- Tariq Karim
Prologue
Bangladesh is a heavily populated Muslim-majority developing country with notable resource constraints, prone to frequent natural disasters like hurricanes and floods. It is also plagued today by several levels of contestation taking place simultaneously and tending to interplay with one another. At one level there is the struggle between democracy and authoritarianism; at another level, there is the contestation between reverting the state to its secular moorings or making it an Islamic state; and on the third level, there is the contestation on what vision of Islam to be identified with – its long legacy of Sufi Islam, that is pluralist, inclusive and tolerant of other faiths, beliefs or practices, or the more recent intrusion of Wahabi-Salafi-Deobandi version of Islam that is exclusionist, intolerant of others and dictates conformity. Given these contestations, Bangladesh may be viewed as a front-line state in the global struggle underway today for democracy, secularism and tolerance towards others, and their outcome would have implications for the region and beyond. At the same time, Bangladesh’s vulnerability to the forces of nature could intensify the levels of these internal contestations, heightening the stakes for everyone involved or likely to be affected. With its finite land-mass, steadily growing population, limited resources and environmental vulnerability accentuated by alarming forecasts of the impact of global warming, and its proximity to unstable tectonic plates, the country faces some daunting challenges ahead in the next two decades.
Thomas F. Homer-Dixon in his seminal work on environmental scarcities and violent conflict had hypothesized that environmental scarcity causes large population movements, which in turn causes identity conflicts , and cited the case of Bangladesh and Northeast India in support. While identifying population growth putting additional strains on scarce land and contributing to brutal poverty as the main contributory cause for large scale migration from Bangladesh to India , he also asserted that the continuing growth of population at its present rate, worsening floods aggravated by deforestation in the upper reaches of Bangladesh’s rivers and construction of dams upstream by India have exacerbated the problem which is likely to magnify further in the future.
This paper will revisit the hypothesis enunciated by Thomas F. Homer-Dixon, about environmental scarcities and violent conflict, and examine whether it can be related to the case of Bangladesh, not only in taking stock of its developmental efforts to date, but also attempting to peer into the future prospects for the country.
This paper is in three parts: the first part will summarize the main thrust of Homer-Dixon’s hypothesis and findings; the second part will focus on what Bangladesh inherited at its birth and trace its development and progress (or not) in the 35 years since wresting its independent status as a nation-state; the last part will then, with the hindsight gained from the review, and available projections of its demography and resources, attempt to peer into what the Bangladesh landscape is likely to look like in 2025.
The paper will conclude that unless Bangladesh’s policy-makers adopt anticipatory thinking and a holistic approach now to resolving their problems and strategizing for the future, the country is likely to face critical and trying times ahead.
A. The Homer-Dixon paradigm: environmental scarcities and conflict?
Homer-Dixon’s thesis, propounded in 2000, stated simply, is as follows: As human population continues to grow, global economic output may also grow exponentially, but renewable resources will also decrease sharply. The future may witness widespread depletion and degradation of aquifers, rivers, and other water resources, decline of fisheries, and significant climate change (in this last, he was far ahead of his times, and almost prophetic in his pronouncement). His research showed that environmental scarcities were already contributing to conflicts in many parts of the developing world, harbingers of worse things to come. Scarcity of water, forests and fertile land is already an increasing reality. Such scarcity can sharply increase demands on the state and its institutions, and also simultaneously dramatically reduce their capacity to meet those growing demands, rendering the state fragile and even inducing it to circle the wagons and become authoritarian.
Homer-Dixon’s research focused on two fundamental questions: does scarcity cause violent conflict? If it does, how does it operate? Six types of environmental change were identified as plausible causes for conflict: greenhouse-induced climate change; stratospheric ozone depletion; degradation and loss of good agricultural land; degradation and removal of forests; depletion and pollution of fresh water supplies; and depletion of fisheries. Three hypothesis were applied to test the assumption of conflict: first, decreasing supplies of physically controllable environmental resources, such as clean water and good agricultural land would provoke “simple-scarcity” conflict or resource war; second, large population movements caused by environmental stress would trigger “group-identity” conflict; and third, severe environmental scarcity would simultaneously increase environmental hardship and disrupt key social institutions, which in turn would cause “deprivation” conflict. These hypotheses were tested rigorously through two case studies for each variable, which were then reviewed at a series of workshops of leading experts. Finally, the findings arrived at were once again scrutinized by a core team of experts.
Based on this research, Homer-Dixon posited as follows: While states in the past have fought more over non-renewable (petroleum and mineral) than renewable (water, forestry, agrarian) resources, the latter category, particularly river water, is more likely to spark off conflicts in the future. While such conflict may be inter-state, there is increasing evidence that such conflicts may also be intra-state (as in federal India). He has cited the case of the Bangladesh-India water sharing dispute as one of the cases in point of inter-state conflicts.
Homer-Dixon’s research concluded that environmental scarcity can cause violent conflict that tends to be persistent, diffuse and sub-national. However, he defines environmental scarcity as having three facets. The degradation of environmental resources and their depletion is only one source of environmental scarcity, the other two being population growth and unequal resource distribution. The intersection of all three forces impacting on the social matrix are likely to have the harshest social consequences, straining the capacities of states and in turn either propelling states to fragmentation and failure, or becoming increasingly authoritarian (the latter spinning off its own negative dynamics for state consolidation). In any event, these consequences have serious implications for international security, which one would view as encompassing regional security as well.
