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Bangladesh needs West's help,
but isn't waiting for it
Lisa Friedman
Bangladesh may be Mother Nature's punching bag, but in the battle for survival against climate change, this tiny, riverine nation isn't going down without a fight.
Already, Bangladesh has invested 10 million taka, the equivalent of about $150,000, to build cyclone shelters and create a storm early-warning system. Earlier this year, it allocated another $50 million to the country's agriculture and health budgets to help "climate-proof" certain development sectors. The nation's agricultural research centers are devising salinity-resistant strains of rice. And the South Asian nation was one of first to deliver to the United Nations a strategy outlining what it needs in order to cope with the worst effects of climate change.
"They're not waiting," said Saleem Huq, lead author of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's most recent report on sustainability.
Leaders throughout Bangladesh say the nation desperately needs money from the West to adapt to problems that the world's leading climate scientists agree are caused by the emissions of industrialized nations. But they also point out that the country's history with catastrophe has in some ways given Bangladesh a head start in knowing how to cope with climate change.
Moreover, even as leaders here say they believe the West owes Bangladesh and other vulnerable countries compensation for global warming, they also bristle at those who view Bangladesh as just a hopeless, helpless nation forever in need of aid.
Learning to survive
"We had a terrible famine in the 1970s, we've had every cyclone you can possibly think of, a huge series of natural disasters," said Omar Rahman, dean of the Independent University, Bangladesh. But while poverty abounds, he pointed out, starvation is rare, and the country's food production has improved tremendously in recent decades.
Moreover, until the economic slump, Bangladesh's economy was growing at a pace not far behind India's, which Rahman attributed to a developing culture of entrepreneurship and a thriving garment industry. Indeed, in 2007 - some 30 years after former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger declared Bangladesh "an international basket case"-the World Bank predicted that Bangladesh could join the ranks of middle-income countries inside two decades.
"What I see is a country that has done spectacularly well in the face of very few advantages," Rahman said. "Bangladesh hasn't had a lot of things handed to it on a platter."
Added Rabab Fatima, South Asia representative for the International Organization for Migration, "This country is quite a miracle, I must say."
"It's completely people-driven. Despite all natural odds, despite bad politics and bad governance, people don't starve here. The country is almost self-sufficient in rice production. And for the size of this country, this tiny country, to feed 150 million people-that itself is a miracle," Fatima said.
Now the country's leaders are hoping to launch another miracle: survival of the greatest combinations of natural disasters that the heavens can rain down upon them.
Aiming local resources
The current focus is on a method known as community-based adaptation, which Huq and others say will help the very poorest communities access funding and information. Advocates say the initiatives, still being formed, are aimed at helping villages most at risk launch projects, with the money going to them instead of trickling down through global and national funds.
That's something that could help in places like Gabura in southwest Bangladesh, where nearly six months after a tidal flood rocked the village and left thousands homeless, a local environmental activist continues to send out e-mails pleading for philanthropists and others to help the people who live there.
Exactly how much funding Bangladesh needs overall is unclear. Leaders here estimate it will cost $500 million just to raise embankments in some areas about 20 centimeters (7.8 inches) - a level that by the time construction is complete might not even be high enough to keep growing storm surges at bay.
"Adaptation sounds very easy, but it's a costly proposition for us," said Hamidur Rashid, former director-general for multilateral economic affairs in Bangladesh's foreign ministry.
Ainun Nishat, Bangladesh representative for the International Union for Conservation of Nature, called food security the country's top short-term priority.
Two years ago, he said, Bangladesh lost 10 percent of its crop to flooding. The IPCC estimates that Central and South Asia can expect a 30 percent drop in yield by 2050. For a country that depends on rice for survival, a major loss of production could translate into a widespread nutrition crisis.
Sitting in a glass jar on the wooden ledge of a bare classroom, the 47th strain of salt-resistant rice developed by the Bangladesh Rice Research Institute doesn't look like much at the moment. But it could help save the country.
It is a product of the waist-high plots of numbered and labeled rice paddies at the institute on the outskirts of Dhaka. Researchers at BRRI said they have spent more than 15 years testing new, high-yielding varieties of rice that can grow in the salty waters that, because of rising sea levels in the Bay of Bengal, have already moved into rice-producing areas, causing crop yields to shrink.
