Published 20 May 2020, Revised 28 January 2022
I am using Bangladesh as the ”canary” to show the impact changing climate and global warming is having on food in poorer countries. This particular country is one of the places highly impacted by changing weather patterns, its natural geography, global warming, the ongoing pandemic, and political concerns. But the point to make is that what this country and its people are now experiencing, could be any of us. We should be learning from what they are doing, for many countries may find this is our future too.
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Recent Environmental Catastrophe
On 20 May 2020, just days ago, Bangladesh and India experienced one of the strongest cyclones in 20 years, named Cyclone Amphan. This particular catastrophe was on top of the pandemic we are all dealing with, and the ongoing effects of climate change.
AlJazeera and CNN report the country has had horrible crop field flooding of up to 15km inland, that resulted in destroyed homes, towns, and villages; and destroyed transportation and communications capabilities. Over 500k people were evacuated, which when added to refugees already in the country, they now have millions of homeless people.
As a result, this post I drafted earlier this year, but did not publish, is now of importance. My intent was originally to explore how changes in food production policies can help nations, but now it is even more important for it also reinforces the picture I painted about this country as a “canary in the coal mine” for the world, in terms of climate change.
The Start Was a Story
Bangladesh the Country
Why Bangladesh: Environment
Because, from my viewpoint, Bangladesh has the perfect collection of climate-change affected conditions; in their country, we can foresee all of our children’s future. So, using NCDO as a source, I wanted to give you a sense of the country.
- Nearly 80% of Bangladesh is in a floodplain, it is one of the largest deltas in the world.
- The north-western part of the country is higher ground, but subject to other issues caused by runoff from the massive Himalayan mountains.
- NCDO also writes that Bangladesh has a wide diversity of ecosystems including Sundarbans Mangrove forests (a World Heritage site) at the extreme south of the country.
The Politics + People
There has been a dramatic influx of refugees from Myanmar, which means that people have no choice but to live in dangerous and over-crowded situations during a pandemic. Although there is access to drinking water in general, half of it fails to meet safety standards. Transportation is really congested and failing in many part of the country effecting all aspects of society.
At the same time, believe it or not, things have improved from where they once were. One of the major issues that shows minimal improvement, as far as I was able to tell, is governmental corruptions, which means little of the financial efforts actually reach the people to need them.
More than 41M people live below the poverty line and over half of the population is working in the Agricultural field. Estimates are that 40% of the population are underemployed (1).
Food
The cuisine of the area is made up of a diverse range of spices, herbs, generally white rice, fish, meats, flatbreads, lentils and chutneys. Similar to Indian food, they have curries and daal, and by reports eat more meat than some neighbors in nearby India. Being predominantly Muslim, their diet is halal (1).
Climate Change Impacts
Savage writes: As a delta country, full of rivers and surrounded by the sea, Bangladesh is one of the places most affected by climate change, and the eighth most prone to natural disasters, according to the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies. Climate change results in rising sea levels, coastal flooding, groundwater salinity, more and stronger storms, changes in temperatures and changing rain patterns, etc. While the USA and, to some extent, all countries are experiencing aspects of these environmental changes, they are acute in areas like Bangladesh.
USAID agrees, [s]itting in a predominantly low-lying region at the
intersections of the Ganga, Meghna, and Brahmaputra rivers and the Ganga-Brahmaputra delta, Bangladesh is one of the most vulnerable countries in the world to a changing climate.
Floods + Flash Floods
The geographical layout of Bangladesh is such that it is subject to flooding from sea rises and storms, and severe flash floods caused in part by rains and mountain runoffs. So from the mountains they have fresh water floods, and from the ocean they have salt water floods. The lands in between are mainly agricultural, subject to annual destruction.
To compare to the USA think of New Orleans, and parts of Florida (1).
Cyclones + Storm Surges
Bangladesh is often hit by tropical cyclones (historically every few years) and storms that sweep salt water into the land. Eighty percent of their protein is from lake and ocean fish, but fish are sensitive to salinity so these storms also result in kill-offs.