B. The last 35 years: Successes and failures – Lessons learnt?
In this section, we shall recount Bangladesh’s journey as an independent state since 1971, its mixed bag of successes and failures, and whether, and how, Homer-Dixon’s hypothesis was applicable to Bangladesh during these 35 years since its birth.
The split from Pakistan
Bangladesh was once a part of Pakistan, as the eastern province of East Pakistan, and remained so until 1971 when it split through a bloody process of internal conflict (which drew in India as an external influence and agent) to wrest independent existence as Bangladesh. It separated itself from its bondage with Pakistan after waging for nine months a war of liberation against the latter’s occupation forces in East Pakistan. One will resist the temptation here to go into the history of Bangladesh’s cohabitation with Pakistan for a quarter century since colonial India’s Partition in 1947 into the post-colonial reconfiguration into India and Pakistan. Suffice it to simply note here that when the split between the two artificially conjoined parts of Pakistan took place on December 16, 1971, East Pakistan, as the geographically smaller of the two units that had comprised the notionally federal state of Pakistan, was home to the greater half of the total population. With 144,000 sq kilometers (slightly smaller than Iowa), as compared to West Pakistan’s combined area of 803, 904 sq. kilometers (or slightly smaller than twice the size of California), East Pakistan had 75 million people as compared with a little over 62 million in the western wing.
However, if one were to compare the ratio of land mass to water bodies of the two units, a more telling contrast emerges: while West Pakistan (or post-1971 rump state of Pakistan) had 778,720 sq. kilometers of land area and 25, 200 sq. km of water bodies (ratio of 31:1), East Pakistan (or post 1971 Bangladesh) had 133,910 sq. km of land mass versus 10,090 sq km of water (13:1) . This latter phenomenon makes Bangladesh today the most densely populated state in the world. The intersection of its geographic location, densely packed demographic compulsions, and its geo-political legacy of history also makes it one of the most environmentally vulnerable states in the world today. While it has defied the doomsday prophecies pronounced by many at its birth, most notoriously by Dr. Kissinger having contemptuously dismissed it as destined to become a “bottomless basket case”, following its separation from Pakistan it has actually managed to do better than the latter in many respects.
It could be argued here that the split from Pakistan was itself as much driven by the struggle over limited resources and obtaining a fair share of them, as by cultural factors. In the initial decade or more of Pakistan’s existence, East Pakistan earned a major share of the entire country’s foreign exchange resources from its golden fibre, jute, these earnings peaking during the time of the Korean War. With the international price of jute subsequently remaining stagnant, and even deteriorating progressively, the jute industry became a millstone around Bangladesh’s neck. Apart from the short boom during the Korean War, it declined steadily as a post-Bangladesh state owned enterprise (SOE) from the mid-seventies, serving as a South Asian “iron rice bowl” replica which lost money and devoured heavily of government subsidies and revenues.
Additionally, in 1947, the whole of Pakistan had only seven textile mills, and all of these were located in East Pakistan. However, most of the foreign exchange revenues earned from the main cash crop (jute) were invested in West Pakistan, and within less than two decades all the textile mills in East Pakistan atrophied and were disinvested while West Pakistan developed a mighty textile industrial complex that then harnessed the eastern wing as its captive market – much as colonial Britain’s textile mills in Lancashire and jute mills in Dundee had treated its colonially possessed market.
Inheriting a wasteland
At its birth, Bangladesh inherited the dubious legacy of Pakistan’s weak and intrinsically flawed institutions and a vast and fast-growing population, overwhelmingly agrarian and teeming in abject poverty. Bangladeshis had inherited a wasteland, in the making of which they had also contributed through sabotaging the infrastructure in their nine-month war of liberation against the Pakistani occupation forces. Whatever moveable assets had existed had been spirited out by Pakistani forces well before their surrender at Dhaka to the Joint Indo-Bangladesh Command. Governance structures of the new nation were weak, and some like the Foreign and Defense Ministries had to be built up from the scratch. The systematic killing of a large number of intellectuals by Pakistani collaborators shortly before the end of the war had a traumatizing and debilitating effect on civil society and whatever civic institutions existed. The government-in-exile had returned with little, if any experience, in actual governance; it was also beset by factionalism between competing groups and local commanders (a somewhat scaled-down version of the factionalism between warlords that plagues Afghanistan today), as well as insidious factionalism within the government (with one group ideologically linked to the USA, another to Moscow, and yet a third group looking to China – mirroring the Cold War rubric that prevailed then). The situation was aggravated by the fact that the thousands of youthful freedom fighters returning with the refugees had no occupation or schools to return to, and no income-generating avenues available which meant that they took free and easy resort to the use of their guns. Bangladesh, like Pakistan, also had a large number of ‘madrassahs’.