Cell-phone warning system
Meanwhile, in the heart of town, engineers with Bangladesh's Center for Environmental and Geographic Information Services are creating a storm early warning system that can be sent out via cell-phone text message. Cell phones are widespread, even in remote villages.
Already, vast improvements in the country's early warning storm systems already have been credited with saving countless lives during Cyclone Sidr in 2007. Ahmadul Hassan, senior water resources planner at CEGIS, said the cell phone is ideal for disseminating warnings even more rapidly.
Even so, Hassan said, more development aid is required to address the threat of climate change. Warnings are important, and so are the building of new cyclone shelters and the strengthening of embankments. But the real work of preparing for climate change, he said, lies in population control, increasing access to education, and raising income levels.
As night fell in Dhaka, Nishat sat at the rooftop table that he said was the place where Bangladesh's leaders agreed on how best to prepare for climate change. He said he is eager to see his country do things that won't cost much money but that could spark dramatic changes in governance-like establishing climate change divisions in every ministry.
"We're not talking about additional manpower. We're talking about making climate change an inroad into everything," he said. "Climate change is still something abstract to people."
Rahman, meanwhile, is busy setting up a major center for studying adaptation at his university. Spearheaded by Huq and leading Bangladeshi scientists like Atiq Rahman, the proposed center works on the theory that students will learn more in the living laboratory of Bangladesh than in a sterile classroom in Cambridge or Oxford about what vulnerable countries need to cope with climate change.
Record 'of doing things'
Omar Rahman pointed to the country's successful, decades-long campaign to drive down population growth as a measure of what Bangladesh can accomplish. Three decades ago, he noted, the average family had seven children. Now the average family has three, and the number is reducing still. There's a climate change lesson in that, he insists.
"We have established a record of doing very complex things," he said. "In a traditional, conservative country, to make it acceptable to talk about birth control shows that we are capable of sustaining social change, if we have enough support."
He said it's important to him that Bangladesh's achievements be understood, and to avoid having his country labeled as an "eternal victim."
"You basically give up as soon as you label a country a victim. There's fatigue," Rahman said.. "Bangladesh is a resilient country. We have shown the world that we can adapt, that we can confront things, that we are not just passive victims of disasters."
Sarder Shafiqul Alam, a research fellow at the Bangladesh Centre for Advanced Studies, said there's a larger picture to consider. Alam said he doesn't want the world to become so focused on helping countries cope that it ignores the need to reduce emissions. All the cyclone shelters in the world, he said, will only go so far.
"Our adaptation will not last very long," Alam said. "Adaptation has some limit."
Courtesy : ClimateWire
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Need for political solution to Tamil people's problems
Jehan Perera in Colombo
Last week Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa appealed to the cornered Tamil Tiger rebels to lay down their arms and surrender to save their lives and ensure the safety of tens of thousands of civilians trapped with them in a "no-fire" zone. A total of 2,127 civilians, including 919 children, fled to government-controlled areas late after the military captured the last Tiger stronghold outside the "no-fire" zone, a military statement said.
More than 60,000 Tamil people are presently in government welfare camps in the north having broken free of the LTTE and fled. Another large number, said to be a similar number or two times as many are trapped in a 20 square kilometer zone that the government has designated as a safety zone, but which is still under LTTE control. The latest reports are that the LTTE no longer controls any territory other than what the government has designated as the safety zone and has suffered heavy casualties.
Harmful polarisation
However, the silence of Tamil people elsewhere in the country, even in Colombo, is a notable feature of the present phase of conflict. Their silence is accompanied by the utterances of some Sinhalese nationalists which are not in consonance with life in a pluralistic society. So far there is no answer to such harmful polarisation either from the Tamil people in Sri Lanka or from the rest of Sri Lankan society including the political opposition.
Recently the National Peace Council for which I work, organized an in-house seminar on international experiences in conflict transformation through war. There were three case studies that focused on military campaigns that ended in military victories. These were the cases of the Boers of South Africa in the early 20th century, the Sikhs of the Indian Punjab in the 1990s and Chechnya in Russia at the beginning of this century. One notable feature of the seminar was the silence of a section of the Tamil participants at the seminar. While Tamils who were critical of the LTTE were prepared to speak up, those who were critical of the government's military-centered approach maintained a stoic silence.