The issue of clean drinking water, drowned live stock, and destroyed rice and other food-growing fields are a constant. Again, think of tropical cyclones moving into the contiguous United States from the Atlantic Ocean, the Gulf of Mexico, and the Pacific Ocean (2).
Salinity Intrusion
Some reports I read indicate that the whole Coastal Belt, along the Bay of Bengal, has salinity problems. This is destroying rice paddies, the main carbohydrate for the country, and pollutes groundwater and other drinking water sources. Most of the food irrigation relies on these aquifers and if polluted there will be crop failure. Of course other critical crops like wheat, potato, maize, sugarcane and soybeans should experience similar problems.
As a reminder, this is also occurring in North America and Mexico (3).
Extreme Temperature and Drought
Temps and droughts are reportedly severe in the North and North-western regions of Bangladesh.
For us, think California, the Great Plains and Southwest (4).
Rising Sea Levels
Just 1 meter of sea rise and Bangladesh will lose 15% of its land and nearly 30M will become displaced.
For the US, think about that kind of impact in all coastal regions, floodplains, and waterways (5).
Rural Displacements
This country hosts an amazing ~150M people. Two thirds of the people are working in some aspect of agriculture, thus 75% of the population lives in rural areas.
Savage reports: Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre, a Switzerland-based NGO, says 17.2 million people were displaced worldwide last year because of fast- and slow-onset climate-related disasters. Wikipedia follows that [i]t is projected that, by 2020, from 500 to 750 million people will be affected by water stress caused by climate change around the world.
Bangladesh’s Response
Bangladesh has a number of national strategies and plans that address climate risk and adaptation.
An Economic + Gender Story
Obviously the poor, and women, are highly effected by what is happening. According to DW, women in these regions mostly rely on small-scale agriculture, cattle, poultry rearing, as well as handicrafts for their livelihood.
Initially the income they derived from their efforts would augment what the men brought home from their labors. But now, with declining agricultural work opportunities, men are leaving their families to find work, thereby leaving the women at home to, essentially, fend for themselves and their children. But compounding these natural disasters are economic, political, and cultural norms that prevent women from being equals in their societies.
Meanwhile, their government, along with the UN and other NGO agencies, are trying hard to help the women and girls so that they can better support themselves by:
- Building suitable water management systems to direct rainwater to fields
- Using climate-resilient seeds and organic fertilizers for sustainable growing
- Providing approval and logistics to connect them to markets
A Family Story
Ms. Savage details one story of a family where the husband worked in the rice paddies. But that work was conditional, given the climate problems, and often there would be no work. Meanwhile, the wife worked at home raising chickens and collecting their eggs for themselves and the market.
The chickens would often drown in sudden floods or became expensive to catch and move to higher ground. So the family moved from chickens and chicken eggs (as they kept drowning), to ducks and duck eggs (as they can swim). The ducks are better able to survive the changing weather patterns of drought, to severe flooding, and are not as sensitive to changing and unpredictable climate. And as a result of the change, the family was better able to survive.
A Community Story
Not just ducks, but in other areas they have moved from rice paddies to shrimp farming. Of course, like all things, the dark side of this effort is that this type of land-based fish farming introduced even more salt to land already being salted from floods. So programs are trying to get farmers to move from shrimp to “crab fattening” as crabs are better suited to the changing environmental conditions, and require less land-harming efforts.
In fact, Savage reports, a UNDP project is introducing cow, goat, and pig fattening and hydroponic vegetable-growing (which involves cultivating plants in a mineral-nutrient solution rather than soil) to help communities that have been left landless by river erosion and rising soil salinity.
Bangladesh is Us
So what does Bangladesh tells us in terms of the World’s future? Climate change will develop into a story of massive movements of people throughout the world as we all seek safe ground on which to live. It will mean extreme pressures on natural plant and animal life, food sources, and land.
We are just now seeing the future in the lower lying lands and deltas. We need to plan for this change now, it is oncoming and visible to those who remove blinders.
–Patty
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