At independence, the new state was also saddled with the enormous task of resettling and rehabilitating almost ten million Bangladeshis streaming back from refugee camps in India, where they had fled during the Pakistani military crack-down in East Pakistan in March 1971, and the resultant conflict that ensued. Bangladesh was not recognized as a sovereign entity by many countries during the first few critical years of its independent existence, during which period it had to wage a concerted campaign to win universal recognition . Then in the mid-seventies, barely four years after independence, the fledgling state was beset with a series of political crises, with the assassination of the then President (and founder of the nation), Sheikh Mujibur Rahman followed by a series of coups and counter-coups. This resulted in the new nation becoming hostage to governance by military or quasi-military regimes for the next 16 years. Bangladesh, at this point, appeared to be regressing into the very state of existence which had typified Pakistan at the time of her separation from the latter, and possessed many of the factors that are generally recognized as responsible for a state becoming a failing state.
Such a situation would be a daunting challenge of almost insurmountable proportions for any government. In any developing country, the government is at best able to reach its services to only a portion of its entire population. Depending on how much or how little it is endowed with natural resources, and not counting corruption, poor governance and the plethora of malaise that tend to bedevil most of the poorer countries, the government can at best effectively reach its services only to parts of the population it governs, to greater or lesser extent depending on its capacities and capabilities, neglecting significant parts of its populace who are left to fend on their own (anywhere from 40% to 60% of its total population). Since this untended mass needs someone to fulfill its needs one way or other, the empty space rarely remains untended, and non-state actors step in. How these neglected sections of society shape their activities (productive vs. unproductive) depends largely upon the nature, and more importantly, the agenda of the non-state actors filling the breach.
NGOs to the rescue and their contribution to societal development
A host of International Organizations and International NGO’s stepped in to help the fledgling government, as did many foreign governments with bilateral assistance. Simultaneously, alongside the international NGOs, a number of small indigenous or local NGOs also started working in relief and rehabilitation projects at first, or subcontracting to larger foreign NGOs. In the process, they developed their own capacity to take over larger areas of unfilled space, expanding their sphere of activities essentially through a learning process.
In the case of Bangladesh, NGOs played a seminal role in Bangladesh’s development efforts from its very inception. NGOs became partners of government in helping Bangladesh achieve commendable break-through in poverty alleviation, gender equality and overall social development. In the main this role has been positive, indeed essential to the survival of millions un-served by the state in basic needs. Micro-credit loans were invented by a Bangladeshi economist, Dr. Yunus, who founded the Grameen Bank in the mid-70’s. In recognition of the remarkable contribution to poverty alleviation, women’s empowerment and mainstreaming, Dr. Yunus and the Grameen Bank were awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace in 2006. NGO activities in social development have played a notable role in translating such socio-economic progress of women in the democratic transition of the country as well. To give an idea of the respective ‘space’ covered by Government and NGOs: in the poverty alleviation programs/projects alone, the government reaches 5.5 million people, while the NGOs cover 3.1 million (GO: NGO ratio of roughly 60:40). NGOs also cover as large, if not larger, swathes of territory in providing public goods like primary education, non-formal adult education, and suburban and rural healthcare.
In retrospect, despite the nay-sayers’ gloomy forecasts in 1971, Bangladesh has not done too badly as compared to Pakistan since its separation from the latter. As stated earlier, the combined population of the four provinces of West Pakistan totaled about 62 million people, while the province of East Pakistan alone accounted for about 75 million; three decades on, today Pakistan has over 150 million people, Bangladesh 145 million. In 1971, Pakistan (including Bangladesh) had a population growth rate of 3.2 % per annum. Today Bangladesh has a population growth rate of 1.6%, while Pakistan’s population growth rate still is perilously high though not any more as close to the 1971 figures. Literacy in Bangladesh is almost twice as much as that in Pakistan , thanks largely to NGOs’ stellar work. Women have increasingly become proactive partners in societal development, and indeed today are the backbone and majority workforce of its major industry, the garments industry. Countless women have become micro-entrepreneurs, thanks to the micro-finance programs of NGOs (and government also launching its own micro-credit programs). Women now have increasing say in the size of the family that they wish to have, and the quality of life they want their families.
Political development: democratization and underlying tensions
Although Bangladesh won independence riding the chariot of democratic resistance against Pakistan, as mentioned earlier, it regressed to the Pakistani-model of military coups and quasi-military authoritarian rule within 5 years of independence. However, Bangladesh civil society wrested a return to democracy in 1990 by mobilizing entire society against military rule, forcing the army back to their barracks. Having been plagued by a legacy of mutual distrust inherited from its days together with Pakistan, Bangladesh proved itself to be an innovator in political development. To overcome the legacy of mutual distrust that plagued the political culture, it invented the unique institution of the Non-Party Caretaker Government, a transitional body that takes over the reigns of government at the end of an elected Parliament’s (and government’s) term, and acts as inter regnum for a period of ninety days during which it must conduct elections to the next Parliament. This system worked well, initially, and transformed the country from the previous military dictatorship into a functioning democracy since end of 1990 ; since then, it has held three general elections for the national Parliament (largely free and fair as testified by a host of international observers), and has husbanded three relatively smooth transitions of power. Bangladesh society is marked by a remarkably high quotient of political awareness, with over 70% turnout of registered voters in the last three general elections, in 1991, 1996 and 2001. Importantly, women’s participation in the political process has steadily increased in the last three decades. Apart from the inescapable fact that the leaders of the two major parties from 1991 to 2001 were women with very feisty personalities, in the general elections of 2001, 56% of the voters were women. The Bangladesh High Court has three women judges (at last count). There are countless women lawyers and advocates, and there is no dearth of women’s rights activists engaged in a ceaseless battle for overall upliftment of women’s status and role in society.