Suspicion
There are many reasons for this. The LTTE's strategy of infiltrating the civilian population and launching terrorist attacks has led to a situation where the government's security forces tend to view all Tamils with a measure of suspicion. LTTE cadres have launched a variety of terror attacks in Colombo and elsewhere after posing as regular Tamil civilians. The government's counter terror strategy has been to regularly check identity papers and do search and cordon operations in Colombo and elsewhere. It is inevitable that the target of such investigations will be those of Tamil ethnicity whose first priority will be to keep a low profile and stay out of trouble, even not speaking of the political solution they would like to see take the place of the military solution.
Stoic silence
However, the reluctance to speak up and be critical of the government goes beyond being suspected to be an LTTE cadre. Even those who are suspected to be in opposition to the government's current military strategy are liable to find themselves at the receiving end of government's punitive measures. In this context, civil society groups have expressed concern about the recent arrest of Shantha Fernando, a senior official of the National Christian Council and a human rights activist. He was reportedly detained at the international airport where he was about to board a flight to India in order to take part in a seminar on the prevailing humanitarian crisis in Sri Lanka. It is understood that his detention is sought to be justified by his possession of material that the government considers to be adverse to the country's security interests.
There are two other instances of arrests and detentions that would chill the expression of public opinion. One is the arrest of the editor of the popular Sudar Oli newspaper, N Vithyatharan on the grounds that he had information concerning the most recent suicide attack on Colombo by the air wing of the Black Tigers. While any suicide attack has to be condemned and rejected on account of their morally irreprehensible nature, the media in a democratic country, even one at war, has a right to seek information regarding such incidents in order to disseminate them to the public.
Shrinking space
Another incident that could have a deterrent impact on expressing views on the issues of war and peace was the arrest and detention for a short period of the owner of Poobalasingam bookstore, a well known books shop that sells publications in the Tamil and English languages. This was on the grounds of selling one of the issues of Ananda Vikadan, a Tamil magazine published in Chennai. The issue in question included a story on the LTTE air attack on Colombo with photographs of LTTE members. Ananda Vikadan magazine is a respected family magazine that has been imported into Sri Lanka from India for over thirty years. Instead of arresting the bookshop owner the government could simply have confiscated this particular edition of the magazine if it had found it objectionable.
The three arrests and detentions outlined above are all indicative of the shrinking democratic space for dissent and alternative perspectives. While emphasizing the need for a political solution, the rule of law must be put in place for the peaceful coexistence of the society. At the seminar on conflict transformation, one of the main arguments was that the present situation in the country is akin to a boiling pot of water; as the water boils steam forms; although a lid may be applied to the pot pressure will build inside the pot. The steam will eventually escape, perhaps even burning the hand that seeks to forcibly hold down the lid in place. The greater the pressure on the lid, the greater will be the pressure of the steam, eventually even bursting the pot.
Fuelling grievances
The important point for us to note is that the fire beneath the pot is fuelled by political grievances, the root cause of the conflict. As such a lid will only contain the steam, the symptoms of the conflict, and that too temporarily, but not the cause. The conflict will continue until this heat is extinguished, by meaningful political dialogue that leads to a transformative solution acceptable to all Sri Lankans.
The presentation of the Punjab conflict has resemblance to Sri Lanka today. The Indian counter insurgency strategy was effective because it succeeded in winning over the majority of the Sikh population to the political process.
Once a solution was found that was acceptable to the majority of Sikhs, the division became one of those who wanted democratic peace and a dwindling minority who advocated violence. The civilian Sikh population rejected the Sikh militants as the opportunities presented by the political process outweighed continued violence.
Only through political engagement and involvement of the affected population was the Indian state able to definitively win the counter insurgency campaign. Although the Indian government has not got itself involved politically in pushing a solution in Sri Lanka this time around, its provision of two fully equipped field hospitals for the civilian victims of the fighting in the north is suggestive of a hearts and minds strategy directed at the Tamil people both in Sri Lanka and Tamil Nadu.
In Sri Lanka, on the other hand, the political process and hearts and minds strategy appears to have got into a state of dormancy again. Although Prof. Tissa Vitarana, the Chairman of the All Party Representatives Committee which has been mandated by President Mahinda Rajapaksa to work out a political solution to the ethnic conflict has affirmed that 95 percent of the job has been done, there are has been a long period in which nothing has been seen to happen. Instead the government's entire effort seems to be to militarily defeat the LTTE and to win provincial elections in the south of the country. But winning peace means winning the hearts and minds of the Tamil people, even as the Indian government did in the Punjab.
