The New Nation - Internet Edition

Water everywhere but not enough to drink

Moslem Uddin Ahmed

Drinking water in Bangladesh is often full of salt as rising sea levels force water further inland. Expensive technology offers solutions but who will foot the bill?

Momtaj Begum, holding her baby daughter, is among hundreds of women queuing for a pitcher of drinking water at a desalinisation plant in Tafalbaria, a remote village in the Bagerhat district in south-west Bangladesh.

'We have to walk this long way to the desalinisation plant as the water in the pond in our village has turned too salty and muddy to drink,' says Khadiza, a neighbour who had joined in the scramble for fresh water.

The women make several trips a day along muddy roads and paths from their home in neighbouring Khuriakhali in the Sundarbans, the world's largest mangrove forest and a UNESCO world heritage site. Their village pond is full of water, but today not a drop of it can be drunk.

The tidal surge whipped up by Cyclone Sidr in November 2007 has contaminated the pond with salt and dirt. The nearby Baleswar River used to provide fresh water, but it is also full of salt and dirt.

Residents of coastal areas have put up with saline surface water for years, but it is getting worse. Researchers have discovered saline water further inland than in the past, as far as 130 km. This is partly because global temperature rises are causing sea levels to rise, occasionally flooding low-lying areas.

And cyclones like Sidr cause tidal surges, inundating drinking ponds and driving brackish water further inland. 'Once saline water enters local ponds and fields, the trapped water cannot flow anywhere else, as the silted-up riverbeds block their way,' said Sheikh Selim Akhter Shawpan, an NGO official working in water management.

Communities along the coast are hit doubly hard. Groundwater is often contaminated with arsenic while the surface water is full of salt. The situation is acute in the 25 upazilas (sub-districts) of Satkhira, Khulna and Bagerhat. Upstream rivers such as the Ganges and Brahmaputra are struggling to wash the saline water back out to sea because their currents are getting weaker and often stop altogether in the dry season.

Commercial shrimp farming, which annually is worth billions of Bangladeshi taka, is adding to the pressure because farmers are flooding their fields with saline water to breed the shellfish.

'It is affecting agriculture,' says Fazar Ali, sitting in his small house in Parulia, in Sathkira. 'I cannot grow as many crops as I did in the past. I'm trying but I cannot because of either drought or salinity. I believe it happens because of changes in the weather.'

For women it means long walks along earthen tracks and through mangrove swamps. It is common for women in this region of Bangladesh to spend three to four hours per day fetching clean drinking water, while the men have been driven out of their traditional professions of farming and fishing to search for livelihoods in the nearby forests, or they are forced to travel to towns and cities to find work.

Some reports claim women and adolescent girls no longer have enough time and energy to carry out household duties like cooking, bathing, washing clothes and taking care of the elderly and infirm. It is even affecting their marriage prospects and family lives. Families who struggle to get clean water don't want daughters to leave their homes and marry elsewhere.

A study by WaterAid Bangladesh in Assashuni and Shyamnagar upazilas in Satkhira district claimed the skin of adolescent girls was turning rough and unattractive as a result of the saline water. It said men from outside the area had no interest in marrying these young girls and girls from poorer families were being rejected by the better-off local men.

There is also some evidence young women are being discouraged from developing relationships with men in flood-prone areas. When the NGO Care Bangladesh interviewed Padmabala Mondol, 45, from Fultola in Shyamnagar upazila she told them, 'No decent parent wants their daughter to marry a boy from such communities. So great is the scarcity of water that, right after the wedding, the bride has to travel great distances to get water, so marriages are taking place mostly among villagers.'

Solutions

International donors have advised the government in Bangladesh to undertake 'climate-proof' adaptation projects. Indeed, many people are already doing this at a household level. In the coastal belt, people usually drink water from ponds, sometimes purifying it with lime and medicines. Or they rely on the few water desalinisation plants operated by NGOs and government agencies.

The latest United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) report on climate change adaptation, Risks, Vulnerability and Adaptation in Bangladesh, noted, 'Compared to many other developing or least developed countries Bangladesh is doing a lot more on climate change.' However, it added, it was mostly 'undertaken by a small, isolated and dedicated group of people and institutes in the NGO and government sectors. The national activities are confined to pilot scale by NGOs and private research organisations.'

The non-governmental organisation Care Bangladesh has worked with coastal communities to develop awareness-raising programmes. 'We have built a few specially engineered low-cost storm-resistant houses and pond-sand filters for water purification as models for replication,' said Care's Media Support Officer, Ruhul Motin. Other partners in the area help people to develop low-cost drinking water facilities as well as growing salinity-tolerant crops and developing so-called floating gardens, designed to withstand flooding.

But these small-scale NGO projects cannot address the growing climate-change problem. The UNDP report says large-scale engineering projects such as diverting water from the Ganges and more desalinisation plants would be most effective way to improve fresh water supplies but it rules them out on the grounds of cost.