However, all the pluses above notwithstanding, its polity has been seriously buffeted by an intensely politically polarized society and zero-sum contestation among its political parties that threatened recently to undo, even negate, all its positive achievements. These phenomena served to undermine the stability and essential neutrality of core institutions that hold up the state and are supposed to buttress it and make it strong. The creeping annexation of political space by an intolerant version of political Islam exacerbated the political polarization, and unless traditionally secular forces are once again able to wrest the middle grounds back, the consequences for Bangladesh’s future could be tellingly troubled. While Bangladeshis had shown themselves to be innovative in inventing new institutions, they also proved their ingenuity in undermining these same institutions and in the process subverting the integrity of other core institutions. As a result, prior to the general elections that were to have been held on January 22 this year, the country was on the brink of civil strife reminiscent of civil war, despite the fact that it has a homogenous society comprised 98% of ethnic Bengalis, with no significant sectarian, caste or tribal divisions. This provoked military intervention heavily disguised in civilian mufti, and a new civilian interim administration now is preparing to hold general elections sometimes in the not too distant future, or so it is widely hoped.
If the bottom line in politics is all about capturing power and holding on to it as long as possible, by whatever means possible, in order to be able to dictate how resources are allocated and distributed, effectively morphing what could have been a role model for transitional democracy into a rapacious rentier state, then one could conceivably argue here that that the contestations described above in fact has played out the Homer-Dixon hypothesis in the domestic context in Bangladesh, and in the process has also exacerbated relations and tensions with neighboring India. According to UN projections, Bangladesh’s current population of 145 million is to increase to 210 million by 2025. Population density today of near 900 people/sq.km is therefore also likely to aggravate exponentially. Since practically all the country’s arable land is already being over-exploited (with farmers often extracting three crops a year as compared to the usual two elsewhere), this population growth will further dramatically reduce the amount of cultivable land available per capita by 2025. The construction of the Farakka Barrage by India upstream of Bangladesh had the effect of almost completely drying up the Gorai River, one of its main distributaries that serviced one-thirds of Bangladesh, resulting in massive migration of economic refugees to India (India claims that there are at least 2 million illegal Bangladeshis in India). Assam and Tripura, two of the Northeast Indian states adjoining Bangladesh claim that they have been inundated with Bengalis from Bangladesh taking over their lands and jobs. Homer-Dixon asserted in his paper as follows:
“Over the last forty years, millions have migrated from East Pakistan or Bangladesh to the Indian states of Assam, Tripura, and West Bengal. Detailed data are scarce, since both India and Bangladesh manipulate their census data for political reasons, and the Bangladeshi government avoids admitting there is large out-migration, because the question causes friction with India. But by piecing together demographic information and experts’ estimates, we concluded that migrants from Bangladesh have expanded the population of neighboring areas of India by 12 to 17 million, of which only 1 or 2 million can be attributed to migration induced by the 1971 war between India and Pakistan that created Bangladesh. We further estimate that the population of the state of Assam has been boosted by at least 7 million people, to its current total of 22 million .”
Various human rights groups within Bangladesh and elsewhere have for some time been asserting that successive governments have turned a blind eye, if not actively encouraged, aided and abetted, politically backed thugs and client groups of using repressive tactics as an instrument of persuasion to force people (usually of the minority groups but not excluding poorer Muslims as well), along border areas (and elsewhere as well) to give up their properties and lands and flee for safety. The largest numbers of litigation (and crimes) are related to disputes over land and property. These dynamics may have actually exacerbated the political contestations into the zero-sum games that they have transformed into today. Notably, the water dispute, and other disputes, that have been resolved or been amenable to resolving through civil negotiation have typically been under the limited watch of the secular-democratic government, but this also triggered attempts by people in India laying claim to a return of their properties; this served to harden the stance of authoritarian or right-oriented/influenced parties to adopt a more confrontationist and negative approach.
Environmental vulnerability
Occupying as it does a unique geographic location that in satellite imagery appears as a very narrow stretch of land wedged in between the Himalayan Mountains on the north and the Indian Ocean on its south, Bangladesh is environmentally a very vulnerable country. Environmental problems faced by Bangladesh are largely caused by factors, which are teleological because of its geographical position. These include, deforestation of the Himalayas, rise in the sea level due to Global Warming, sharing river waters with India (54 rivers are shared between the two neighbors), floods, cyclones, droughts, and waste dumping that adversely impact on water and soil quality . The land that is Bangladesh serves as virtually the only major drainage channel for the vast river basin complex of the Ganges, the Brahmaputra and the Meghna, that originate in the Himalayas, in Tibet, Nepal, Bhutan, China and India, and drain into the Bay of Bengal. Floods have displayed a trend progressively to inundate larger tracts of lands for longer periods of time.
The Bay of Bengal that connects it to the Indian Ocean is shaped like a funnel that serves to suck in the winds of tropical cyclones of devastating magnitude in wind speeds and ocean waves. It is beset at regular intervals by horrific cyclones (hurricanes) originating in the Bay of Bengal, with wind-speeds that often exceed 150 miles/hour, and catastrophic floods of mammoth proportions that in the last two decades have tended to submerge almost two thirds of the land area under water for periods sometime stretching into over two months. It is remarkable how the country managed to keep the death toll down to well under 100 in the earlier floods – although it could do little to prevent loss of property and livestock.
