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The impacts of climate change, food production and food security are global concerns, but they represent a particular threat for Bangladesh. Agriculture is already under pressure mainly due to an increasing demand of food for the growing population. The prospects of global climate change make this problem a priority for Bangladesh.
   Potential increase in global temperature due to climate change and inter-annual climatic variability and its impacts on rice productivity, above all food security, are of major concern in recent years. Bangladesh, where lives and livelihoods depend mainly on agriculture, is exposed to a great danger as the country is one of the most vulnerable countries due to climate change.
   Rice is the staple food for above 150 million populations. Every year a huge amount of rice production is being damaged due to changing climate state, and eventually threatening food security in Bangladesh. It is also constrained by different climatic disasters such as floods, droughts, cyclone, storm surges, sea level rise, etc. For example, two round of floods and devastating cyclone Sidr in 2007 and cyclone Aila in 2009 caused severe damages in agriculture production, especially the rice production and caused a severe food crisis.
   Food security refers to the availability of food and one’s access to it. A household is considered food secure when its occupants do not live in hunger or fear of starvation. According to the Food and Agricultural Organisation, food security exists when all people at all times have physical, social, and economic accesses to sufficient, safe and nutritious food to meet their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life. To achieve food security, four components such as availability, accessibility, stability and utilisation must be sufficient. These components are often dependent on some natural events, such as flood, cyclone, water conservation, degradation due to erosion, drought etc.
   Rice production systems make a vital contribution to the reduction of hunger and poverty in Bangladesh. In 2007-2008, Boro rice contributed above 58 per cent of the total rice production, whereas, T.aman 34 per cent and Aus rice only 7 per cent. Therefore, it is clear that the rice production of this country depends considerably on Boro rice production. But rice cultivation areas are mostly unchanged in the last few decades. There is a good sign to increase Boro rice area because it makes an important contribution to increase the overall rice production and the main source of livelihood for the farming community in Bangladesh. Rice areas of T.aman and Aus have gradually decreased after the year of 1989-90.
   Population of Bangladesh is increasing at a rate of two million every year and the total population will be 233.2 millions in the next 40 years, if the current trend continues. Therefore, Bangladesh will require more than 55.0 million ton rice by the year 2050. During this time total rice area will be shrunk due to pressure from cultivating high value crops, urban and industrial development and expansion of human settlement area. Rice production in Bangladesh increased at a rate of 0.4582 million ton per year, Boro rice production increased at a rate of 0.3654 million ton per year, T.aman production increased at a rate of 0.1388 million ton per year, whereas Aus rice production decreased at a rate of 0.0463 million ton in the year of 1971 to 2005. If this rate continued for a few years such as 2020, 2030, 2040 and 2050, then there will be a huge amount of rice shortage 5.08, 6.02, 7.80 and 10.50 million ton, respectively compared to the requirement of total population on the specified years. Therefore food security problem will be more acute in 2050. About 10.50 million ton rice shortage may occur compared to its total population demand in 2050 which is about 38.43 per cent the total rice production in Bangladesh in the year of 2006-07 (rice production in 2006-07 was 27.32 million ton).
   Temperature greatly influences not only the growth duration, but also the growth pattern and the productivity of rice crops. During the growing season, the mean temperature, and the temperature sum, range, distribution pattern, and diurnal changes, or a combination of these may be highly correlated with grain yields. According to Yoshida, rice plant has a nine growth stages with its three distinct growth phases and every stage has an optimum temperature range for its proper development. These optimum temperatures differ according to variety, duration of the critical temperature, diurnal changes and physiological status of the plant. Extreme temperatures, whether low and high, cause injury to the rice plant. High temperatures are a constraint to rice production and cause a significant yield reduction. When temperatures exceed the optimal for biological processes, crop often respond negatively with a steep decline in net growth and yield (Rosenzweig and Hillel).
   The effect of temperature on yield of Boro rice has been assessed using the DSSAT (Decision Support System for Agrotechnology Transfer, version 4) model for the years 2020, 2030, 2040 and 2050, respectively. The study has been conducted on the basis of IPCC fourth assessment report (temperature is projected to rise in a range from 1.8°C to 4.0°C by 2100) and found a considerable yield reduction (1.5 per cent, 2.5 per cent, 4.4 per cent and 5.4 per cent) on the specified years which directly affect the total rice production in Bangladesh (base year 2008). About 13.93 million ton rice production may shortage in 2050 which account for about 50.10 per cent of the total rice production of the year 2006-07. As a result, more than 11.50 per cent (3.43 million ton) rice shortage may occur only for temperature and its effect on Boro rice production during 2050 (38.43 per cent rice shortage may occur for increasing population and 50.10 per cent for increasing population and temperature effect in 2050, compared to 2007).
   If rice production is not adequate to meet the demand, a major part of our population will be deprived from food and pass a hungry life with their family and face malnutrition problem. Consequently, our next generations are going to face a great challenge for their daily food due to changing climatic condition and pressure of huge population.
   The sustainable increase of rice production for food security will require efforts to enhance the capacity of rice production system to adapt to global climate change as well as to mitigate the effects of rice production on global warming. Improving Boro and T.Aman production and protecting the declining rate of Aus rice production and developing more heat tolerant rice varieties and management practices would be a major concern for increasing rice production in Bangladesh. Technical options for adaption and mitigation are available, which should be properly applied in agricultural sectors. Policy support to rice research and development to develop and transfer appropriate and efficient technologies, however, will be vital for the realisation of such measures for sustainable rice production. Above all public awareness of the impact of climate change on the agricultural production deserves priority consideration.
   Jayanta Kumar Basak is project associate, unit of ecology and climate justice, Unnayan Onneshan