However, Dr Atiq Rahman, co-author of the UNDP report and executive director of NGO Bangladesh Centre for Advanced Studies (BCAS), thinks it is in fact 'very much possible' to mobilise funds from donors for the engineering projects. However, he rules out NGO efforts as suitable for this major problem, saying the government has to be persuaded to harness technology, equipment and funds.

Earlier this year, the head of the present caretaker government of Bangladesh, Dr Fakhruddin Ahmed, told businesses and global leaders at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, about the devastating impact of climate change on Bangladesh. He made an international appeal to establish a global fund for assisting vulnerable countries in adapting to the new challenges faced by climate changes.

Dr Atiq Rahman says it is a long shot to expect business leaders to take up Ahmed's proposal. He suggested the government seek financial help from international donors as well as sourcing funds from the domestic economy.

Professor Mohammed Farashuddin, a former governor of Bangladesh Bank and a commentator on development efforts, agrees. He believes money from the country's national poverty-reduction programme could be diverted into a climate adaptation scheme. However to make it work, generous grants would have to be sought from donors in richer countries.

Such a move would help to satisfy those who believe industrialised countries, responsible for high levels of harmful carbon dioxide, should assist poorer nations like Bangladesh which have polluted least but suffer most.

(Source: Panos London)

Weather-related disasters on increase

Petra Löw

In 2007, there were 874 weather-related disasters worldwide, a 13-percent increase over 2006 and the highest number since the systematic recording of natural perils began in 1974. Weather-related disasters around the world have been on the rise for decades (see Figure 1): on average, 300 events were recorded every year in the 1980s, 480 events in the 1990s, and 620 events in the last 10 years.

Weather-related disasters can be divided into meteorological, hydrological, and climatological events. The category of meteorological events includes tropical cyclones (hurricanes, typhoons, cyclones), extratropical cyclones (winter storms), and local storms (severe storms, thunderstorms, hailstorms, snowstorms, and tornadoes). Hydrological events include floods (general floods, flash floods, storm surges/coastal floods) and wet mass movements (rockfalls, landslides, avalanches, subsidence). And climatological events include extreme temperatures (heat waves, cold waves, extreme winter conditions), droughts, and wildfires (forest fires, bush/brush fires, scrub/grassland fires, urban fires).

In 2007, weather-related disasters accounted for 91 percent of all natural disasters, a broader classification that also includes earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanic eruptions, and dry mass movements. About 81 percent of economic losses from natural catastrophes and 97 percent of insured losses resulted from weather-related disasters. And all six "great natural disasters" in 2007-three storms and three floods-were weather-related. A "great natural disaster" occurs if the affected region's ability to help itself is overstretched and supraregional or international assistance is required. As a rule, this is the case when there are thousands of fatalities, when hundreds of thousands of people are made homeless, or when the overall losses or the insured losses reach exceptional orders of magnitude.

Economic losses from weather-related disasters totaled about $69 billion in 2007, an increase of 36 percent over the figure in 2006. It is worth noting, however, that losses in 2006 were unusually low in comparison with losses in 2004 ($108 billion) and 2005 ($214 billion), when the hurricane seasons caused extraordinarily high economic and insured losses.

Fatalities due to weather-related disasters in 2007 (at 15,295) accounted for 95 percent of the deaths in all natural disasters. This was an increase of 14 percent over fatalities in 2006. More than half of the fatalities worldwide were caused by floods, 3 percent were from wet mass movements, 39 percent occurred in storm events, and 5 percent were during climatological events like extreme temperatures and wildfires.

The catastrophes with the greatest human tolls in 2007 occurred in developing and emerging countries. Storms, floods, and landslides in various parts of Asia caused more than 11,000 deaths, with some 3,300 attributable just to Cyclone Sidr, which struck Bangladesh in November. In June, Cyclone Gonu crossed the Arabian Sea to Oman. It was the most intense storm ever recorded in the Arabian Sea and the heaviest tropical cyclone with a track leading into the Gulf of Oman.

The number of named storms in the 2007 hurricane season (15) was much higher than the long-term climatological average of 10.6 named storms in 1950-2006 and roughly equal to the average of the current Atlantic warm phases. Nevertheless, as only two of last year's hurricanes (Dean and Felix) were classified as intense storms, the intensity of the 2007 season was below the long-term average. At $60 million, economic losses in the United States for this hurricane season were far below average.

But the United States suffered particularly from forest fires and heat waves in 2007. In California, hundreds of destructive wildland fires occurred from late October to early November. Economic losses rose to $2.7 billion, while insured losses totaled $2.3 billion. In August, central and southeastern parts of the United States were hit by a severe heat wave. It was the second warmest August since recording began 113 years ago.