Being the lower riparian with three major river systems flowing downstream from the Himalayas through Bangladesh into the Bay of Bengal, Bangladesh is hostage to environmental forces that it cannot hope to manage or mitigate on its own. On the one hand it has a surfeit of water for prolonged periods of time every year, some years being worse than others. On the other hand, ironically, it has acute shortages of water as well, and is actually subject to severe drought conditions, with longish spells of dry weather and moderate drought spread over an area of 5.46 million hectares. Very severe drought conditions have hit the country in 1951, 1961, 1975, 1979, 1981, 1982, 1984, and 1989, affecting 47% of the land and 54% of the population .
Of its total land surface of 12.31 million hectares, 7.85 million hectares are under agricultural cultivation. Due to population growth, the share per capita of this land is progressively “shrinking every year, making the resource base for agriculture, forest and wetlands more vulnerable and marginalized” . Total cultivable land dropped from 20 million hectares in 1983-84 to 17.5 million acres in 1997, an average loss of nearly 82,000 hectares per year, mainly on account of conversion of land into urban, peri-urban, industrial uses, and construction of roads and embankments . Recent surveys indicate that over 33% of total land acreage falls below the minimum threshold for sustainable cultivation .
The land degradation is a result of a combination of anthropogenic activities and natural causes emanating from geo-physical phenomena. Major anthropogenic causes are: shifting cultivation (particularly in hilly areas inhabited by tribal people), faulty cultivation practices that result in faster topsoil erosion, increasing use of pesticides that have a cumulative effect, soil mining in cultivable land, irrigation (which initially beneficial has long-term degradation effect because of continuous submersion of cultivable land), and over-exploitation of biomass (for fuel, fodder and thatching of huts and roofs). To this must now be added the sheer rapacity of men in power, whether political leaders (across the political divide) or unbelievably greedy bureaucrats, as recent events have unraveled. The political culture became increasingly one that promoted patronage to “loyalists”, which is essentially based on exchanging said loyalty for a share of resources that in turn translated into over-exploitation and allocation of scare land (including “extracting” land from marshland areas critically important for maintaining environmental equilibrium and stability and providing vital drainage). The notable natural causes are: changes in the coastal morphology, with accretion in coastal belt from silt deposit (over 2 billion tons annually) brought down by the rivers, which are offset by erosion of valuable estuarine territory that aggravates flooding; alarming rate and extent of river banks erosion, that aggravate socio-economic problems by taking away good agricultural land, standing vegetation and human settlements; sedimentation of agricultural land, caused by deposition of sandy materials as a result of deforestation of hills and faulty cultivation practices in upper catchment areas; intruding salinity, caused by lowering flow force and discharge of fresh water because of upstream withdrawals; land fragmentation because of land tenancy disputes and land inheritance laws made complex by rapidly growing population . An additional factor that needs to be taken into account, but needs further investigation to establish causality, is that almost every major flood in recent times has been accompanied by some tectonic activity – which presumably also affect the river beds of these massive bodies of water.
There has been an overall depletion of forestry in Bangladesh during the last three decades, with depletion rate in Bangladesh alone being as high as 3% per year, as compared with 0.6% per year for the rest of South Asia . “The share of land area under forest cover is the second lowest in the region, and has halved since the 1960’s,” … with “most natural forests now significantly degraded. Protected areas cover the smallest share of any country in South Asia, and pressure on wetlands and aquatic life is a particular concern” .
C: The next 25 years – Mapping the future
If Bangladesh is the most densely populated country of the world today, imagine what it will be in 2025, when its population is expected to be over 210 million. If it regresses into politics being drive by the forces of political Islam, there would be negative fallouts on the broad matrix of its development and ability to manage or tackle its problems of sustaining political stability and increasing economic growth, and mitigating further environmental degradation.
The World Bank lists Bangladesh as being “highly vulnerable to the projected impacts of climate change which will increase the already high risk of disasters, exacerbating existing vulnerabilities both to flooding and drought, and threatening agricultural productivity in coastal areas that face increasing salinity ”. .
The damming of one major river, the Ganges, by India a few miles upstream of Bangladesh had disastrous effects on Bangladesh’s ecology and economy. Of the distributaries that serviced almost a third of Bangladesh almost totally dried up, with invasive salinity creeping progressively upstream from the Bay, adversely affecting agriculture and economic activities, and wiping out numerous species of flora and fauna. Significant migrations took place from Bangladesh into India as a result, triggering political tensions within India as well as between India and Bangladesh. The problem was mitigated to some extent only after Bangladesh and India finally, after almost two decades of bickering, signed a water-sharing treaty on the Ganges in 1996. But the rivers are Bangladesh’s main arterial lifelines and its principal resource and they still remain hostage to upstream interventions that would be harmful to Bangladesh.
