity problems in a country where nearly a quarter of deaths are attributed to water-borne diseases. These issues are compounding the problems faced by people who are already exposed to frequent and large-scale natural disasters, and as such the massive movement of people from the coastal regions to the cities seems set to increase.

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