The temple bells were ringing. There was a Hindu religious ritual taking place. This was the village of Velanai, one of the small islands off the Jaffna coast. Internally displaced people (IDPs) from the Vavuniya camp had been sent back there. What we saw was a heart-warming sight. The children of Velanai and the returnee IDP children were together, being fed by the village temple. We witnessed this while on a north-south linkage programme over the weekend.
   The returnees to Velanai were fortunate. These were people who had left the island in the early 1990s, when the Sri Lankan military moved in. They had gone to Jaffna which was under LTTE control and had joined the LTTE in their forced the exodus from peninsula in1995. Thereafter, they ended up in the LTTE-controlled Wanni. Fortunately for them they have their relatives to return to on the island of Velanai, and their homes to stay in temporarily. Unfortunately, not all of the 100,000 or more returnees from IDP camps have this possibility of being able to stay with friends or relatives.
   The government has now announced it has resettled over 100,000 people who were in welfare centres. The fate of the 280,000 persons who were displaced during the last stages of the war, and were confined to welfare centres from which they were not permitted to leave has been immensely controversial. Initially, the government gave a timeframe of 2-3 years for the resettlement of these people. This caused grief and outrage amongst the Tamil community, both in Sri Lanka and outside in the Diaspora. It led to strong concern being expressed by sections of the international community, including India, and was the subject of much adverse international media reportage.
   The government gave three reasons why it had to temporarily restrict the freedom of the displaced population. The first was that many LTTE cadres were hiding amongst the civilian population and had to be weeded out in the interests of national security. The danger of hardcore Tigers in particular infiltrating out of the area and into the rest of the country was plain on its face. Even a handful of suicide bombers could cause havoc in terms of their destructive capacities. This governmental concern was compounded by the continuous discovery of arms caches buried by the LTTE in the areas they once controlled.
   Any premature return of people to those areas they formerly inhabited could have provided the LTTE cadres with an opportunity to get their hands on those weapons and to rearm and regroup. The fact that several senior LTTE leaders still remain unaccounted for has increased the level of this threat. The third reason given by the government was that a considerable part of the formerly LTTE-controlled area was filled with landmines which needed to be removed prior to the resettlement of the civilians. The problem with the government’s position was that the relatively lengthy timeframe it gave for the resolution of these problems.
   A government plan on resettlement that surfaced in the early part of the year, and which suggested a 2-3 year timeframe for resettlement, was indeed a very comprehensive one. It included the building up of the infrastructure of the welfare centres (or IDP camps) into small townships, complete with schools, hospitals and playgrounds. But this created an impression that inevitable delays in the implementation of this programme would effectively lead to the incarceration of people in the camps that could extend even up to more than three years. As a result of these misgivings the government came under severe local and international pressures to speed up the resettlement of the displaced persons.
   