More alarming is the fact that the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in its latest report (released in February, 2007has identified Bangladesh as being extremely vulnerable to climate change, and at risk of losing a sizeable chunk of its territory because of continuing global warming that could result in ocean levels rising. Fierce cyclones churned in the Bay of Bengal are likely to become increasingly violent as the weather warms, and carry saltwater from the seas deeper into the country’s rivers, destroying the soil. Projections vary of the area of landmass that is likely to be swallowed up by the sea. A combination of melting glaciers (and there is concrete evidence of this, with satellite imagery revealing that the size of the Gangotri glacier that feeds the Ganges having shrunk dramatically in recent times), increased rainfall and constant erosion of river bank lands is certainly going to adversely affect the land to people ration in coming decades.
Most of Bangladesh is universally acknowledged to be at high risk from a combination of flooding, sea-level rises and stronger storm surges due to global climate change . According to one estimate, if the trend continues without remedial measures being taken urgently, Bangladesh may lose 20% of its land by 2030. The IPCC report said that sea-levels were likely to rise by up to 59 centimetres (23.2 inches) by the end of the 21st century. These estimates are still considered as being on the conservative side by the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany. While the IPCC in its earlier report of 2001 had estimated sea-level rise of less than 2 mm per year, satellite imagery data used by the Potsdam institute showed that actual se-level rise has averaged around 3.3 mm (0.12992126 inches) every year . The latest IPCC report admits “that sea levels were probably 13 to 19-1/2 feet higher when temperatures were 3°C higher than the present in a period between Ice Ages 125,000 years ago” , and that there is evidence that sea levels rose by 6.7 inches in the last 100 years alone. IPCC projections estimated a rise in global temperatures between “3.6° to 8.1°F above pre-industrial levels with a ‘best estimate’ of a 5.4°F rise, assuming carbon dioxide levels are stabilised at about 45% above current levels” . According to European Union studies, if present levels of consumption and anthropogenic stimulus continue unchecked, “any temperature rise above 2°C will cause ‘dangerous’ changes” . According to IPCC projections, it is very likely that extremes such as heat waves and heavy rains will become more frequent. (Some doomsday predictions would have it that if the bay rises by three feet by the turn of the century, it will swallow a fifth of Bangladesh). As the seas continue to swell, they will swallow whole island nations, from the Maldives to the Marshall Islands, inundate vast areas of countries from Bangladesh to Egypt, and submerge parts of scores of coastal cities. As sea-level rises, it changes the coastal morphology with the water line of any coast inevitably shifting more inwards into the land configuration, and also causes a shoaling effect on rivers – in other words, decreasing availability of land mass, putting populations and available resources under increasing pressures .
Already, two small islands in the Indian side of the Sunderbans coastal belt that is shared with Bangladesh have reportedly disappeared. In all, a dozen islands, home to 70,000 people, are in danger of being submerged by the rising seas. According to the IPCC report, “projected sea level rise could flood the residence of millions of people living in the low lying areas of South, Southeast and East Asia such as in Vietnam, Bangladesh, India and China. Even under the most conservative scenario, sea level will be about 40 cm higher than today by the end of 21st century and this is projected to increase the annual number of people flooded in coastal population from 13 million to 94 million,” the report states.
Bangladesh’s Jamuna River may be an example of the transformation of a river from a sustenance-provider to a threat to humans, resulting from global warming. The surging waters of the river, an arm of the Brahmaputra, have forced many residents living along the river’s banks to move their ramshackle tin-and-bamboo dwellings several times in the past 10 years. Scientists believe severe monsoons that cause the Jamuna to swell to dangerous levels every year are the result of global warming and greater glacier melt in the Himalayas, the newspaper said. At the same time, ironically, the current trends in glacial melting suggest that the Ganges and the Brahmaputra may become seasonal rivers in the near future as a consequence of climate change with important ramifications for poverty and the economies in the region.
Food production will also be adversely affected. A 2°C increase in mean air temperature could decrease rain-fed rice yields by 5-12% in China and under one scenario net cereal production in South Asian countries is projected to decline by 4 to 10% by the end of this century. In Bangladesh, production of rice may fall by just under ten per cent and wheat by a third by the year 2050. Bangladesh is likely to see more frequent and heavier rainfall that would almost certainly result in more severe flooding and increased land erosion (as well as increased river bed siltation, which aggravates flooding).
Environmental factors in confluence with man-made interventions reportedly are also inexorably changing Bangladesh’s geographical map. In changing course over the years the rivers swallow landmass, routinely devouring it by washing away the grounds of countless homes during every flood season, rendering people homeless and internally displaced, and overall exerting further pressures on the already overcrowded country’s very limited land-mass. River bank erosion has become much worse along the Padma and its distributaries in the western, south and south-central regions of Bangladesh, while the Brahmaputra-Jamuna is also causing large-scale erosion in the districts of Serajganj, Bogra, Kurigram, Jamalpur and Tangail . The major rivers, the Brahmaputra-Jamuna, the Ganges, the Meghna and the Padma, together swallow thousands of hectares of arable land on both sides of their banks ever year, being particularly merciless during high floods periods. Between 1970s and early 1990s, mean annual erosion is said to have been approximately 3,300 hectares along both banks of one river alone, the Jamuna . The 2007 floods, most devastating so far in recent decades (commencing with the then unprecedented floods of 1988) have reportedly already completely washed away 140 km of river banks and partially washed away an additional 1,345 km . Not only are rivers ‘devouring landmass” during rampaging floods, but with 300 kilometers of riverine border with India, Bangladesh appears to have lost 30,000 acres of land that have “drifted towards the Indian side following erosion of the riverbanks ”. Erosion in Sylhet reportedly washed away land of 20 to 25 families during the current year.