For peace in Sri Lanka, the government needs to win over the majority of Tamil people to the belief in a political solution and that the government is genuinely concerned about their welfare. Even while the Sri Lankan government takes steps to eliminate the LTTE as a military and terrorist power it needs to reaffirm with deeds on the ground that a just political solution for the Tamil people's grievances is necessary to resolve the ethnic conflict. The government also needs to make it clear that it stands for a just political solution in which human rights are protected for all, and that it will support the work of those who stand for such a future Sri Lanka.
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ISLAMABAD DIARY
Is something more sinister
in store for Pakistan?
Jonaid Iqbal in Islamabad
It has been a full week filled with the remembrance functions relating to 30th anniversary of the late Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. The functions were to be momentous affairs. Hundred of thousands poor haris (landless peasants) gathered at Larkana thronging the mausoleum of the former premier as well as graves of three martyrs of the Bhutto clan, including his beloved daughter Benazir, and her two brothers, Mustafa and Shahnawaz.
The death of the last two is still a mystery; and the assassination of Shaheed Benazir Bhutto is also a mystery, waiting to be probed by a UN Commission, within six months, according to her widower, and now President, Asif Ali Zardari.
Zardari knows murderers
The Pakistan President once stated that he knew who his wife's assassins were, but has refrained from disclosing the murderers' names.
Speaking at Benazir's death anniversary function at Karachi, a professor asked for public apology for what he called 'judicial execution' of the popular leader, who founded the Pakistan People's Party in 1967.
Other incidents happening on Benazir's 30th death anniversary day stole the thunder of the Remembrance Day which indicates that the extremists and the militants might have decided to move closer inland, near the federal capital, otherwise how could we explain a suicide bomber striking at a Frontier Constabulary post, killing six security personnel and injuring about 20 civilians, well within Islamabad. It was followed next day by one more suicide bomber attacking an Imambargah (mosque of the Shia community) at the municipal town of Chakwal, inside Punjab, but only 90 kilometres away from the federal capital, taking a death toll of 26 deaths and 50 injured.
The President and the Prime Minister issued inane condemnation statements, and the Interior Minister asserted that the culprits were stopped in the nick of time at the approach gates which minimised the number of casualty. The Prime Minister also wants the security forces to trace and wipe out the bases of militants, there is little indication that this job has been vigorously pursued or the statement has been made pursuant to the public demand.
Flogging a girl
In fact the Muttahada Qaumi Movement provided an example of moving in step with the public mood by sponsoring protest day to condemn the flogging by Swat militants of a 17-year young girl. The Talibans say that the flogging of the girl took place six months ago, much before they struck a deal of reconciliation with the present government. That hardly touches the central legal point whether they have any right to take law in their hand and commit a most heinous crime, without any regard to the law of the land. It shamed the country making a laughing stock of the religion.
Chief Justice's suo moto
The people of Pakistan are justifiably angered at the ugly incident, and the public outcry has forced the reinstated Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry to take suo moto notice. However, as one anchor person said in a TV talk show, it is debatable whether Swat's Sufi Mohammad or his son-in-law would really show up before the C.J.
Another dimension to these sordid affairs is being voiced by another anchor person. The broadcaster tried to make a case whether these incidents had some connection with U.S. President Obamas's newly announced outlined policy on Afghanistan and Pakistan, and the fact of his doling out $4.5 billion, over the next five years, to civil society organization. A case in point is Baitullah Mehsud broadcast statement giving credit to one of his henchmen for causing deaths of 14 persons well inside the US, while the Americans say that the man who committed the crime was from Vietnam. Is something more sinister is in store for Pakistan?
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OBAMA IN TURKEY
'US not at war with Islam'
Tom Raum in Ankara, Turkey
Barack Obama, making his first visit to a Muslim nation as president, declared last Monday the United States "is not and will never be at war with Islam."
Urging a greater partnership with the Islamic world in an address to the Turkish parliament, Obama called the country an important U.S. ally in many areas, including the fight against terrorism. He devoted much of his speech to urging a greater bond between Americans and Muslims, portraying terrorist groups such as al Qaida as extremists who do not represent the vast majority of Muslims.