   Warning signals
   The relatively poor performance of the government at local elections in the north earlier in the year would have sent a warning message to the government that its resettlement strategy would erode any possibility of getting Tamil votes at forthcoming national elections. In addition the government came under tremendous international pressure. There were constant criticisms of the government by international human rights groups and by the international media. The government’s commitment to upholding international standards in the provision of humanitarian assistance began to be seriously challenged. This gave rise to intensified lobbying against the government by international human rights organisations and by the Tamil Diaspora which had serious consequences.
   One of the consequences of the government’s human rights record has been the likelihood of economic sanctions. At the present time the government is doing its utmost to save for itself the GSP+tariff concession granted by the European Union and is engaged in a serious lobbying effort on that count. There have been other threats as well which makes progress on resettlement a priority issue if the government is to manage its finances. Donor agencies that were supplying most of the food and other resources to maintain the welfare centres threatened to pull out. Instead they promised support only to those people who had been resettled.
   It is under these conditions of political and international pressure that the government has apparently decided to expedite the resettlement of the people hitherto confined to the welfare centres. In order to explain its actions, the government has said that most of the screening of the displaced population for LTTE cadres has been completed. The effort to de-mine the formerly LTTE-held areas has been strengthened with the government purchasing a large number of costly demining machines and training over 2000 military personnel to do the job.
   However, this expedited resettlement of displaced persons is not according to the government’s previous plan which envisaged a systematic process. This was to first develop the physical infrastructure of the war-ravaged areas, including the roads, transport system, wells and irrigation canals, schools, hospitals and community halls. Only after this infrastructure was put in place were the people to be resettled to rebuild their homes and war-shattered lives. The earlier plan envisaged at least a 2-3 year time horizon for its implementation.
   
   Filling gap
   But now with only six months since the end of the war, very little has been done by way of developing the infrastructure of some of the areas into which the people are being resettled. In fact, due to the near total destruction of infrastructure in places that were once under LTTE control, the resettlement of people is not in their original places of inhabitation, which no longer exist. A large proportion of the people who have been taken out of the welfare camps are being relocated to areas in the Jaffna peninsula and to the small islands off it, although they originally came from elsewhere in the north.
   These new areas are often devoid of basic infrastructure, in which cases the Rs 25,000 being allocated to each family, and of which only Rs 5000 will be in the form of cash, will not be enough to secure the necessities of survival. When people who lived on the northern mainland are relocated in the coastal areas, as occurred in some instances, the farming skills that sustained their lives for generations will also become obsolete. Furthermore, schools, hospitals and other crucial facilities may be inaccessible or in a deteriorated state, condemning many to rudimentary lifestyles in an inhospitable environment. The hasty resettlement that is currently taking place also means that some IDPs are being compelled to occupy others’ homes, breeding the potential for future conflict.
   In these circumstances, there are severe shortcomings in the facilities available to the relocated people. There are accounts of people being relocated in war-ravaged areas with barely any resources to fend for themselves and of people being stung by snakes dying because there are no roads or vehicles or hospitals in the places they have put into. In this challenging situation, it is incumbent on the government to reconsider its decision to restrict access to humanitarian organisations and NGOs who are best equipped to help the people in the situation they find themselves in. NGOs are most adept at filling in the gaps in the government’s macro-level programmes. The resettlement of the displaced persons is a gap that needs to be filled.
   Members of the NGO consortium in Jaffna were specially aggrieved in this regard. They are denied access to those IDPs resettled in Jaffna. They are unable, and rightly so, to understand why they are not allowed to help those resettled in their own areas.
   The provision of basic humanitarian needs is a primary function of civil society. The government needs to maximise resources and facilitate the efforts of civil society groups to rebuild trust and establish a base of continuous dialogue so that both can work efficiently together to assist the displaced. Showing concern for the needs of the displaced people by providing them with basic requirements for survival and sufficient tools to rebuild their lives will also help develop trust between the government and the Tamil people, which is a crucial component of reconciliation. In addition, the government needs to examine its current priorities, and redistribute funds so that more resources will be available to meet the basic needs of its citizenry.

US arms sales hit record

Guns don’t kill people, people kill people; and monkeys do too (if they have a gun).
   Balaram Sengupta
   Via e-mail

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