River erosion continues in the border areas as embankments of most of the rivers on Bangladesh side remain unprotected while dams and groins have been constructed at different points upstream in India. As such, the rivers change their directions breaking the banks inside Bangladesh. Bangladesh’s landmass in Sylhet is facing erosion as the flows of the river Surma and Kushiara are being changed due to construction of dams at Tipaimukh on the Barak river in the upstream, around 100 km off the border, to generate hydroelectricity.
The increasing political pressures of rapidly growing economies with vaulting ambition (India and China) are also exerting increasing political pressures upon governments for increasing availability of water for domestic, agricultural and industrial consumption as well as exponentially multiplying power generation for fueling and sustaining high growth levels. While India (and China) have their respective master plans that cater to anticipated exigencies of growing water and power shortages nationally, these plans would care little for the adverse consequences to lower riparian neighbours, unless all sides involved engage in constructive dialogue geared to resolution, rather than further aggravation of the problem. The existing problem is likely to be exacerbated, and made more complicated, by very recent reports that China is now contemplating diverting the waters of the Yarlung-Brahmaputra near its point of origin in Tibet for its own domestic needs .
“China plans to construct a dam at Yarlung Tsangpo point on the Brahmaputra River in Tibet province to divert 200 billion cubic metres of water annually to the Yellow River threatening a major ecological disaster in Bangladesh within the next few years” (The Daily Star Bangladesh, May 8, 2007).
Environmental and ecological phenomena transcend political borders, and can only be addressed through cooperative interlocution and cooperative action by the several parties affected. Since the dynamics of Bangladesh’s environment are also very likely to become the drivers of Bangladesh’s economic development, solutions can only be found through a holistic approach that embraces cooperation by all the regional stakeholders. The most logical approach would be to adopt a regional approach to address the looming disaster, a rough blueprint of which would ideally comprise the following elements:
- Adopting cooperative approach on a regional/sub-regional basis, that would include Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Nepal, and if possible China;
- Adopting a holistic approach to environmental issues, that would embrace:
- Joint management of shared commons – waters resources, forestry, etc. The only way that these floods can be managed (they cannot be entirely prevented) is if the sub-region/region were to undertake, simultaneously in a coordinated manner, activities for training and constructing protective embankments along the major river systems that flow across this sub-region, holistically, i.e. from the headwaters to the mouth of these rivers. Piecemeal attempts at taming rivers simply will not work, as the force of the river follows its own logic and finds it own course where left unaddressed.
- This would entail massive employment of human capital (conceivably with relatively little capital heavy machinery) along the entire passage of the river, resulting in employment generation (and consequently wealth generation) from the region of the headwaters to the mouth.
- Along with training these rivers could be undertaken expansion of existing irrigation channels (that would also serve as overflow drainage channels during floods), water conservation reservoirs, and generation of hydro-electricity (not necessarily through construction of mega dams, but perhaps cascading series of smaller barrages and using new technology for harnessing the river flows);
- All these activities would have direct or indirect beneficial economic effects for the peoples of the sub-region. The generation of hydro-electricity would also serve the purpose of rendering surplus hydro-carbon resources for export abroad.
- They would also dramatically reduce the current rate of deforestation (for fuel as well as for illegal logging).
- Regeneration of forestry and increasing forest coverage would create new and enhance existing carbon-sequestration zones, and these could be used as trade-offs, in terms of the existing provisions of the Kyoto Protocol;
- Soil erosion would be prevented through stopping such deforestation (by providing alternative clean energy), from training of the rivers so that large chunks of the river banks are not washed away from uncontrolled floods.
- This in turn would save properties of people from current washing away/destruction by rivers on the rampage during flood season, and siltation of river-beds would be reduced.
- The following additional beneficial spin-offs would also follow:
- The incentives of trade, whether intra-state, inter-state or border trade, would increase dramatically;
- Ancillary supportive infra-structure would be developed;
- Rivers would be rejuvenated where stagnating, and open up supporting avenues for human activities without risk of environmental degradation
- More people-to-people contacts would be spurred, promoting better understanding.
However, existing political mindsets that fuel, and are fueled in turn, by lack of sufficient information being available to the general public would first have to be consciously addressed and overcome by coordinated efforts to inform all stakeholders and woo their support – be they the local people who are directly affected, local opinion-moulders and decision-makers, and political leadership at local, national and regional levels. This process would be immensely facilitated by studies that are jointly undertaken, quantifying for local relevance how many households in how many villages in which areas would be beneficiaries of these multi-purpose activities and their end-products, whether protective embankments, rural infrastructure development that would spin off increased commercial activities, or power generation that would qualitatively improve lives; conserving precious forests resources and optimizing agricultural activities without degrading the soil, through imaginative and innovative diversification in crop rotation and fisheries exploitation. The wheel does not have to be re-invented here. Possibly, such studies already exist, but in fragmented format. They would need to be collated, as far as possible, and compounded together cohesively to make sense comprehensively to local and larger audiences at the same time.
