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THE gathering of 4,000 residents of the district of Gaibandha — most of them farmers — on Tuesday, demanding compensation for damages caused by man-made climate change is significant as the issue now makes the transition from an academic cause to a political one. For a country that will bear the brunt of some of the worst fallouts of global warming and climate change, this issue has had a remarkably low currency among the ordinary citizenry, who are the most vulnerable. According to one estimate, Bangladesh stands to lose up to 17 per cent of its landmass by 2050 because of a one metre rise in the sea level. But even as such dramatic postulations are debated, large swathes of the country is now experiencing variations in rainfall, a higher intensity of floods and cyclones, as well as droughts, confounding the agricultural calendar and imperilling food security.
   With a key United Nations conference on climate change approaching in the first week of December, the farmers’ protests organised under the banner of the Campaign for Sustainable Rural Livelihoods are not only timely, but also the only relevant way of ensuring that the demands of the world’s poorest and most vulnerable communities are the focus of efforts to slow down the pace of carbon emissions.
   One of the most thorny issues in the climate change debate so far has been that of climate refuges: thorny because the industrialised nations fear they will have to accept these refugees into their countries if they agree in principle that it was climate change that saw them driven into destitution and landlessness.
   While we recognise that mass migrations and resettlements pose serious problems of social integration and economic burden, it is also impossible to deny that millions in Bangladesh alone are losing their arable land because of a rise in salinity along their coasts, because of heavy and untimely droughts in the north, and because of river erosion in the central districts. And all these outcomes are linked to climate change – on this the Nobel Laureate Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has delivered its verdict.
   While an ambitious roadmap on climate change action was drawn up at the UN Bali conference last year, much remains to be done especially in the area of adaptations funding i.e. helping countries deal with the adverse effects of climate change, and in capping carbon emissions by some of the worst polluters, and the US in particular.
   In Bangladesh, the government, the NGOs and the scientists have all converged onto a unique common platform of action in raising their voice on the importance of combating climate change, but the participation of the people has so far been largely lacking in this paternalistic venture. Now, this movement needs to involve the political parties to mobilise mass support for Bangladesh’s demands, in accordance with its own interests and those of its partner least developed countries.

Access to arsenic-free water
is a basic right

THE problem of arsenic in drinking water is snowballing with fateful consequences. Although the arsenic contamination in drinking water is near to being universalised, there is very little government effort visible to grapple with it. More and more areas are being reported as arsenic-affected. Vast areas in all the districts of the country except the greater CHT are affected. Last year a government source disclosed that 30 million people are exposed to arsenicosis and 50,000 are already afflicted. Numerous deaths have been reported from Pabna, one of the worst-hit districts. The situation in Chittagong is equally disturbing. According to an agency report carried in yesterday’s New Age, in Chittagong the level of arsenic in the water of some tube-wells is alarmingly high – 0.4 microgram per litre as against the permissible limit of 0.05. The study was conducted by the Chittagong University of Engineering and Technology and the Institution of Engineers in 13 of the city’s 41 wards and found high contamination level in seven of those wards while in the remaining six wards too the level was higher than the prescribed WHO standard. Arsenic is also reportedly entering the food chain.
   Though the problem surfaced around 15 years ago, very little was done to make drinking water arsenic-free or to provide alternative sources of drinking water to the people. Arsenic poisoning acts slowly and full dimension of the peril will begin to unfold with time. What is particularly regrettable is that the successive governments should apparently adopt a policy of wait and see instead of coming out with a bold mitigating programme. Even the 22-member expert committee formed in 2004 to look into the problem is not holding its meetings regularly. The government and the NGOs did identify and red-mark some strongly contaminated tube-wells, and stopped there. No arrangement was made to provide alternative source of water. And the ‘safe’ tube-wells may not be safe for ever and periodic testing is necessary. The people themselves have no access to any testing facility. Tube-wells could be sunk deeper to obtain arsenic-free water. This is expensive and can be done at community-level. It is true there is no quick-fix solution to arsenic but there is a variety of mitigating techniques which can be implemented according to local conditions. Some home-made filtration systems have been devised which are low-cost. But due to absence of official drive few affected households are presumably using these devices. Critics feel that the government is allowing the problem to drift in order to create a justification for corporatisation of drinking water. This will not only penalise the poor in yet another way but also increase the country’s dependency in another vita sector.
   Arsenic in drinking water is a global problem, without any rough-and-ready solution but this cannot justify inaction. Urgent steps should be taken for treatment of those afflicted with arsenicosis at least to keep fatalities limited. Access to safe drinking water is a citizen’s basic right.