In November, the Mexican state of Tabasco and large parts of Chiapas suffered their most devastating floods in 50 years. The Mexican authorities declared a state of emergency. About a million people were made homeless and lost all their possessions.

Europe was also hit by natural catastrophes. Winter Storm Kyrill in January and two flood events in the United Kingdom in the summer were classified as "great natural disasters." Economic losses for these events were $18 billion and insured losses $12 billion. Very high temperatures of up to 45 degrees Celsius (113 degrees Fahrenheit) and dryness for several months occurred in western Russia and southeastern Europe during the summer. Greece was hit particularly hard by forest fires. Economic losses there reached $2 billion, the highest figure in Europe for decades.

The main drivers for the recent increase in weather-related disasters and related global losses are socioeconomic factors and the changing patterns of extreme events. The socioeconomic factors are tied to the rise in population, a better standard of living, the concentration of people and values in large urban settings, and the settlement and industrialization of regions with extremely high exposure levels. Cities, metropolitan areas, and megacities are very vulnerable to natural catastrophes and especially to weather-related disasters. More than half of the world will be living in urban areas by the end of 2008. And the urban population of developing and emerging countries is rising at an unprecedented rate. This is particularly noteworthy in Africa and Asia, where the urban population is expected to double between 2000 and 2030.

(Source: Worldwatch Institute. Petra Löw is a geographer and a NatCat analyst at the Munich Reinsurance Company.)

Value of deforestation?

Siddhartha Krishnan and Seema Purushothaman

The Union government of India has drafted the Compensatory Afforestation Bill, 2008 to establish a compensatory afforestation fund. Revenues collected from agencies that divert forests (even protected ones) for non-forest use will be pooled into this corpus. Net present value (NPV) has been adopted as an economic tool to calculate the compensatory fiscal value of diverted forests. But there are two question marks over the move. Firstly, can forests, especially the protected ones, which provide vital ecological and cultural services, be assigned an economic value in lieu of their diversion? Second, is NPV an appropriate fiscal tool to calculate the 'compensatory' value of functioning physical entities such as forests?

Let us first consider the issue of assigning economic value to forests. The issue at hand here is assigning a monetary value to goods and services provided by forests. Forest products mentioned in the bill include non-timber forest produce and water, and the services mentioned include grazing, wildlife protection; carbon sequestration and flood control. The bill also takes note of the cultural and educational services of forests. But can monetary compensation make up for the diversion of these services? Take the Shola-grassland ecosystem of the upper Nilgiri Plateau. Here evergreen forests occur amidst the folds of vast undulating stretches of grasslands. Post monsoons these Sholas release stored rainwater and regulate its flow to the Kongu plains below. If these grasslands or sholas were diverted for development could their complex structure and functions be compensated for by money alone?

Past actions in diverting grasslands for eucalyptus plantations that fed pulp for paper factories have irreversibly upset the hydrological dynamics of the Nilgiri plateau. Wild grass and insect diversities have declined remarkably. Since these grasslands also served for centuries as material and cultural pastures for the Toda people, conversion into plantations also had implications for their subsistence and rituals.

There are many such forests that continue to provide ecological and cultural services. Take, for instance, the forests of Billigiri Rangswamy Temple Wild Life Sanctuary in Karnataka. Its landscape is a diverse mosaic of tropical habitats. Ecologists see the species diversity of the forest and its functionality as adaptations to centuries of shifting cultivation by Soliga tribals. The forests continue to provide non-timber forest produce to the Soligas and water to people in the Chamrajnagar plains below. The forests have tigers and their prey base. How can the variety of creatures that rely on this ecosystem be compensated, if these forests were diverted? Forests, especially protected areas that contain biologically and culturally diverse values need to be conceived as possessing incomparable values.

NPV of an ecological system should indicate all the costs and benefits involved in maintaining the system as such and in comparison to a next best alternative. Once we know this value-a challenge given the variety of scientific opinions about valuation methods-it could be calculated for the entire area to be deforested and remitted to the fund as required by the bill. But whether this amount will be enough to generate an equivalent value to that of benefits foregone in the diverted ecosystem is not under consideration. Compensatory funds should ensure the same NPV in the 'compensated forest' areas. Spending the fund on much less valuable land raises questions on the use of NPV.

NPV calculated with added weightage on infinite flow of ecological and cultural services in the context of climate change, may in fact permit conversion of the landscape. It may provide incentive for the department to raise resources through diversion of forests while low NPV of unit area diverted may trigger greater demand for diversion.

The NPV approach to compensating ecological loss has another problem: a single consolidated value per unit area of a particular forest type inadequately reflects the multiple ecological, socio-cultural and financial costs and benefits. A segregated multi-criteria approach to NPV can probably address the problem. Accepting this approach depends on the political will to compensate for lost socio-ecological benefits.

(CSE/Down To Earth Feature Service)