"Let me say this as clearly as I can," Obama said. "The United States is not and never will be at war with Islam. In fact, our partnership with the Muslim world is critical ... in rolling back a fringe ideology that people of all faiths reject."
The U.S. president is trying to mend fences with a Muslim world that felt it had been blamed by America for the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
At a news conference earlier with President Abdullah Gul, Obama dealt gingerly with the issue of alleged genocide committed by Turks against Armenians during World War I. He urged Turks and Armenians to continue a process "that works through the past in a way that is honest, open and constructive."
Al Jazeera and Al Arabiyia, two of the biggest Arabic satellite channels, carried Obama's speech live.
"America's relationship with the Muslim world cannot and will not be based on opposition to al Qaida," the president said. "We seek broad engagement based upon mutual interests and mutual respect." "We will convey our deep appreciation for the Islamic faith, which has done so much over so many centuries to shape the world for the better, including my own country," Obama said.
The president spoke for about 25 minutes from a small white-marble-and-teak rostrum in the well of a vast, airy chamber packed with Turkish lawmakers in orange leather chairs.
Except for a few instances of polite applause, the room was quiet during his speech. There was a more hearty ovation toward the end when Obama said the U.S. supports the Turkish government's battle against PKK, which both nations consider a terrorist group, and again when he said America was not at war with Islam. Lawmakers also applauded when Obama said the United States supports Turkey's bid to join the European Union. Earlier, Obama said he stood by his 2008 assertion that Ottoman Turks had carried out widespread killings of Armenians early in the 20th century, but he stopped short of repeating the word "genocide." Gul said many Turkish Muslims were killed during the same period. Historians, not politicians, Gul said, should decide how to label the events of those times.
In his 2008 campaign, Obama said "the Armenian genocide is not an allegation," but rather "a widely documented fact supported by an overwhelming body of historical evidence."
Now that he is president, the genocide question may not be Obama's best issue for taking a tough stand that antagonizes a key ally. It is important in U.S. communities with large numbers of Armenian-Americans, but it has a low profile elsewhere.
In his speech to the parliament last Monday, Obama said the United States strongly supports the full normalization of relations between Turkey and Armenia. He also noted that the United States "still struggles with the legacy of our past treatment of Native Americans." And the president also urged Turkey to help Israel and Palestine live "side by side in peace and security."
Obama's visit is being closely watched by an Islamic world that harboured deep distrust of his predecessor, George W. Bush.
In talks with Gul, and Turkey's prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Obama hoped to sell his strategy for melding U.S. troop increases with civilian efforts to better the lives of people in Afghanistan and Pakistan. At end of meeting later in the day with Erdogan, Obama said: "Turkey is a critical strategic partner of the United States, not just in combating terrorism but in developing the kind of economic links, cultural links and political links that I think will help the world prosper."
Obama recognized past tensions in the U.S.-Turkey relationship, but said things were on the right track now because both countries share common interests and are diverse nations. "We don't consider ourselves Christian, Jewish, Muslim. We consider ourselves a nation bound by a set of ideals and values," Obama said of the United States. "Turkey has similar principles." Obama's trip to Turkey, his final scheduled country visit, ties together themes of earlier stops.
He attended the Group of 20 economic summit in London, celebrated NATO's 60th anniversary in Strasbourg, France, and on Saturday visited the Czech Republic, which included a summit of European Union leaders in Prague. Turkey has the largest army in NATO after the United States. It and tiny Albania, recently admitted, are the only predominantly Muslim members of NATO. Turkey opposed the war in Iraq in 2003 and U.S. forces were not allowed to go through Turkey to attack Iraq. Now, however, since Obama is withdrawing troops, Turkey has become more cooperative. It will be a key country after the U.S. withdrawal in maintaining stability, although it has long had problems with Kurdish militants in north Iraq.
Turkey maintains a small military force in Afghanistan, part of the NATO contingent working with U.S. troops to beat back the resurgent Taliban and deny al-Qaida a safe haven along the largely lawless territory that straddles Afghanistan's border with Pakistan. Turkey's participation in fighting Islamic extremism carries enormous symbolic importance to the Muslim world, and Turkey has diplomatic leverage with Pakistan and Afghanistan.
The author is an Associated Press writer.
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