AGRICULTURE Day was just another cosmetic initiative undertaken by the military-controlled interim government, seemingly to demonstrate its commitment to rejuvenating agriculture. Symptomatic of its top-down approach, a meeting of the council of advisers decided to designate first day of the Bengali month of Aghrahayan (November 15) as agriculture day. Regrettably, however, agriculture has thus far only seen a few unplanned and ill-coordinated measures during the tenure of the incumbents.
   The agriculture sector—it is not limited to crops by the way—is yet to see a comprehensive package for reforms that are urgently needed to ensure the livelihoods of farmers, especially the small and marginal ones, and at the same time ensure food security. Food security in the context of the global food crisis, largely brought about by the artificial and heavily subsidised emergence of the biofuel industry, has become rather significant. The fact that a number of countries either imposed export bans or put a ceiling on their cereal exports means that Bangladesh will have to seriously consider the implications for food security. Given the chronic shortfall in rice production in Bangladesh and since the internationally traded amount of this cereal is very limited, the government will have to approach the issue of food security comprehensively.
   This comprehensive plan for food security and farmers’ livelihoods will have to take into consideration a host of details ranging from farm labourers’ wages to the amount of arable land and how its potential could be best tapped. So far the initiatives undertaken by different governments have addressed only a fraction of those issues. Currently, there are subsidies on fertiliser and irrigation besides a provision for small loan, supposedly for small farmers. Not only do the current measures have to be redesigned in order to ensure that farmers derive the full benefits but there needs to be an overhaul of the entire agricultural programme to be replaced with a concerted agricultural programme.
   Just a week before the incumbents declared November 15 as agriculture day, there was an elaborate ceremony where the Bangladesh Quality Support Programme, supported by the European Commission and the International Trade Centre, unveiled a five-sector strategy to increase and enhance exports and thereby alleviate poverty. This discussion concerns three of those sectors—agro processing, horticulture and herbal medicine.
   According to the project documents, the government is engaged with this project which also enjoys the involvement and assistance of other foreign organisation such as the German GTZ, Katalyst with Swiss funds and Winrock funded by the United States besides government agencies like the agricultural extension department. There is little doubt that Bangladesh needs to diversify its exports in order to attain a healthier and more stable economy overcoming its over dependence on the textiles sector which is often regarded as one of its prime weaknesses. This predominance of the textile sector fetching almost three fourths of the country’s foreign currency must be overcome if Bangladesh intends to move ahead and emerge as a growing economy firmly on its way to transition through industrialisation.
   In that respect, the quality support programme’s spirit of export diversification and poverty alleviation cannot be contended with. Its choice of sectors though raises a number of questions and doubts that development practitioners in general, and those involved in agriculture and environment, proponents of food sovereignty and those advocating for the conservation of traditional knowledge in particular, need to take a closer look at.
   The largely foreign-funded programme envisages boosting Bangladesh’s exports manifold through its projects. While information technology and light engineering should prove to be right choices, the other three mentioned should require more attention and analysis especially as regards food security.
   The project documents provide reasonably detailed information from the grower to the consumer and how the market, especially the export market, could be explored and expanded. There is also detailed information about the need for uniform and dependable quality of the products and conformity to international standards.
   But when considering the strategies through the lens of food security these three sector strategies, especially horticulture and agro-processing, should raise the question whether these strategies are conducive to attaining food security. There are over 30 million people in the country with an average intake of less than 1,800 kilocalories which is the national benchmark for hardcore poverty. According to different estimates and trade statistics, Bangladesh also suffers from a chronic shortfall of a number of agricultural produces, including food staples and spices.
   It should generally be the case that one sells off the commodities that are excess and buys those that are required. The principle largely applies to most farming households. If this were to apply to the country in general then there is the implicit suggestion that Bangladesh is self-sufficient in certain kinds of fruits and vegetables that the quality support programme intends to export. This proposition would be easily countered with the argument that the country could easily import cheaper food selling its own produce for a higher price and thereby be better off. The premise of that counterpoint, however, is firmly based on the presumption that other countries will readily agree to export whatever food Bangladesh requires, which, as the recent crisis showed, may not always be the case.
   The project documents do not really illustrate if the entire programme fits into a comprehensive plan for attaining local food security. Increasing fruit and vegetable exports should eventually lead to higher incentive for their production—most likely by organisations and groups and thus hastening the creeping trend of corporate agriculture and contract farming, which is another issue that will be discussed—and need increasing acreage. Due to the high population density, the country has little arable land to spare as it is. One would have to then consider whether the incentives for fruit and vegetable exports might gradually squeeze out land previously under crop cultivation. That would surely turn out to be disastrous.
   The export-oriented markets are presumably being targeted for bulk exports. If the projects also intend to reap premium for organic fruits and vegetables the only means of increasing production is to increase acreage. With rich dividends, and that too in the form of foreign currency, such initiatives should attract large investors who in their bid to secure a steady supply of raw material would either buy up arable land from marginal and poor farmers or engage in contract farming. Either way the small and marginal farmers would gradually turn into landless labourers or end up as farm labourers on their own land.
   The other sector strategy aiming to export herbal medicine and natural ingredients quite evidently has not deliberated upon the implications of exporting traditional knowledge, which it will be doing. Exports of medicinal plants will invariably also mean transmitting a substantial pool of knowledge that was heretofore held in trust of the community. Apparently, indigenous and traditional knowledge has a high commercial value in pharmaceutical research since it provides the essential information about a certain plant’s medicinal properties. This initial information reduces research work by many years saving literally billions of dollars. Once such a medicine is in the market, pharmaceutical companies should then provide a part of the royalty to the source of knowledge.
   This proposition has brought about concepts like ‘access and benefit sharing’ and ‘prior informed consent’ that are yet to become fully applicable in practical sense. For instance, if a pharmaceutical corporation develops such a medicine and, in the most unlikely scenario, is even willing to share its profits with the ‘community’ that was the source of this knowledge, who would be entitled to the payment? Would it be the country where that community resides, would it be a certain individual or would it be several countries that share the generational knowledge and in that case in what proportion? Moreover, the involvement of foreign-funded organisations in such a project should naturally raise doubts about the possibility of bio-piracy.
   There is little doubt that Bangladesh needs to diversify its exports and reduce poverty. But initiatives such as the one discussed here are being carried out in isolation and apparently without any indication that they conform to a concerted plan towards attaining food security and ensuring the welfare and sustainable livelihoods of small and marginal farmers. While programmes and projects aiming to diversify exports through agriculture may not necessarily bode ill for the people, they must conform to a certain plan. Sections of citizens involved in these areas should combine their efforts with those of the government to develop such a comprehensive plan that clearly outlines the priorities and strategies in the interest of the people.