A Community Threatened, a Response That Works
Located between the Himalayan Mountains and the Bay of Bengal, Bangladesh and its people are highly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. Ice and snow melting from the mountain tops often combine with rain and draining water from neighboring countries to swell Bangladesh’s numerous rivers, causing floods that sometimes last several months. Seasonal droughts in the northwestern region of Bangladesh are also intensifying. Such hazards have a significant effect on agricultural production, livestock population, employment, and health.
One of the most severe impacts of climate change that will hit Bangladesh, however, is sea level rise. It is estimated that in the next 40 years the sea level will rise 45 cm. While this may not seem like a lot, a mere 45 cm will cause the loss of 15,668 square kilometers of land and will force 5.5 million people who have done nothing to cause the problem of climate change to migrate to higher, and more densely populated, lands.
Meet Asiya Begum
Asiya Begum lives in the village of Charipara, in southern tip of Bangladesh, on the river delta. Asiya’s village is already facing the consequences of sea level rise. In the last ten years, the river has engulfed approximately 1 square kilometer of land and has displaced 100 families. “Our poverty is caused by river erosion; people of two villages are now living in one,” says Asiya.
Asiya is a widow and lives with her elderly mother and her two sons. Her 14-year-old son, Mohibur, and her 12-year-old, Habibur, are not going to school so that they can work during the day to provide additional income to the family. And Asiya herself is using a small portion of land as a sharecropper. Over the years, however, Asiya has seen her crop production decreasing due to the lack of irrigation and increasing salinity of the land.
In 2007, Asiya’s family lost all their crops due to the devastating hurricane Sidr. The hurricane also increased the salinity of the land, making it even harder to grow food. Asiya was experiencing the worst effects of climate change.
Community-Based Solutions
Because of the impact that climate change was having on communities like Asiya’s, ActionAid Bangladesh decided to incorporate climate adaptation into its development programs. ActionAid Bangladesh’s adaptation work has focused on increasing livelihood resilience and adaptive capacity in affected villages. Central to the approach is working with communities to identify their problems and to assess possible solutions.
Asiya’s community was clear that the decrease in food production was one of their greatest struggles. The community collectively decided to try new seed varieties and new farming methods to get better yields. They also wanted to fix a gate in an embankment to prevent the saline water from entering into the farms.
Asiya volunteered to be part of the project and was given three different varieties of seeds to test. The seeds were sourced from the Bangladesh Rice Research Institute in Dhaka, and Asiya was trained to use the seeds and inputs to get better yields.
Asiya says, “Now we are doing Boro cultivation [a variety of rice], which was not practiced in this village. We are going to harvest the rice in a few days, and we never had rice during this time of year. With the help of the project our poverty is getting reduced.”
The news seeds, a better irrigation system, fertilizers, and insect traps resulted in almost a doubling of yields and increased the possibility of producing vegetables in the next season. “We couldn’t have vegetables before. Now with the support, we can take vegetables and can even sell them. From every aspect, things are now getting better,” says Asiya.
Through this and other projects, Asiya and other community members were able to build their knowledge of how to adapt to increasing salinity of farmland. Asiya is now looking to her government and other agencies for further support in adapting to climate change.
The Way Forward
While ActionAid Bangladesh’s support to Asiya’s community is invaluable, climate adaptation projects and programs need to be massively scaled-up in order to truly confront the magnitude of the problem. Industrialized countries have created the problem of climate change through unabated pollution; it is the responsibility of those countries to pay for the damages being caused in poor countries.
ActionAid is working on the ground in poor countries to facilitate community-based solutions to climate change. But we are also working at the international level to press rich countries to live up to their responsibility and provide financing for the developing world’s staggering adaptation needs. Please sign up to receive ActionAid’s updates and to learn more about our efforts at the local to the international level.
