[prakruti] Fw: The first refugees of global warming

[Guest guest]

At 09:14 AM 5/4/07, you wrote:

 

>http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0705010817may02,1,7033000.st\

ory?ctrack=1 & cset=true<http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-070501\

0817may02,1,7033000.story?ctrack=1 & cset=true>

>The first refugees of global warming

>Bangladesh watches in horror as much of the nation gives way to sea

>

>By Laurie Goering

>Tribune foreign correspondent

>Published May 2, 2007

>

>ANTARPARA, Bangladesh -- Muhammad Ali, a wiry 65-year-old, has never driven

>a car, run an air conditioner or done much of anything that produces

>greenhouse gases. But on a warming planet, he is on the verge of becoming a

>climate refugee.

>

>In the past 10 years the farmer has had to tear down and move his

>tin-and-bamboo house five times to escape the encroaching waters of the huge

>Jamuna River, swollen by severe monsoons that scientists believe are caused

>by global warming and greater glacier melt in the Himalayas.

>

>Photo gallery

>

><http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-070502erosion-photogalle

>ry,1,7239287.photogallery?coll=chi-newsnationworld-hed>

>Global warming;

>Bangladesh<http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-070502erosion-

>photogallery,1,7239287.photogallery?coll=chi-newsnationworld-hed & ?track=sto-

>relcon> (Tribune photo by Abir Abdullah)

>

>Graphic

>

><http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-bangldsh070502-gfx,1,715

>2860.graphic?coll=chi-newsnationworld-hed>

>Global warming effects in

>Bangladesh<http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-bangldsh070502

>-gfx,1,7152860.graphic?coll=chi-newsnationworld-hed & ?track=sto-relcon>

>May 2, 2007

>Now the last of his land is gone, and Ali squats on a precarious piece of

>government-owned riverbank -- the only ground available -- knowing the river

>probably will take that as well once the monsoons start this month.

>

> " Where we are standing, in five days it will be gone, " he predicts. " Our

>future thinking is that if this problem is not taken care of, we will be

>swept away. "

>

>Bangladesh, which has 140 million people packed into an area a little

>smaller than Illinois, is one of the most vulnerable places to climate

>change. As the sea level slowly rises, this nation that is little more than

>a series of low-lying delta islands amid some of Asia's mightiest rivers --

>the Ganges, Jamuna-Brahmaputra and Meghna -- is seeing saltwater creep into

>its coastal soils and drinking water. Farmers near the Bay of Bengal who

>once grew rice now are raising shrimp.

>

>Notorious for its deadly cyclones, Bangladesh is likely to face increasingly

>violent storms as the weather warms and see surging seas carry saltwater

>farther and farther up the country's rivers, ruining soils, according to

>scientists.

>

>On Bangladesh's southern coast, erosion driven in part by accelerating

>glacier melt and unusually intense rains already has scoured away half of

>Bhola Island, which once covered an area nearly 20 times the size of

>Chicago. Land disputes, many driven by erosion, now account for 77 percent

>of Bangladesh's legal suits. In the dry northwest of the country, droughts

>are getting more severe. And if sea level rises by 3 feet by the turn of the

>century, as some scientists predict, a fifth of the country will disappear.

>

> " Bangladesh is nature's laboratory on disaster management, " said Ainun

>Nishat, Bangladesh representative of the World Conservation Union and a

>government adviser on climate change. As temperatures rise and more severe

>weather takes hold worldwide, " this is one of the countries that is going to

>face the music most, " he said.

>

>Bangladesh is hardly the only low-lying nation facing tough times as the

>world warms. But scientists say it in many ways represents climate change's

> " perfect storm " of challenges because it is extremely poor, extremely

>populated and extremely susceptible.

>

> " One island here has more people than all of the small island states put

>together, " said Atiq Rahman, executive director of the Bangladesh Center for

>Advanced Studies and a top national climate change expert.

>

>With so many huge rivers discharging into the ocean, the country couldn't

>build dikes to hold back the sea even if it had the money, Rahman said. And

>though it has created virtually none of the pollution driving global

>warming, it is unlikely to receive the international assistance it needs to

>adapt to conditions created by others.

>

>What that might mean for big polluting nations such as the United States,

>China and India is that " for every hundred thousand tons of carbon you emit,

>you have to take a Bangladeshi family, " Rahman said, only half joking. India

>already is building a fence along its border with Bangladesh.

>

>The extent of Bangladesh's coming problem is evident in Antarpara, a village

>stuck between the Jamuna and Bangali rivers five hours northwest of Dhaka,

>the capital. In it and other low-lying villages nearby, more than half of

>the 3,300 families have lost their land to worsening river erosion. Some

>have moved their homes a dozen times and are running out of places to flee.

>

>Antarpara's village head, who once owned 700 acres, is now penniless. The

>village's school has had to close for two to three months each time the

>community flees the intruding Jamuna. In the past year, the river has

>marched 300 feet toward the village's latest temporary homes on government

>land, and now the closest shack is just 30 feet from the roiling waters.

>Visitors are warned not to venture near the edge.

>

> " Please protect this land, so we can stay here, " begs Monwara Begum, 35, a

>mother of three. " We are wondering how we will live, how we will manage this

>river. "

>

> " Slowly, it has destroyed village after village, " said Ali, the farmer,

>whose son operates a bicycle rickshaw in Dhaka.

>

>Bangladesh's capital today is home to a growing sea of landless rural

>migrants like Jaha Nura Begum, 35, who lives in a rickety bamboo hut perched

>on stilts over a fetid backwater of the Turag River. Her family and 20

>others fled Bhola Island three years ago when " the river took all our land,

>and there was nothing, " she said. Now her husband breaks bricks as a day

>laborer at a nearby kiln and " we only eat if we can find work. "

>

>With climate migrants accounting for at least a third and perhaps as many as

>two-thirds of rural dwellers flooding to Dhaka, even that work is hard to

>get. " As more and more come, it is more chaotic here, " Begum said.

>

>Bangladesh's government is doing what it can to prepare for coming hard

>times. With the help of non-profit organizations, it is testing new

>salt-resistant crops, building thousands of raised shelters to protect those

>in the path of cyclones and trying to elevate roads and bridges above rising

>rivers. Leaders who once insisted that the West created the problem and

>should clean it up " now accept we should prepare, " Nishat said.

>

>The alternative could be ugly: insufficient food, a destabilized government,

>internal strife that could spread past the country's borders, a massive

>exodus of climate refugees and more extremism, Rahman said.

>

> " A person victimized and displaced will not sit idle, " he predicted. " There

>will be organized climate-displaced groups saying, 'Why should you hang onto

>your place when I've lost mine and you're the one who did this?'

>

> " That, " he said, " is not a pleasant scenario. "

 

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