Future prospects – harmonizing domestic compulsions and priorities with external realities
Both the Indian and Chinese actions, while reflecting the harsh realities of meeting increasing water and power shortages for their fast growing populations of over 1 billion each, could spell disaster for lower riparian Bangladesh. It would be unrealistic of Bangladesh to indulge in injured self-righteousness and acrimonious recriminations against either or both the other parties. Previous experiences with trying to invite world support against bigger powers were not successful, and only complicated matters more, and weakened Bangladesh’s opportunity for deriving maximum advantage when available. Trying to play off India against China is not likely to succeed either, given the trajectory of global developments.
Given that the history of festering disputes between Bangladesh and India indicate that disputes have been more amenable to resolution (albeit not necessarily easily) under democratic-secular oriented centrist-left-of-centre dispensation being in power in Bangladesh; given that regimes with a contrary orientation have tended to adopt policies of animosity (sometimes bordering on bellicosity towards India); and given that Indian foreign policy dynamics over the last 35 years have demonstrated that there tends to be a broad consensus on foreign policy issues across party-divides in the Indian polity (in which parties across the political divide cannot be played off against each other where national interests are involved); the future of Bangladesh in the next two decades (four general elections)will be inevitably tied up with how Bangladesh and its citizens chose define themselves politically, in the domestic and larger context, and could conceivably unfold in either of the following trajectories:
Scenario A:
Bangladesh politics reverses into authoritarianism that rejects secularism and privileges Islam – privileging stressful relations with neighbours
In this scenario, there would be further polarization on issues between Bangladesh and India, the minority is likely to come under further pressures that would force them to seek refuge in the safe haven of India, disputes over water resources and mineral resources located offshore (the maritime boundary between the two countries remain unresolved to date) would escalate perhaps even triggering armed intervention by India. Diversion or unilateral action of waters on other major rivers upstream by the upper riparian is inevitable and would have disastrous consequences replicating (but in much worse form) the Ganges waters diversion scenario and its effects, triggering massive migration of economic refugees. The additional deleterious effects of global warming and climate change as described earlier in this paper will deepen and broaden the scope of the inter-border disputes. The phenomenon of militant Islam will reactively grow broader and deeper in Bangladesh, and in combination with the dynamic of Islamic fundamentalism being further consolidated in Pakistan (as appears to be the inexorable trend), the Indian Muslims who constitute possibly the third, if not second largest Muslim population globally, will not remain entirely unaffected by these developments. These developments, accelerated by the drivers of globalization, will also tend to sharpen, and heighten the polarization and civilisational conflict between the forces of militant Islam and the non-Islamic world, whether in the immediate region or the larger world community, is likely to be further vitiated. It will matter little at that stage to try to establish causal responsibility for a phenomenon that will essentially become a vicious circle that will feed continually on itself to expand.
Scenario B:
Bangladesh politics reverts to secular-democracy without completing marginalizing Islamic parties, thus co-opting them within a consensual framework, eschewing the zero-sum paradigm.
In this scenario, it will be relatively easier to engage both India and China in constructive dialogue and embark on cooperative ventures with them in concert with other regional neighbors/parties involved. Given political will (a sine qua non for this scenario to unfold) and policies underpinned by broad consensus (which seems to be a tall order at this moment) will lend substance and resilience to national policies and make them more easily acceptable to partners in negotiations. All stakeholders would perceive possession of ownership and the advantages to be reaped from such cooperative ventures, and also be in a position to reap benefits individually for themselves and their local constituencies. The process of marginalization of peripheral groups/entities would be effectively reversed, thus removing the casus belli of long-festering insurgencies that have plagued the region. Overall global negotiations on environmental issues would also become easier, since there will emerge possibilities that enhance win-win tradeoffs. Stabilization of the domestic political scenario will deprive extremists, from either polar extremity, the space to operate viably, removing the spin-offs of internal strife, further degradation of environmental resources, and potential spin-offs for conflict build-up.
In order to be able to address the problems that could plague it in the future, therefore, Bangladesh (and more importantly Bangladeshi civil society) needs to indulge in anticipatory thinking and resort to holistic planning. The drivers of these can only be good governance, visionary outlook and proactively positive citizen engagement. Whether Bangladeshis will be able to, or chose to, do this will depend on how Bangladesh resolves its current domestic political crisis, and how it addresses its external relations and larger issues related to environmental dangers. It would behoove policy-makers and those who mould opinions to embrace pragmatism that, while keeping a close eye on promoting and consolidating national self-interest, also at the same time offers the scope for regional advancement that bounces back to further advantages and benefits at the narrower local and national levels – in other words abjuring the zero-sum paradigm of a one-way street, instead opting to drive along a two-way highway, with an eye on the rear view mirror of history.
Otherwise, the Homer-Dixon paradigm looming on the not-too-distant horizon looks forebodingly realistic and self-fulfilling.
This is based on a paper earlier presented by the author at a seminar on Futures at the department of Government & Politics, University of Maryland, in May 2007
The author is former Additional Foreign Secretary and Bangladesh Ambassador to the United States. He teaches at the University of Maryland and at Virginia International University.
Thomas F. Homer-Dixon, Environmental Scarcities and Violent Conflict: Evidence from Cases, International Security, Vol. 19, No. I (Summer 1994), pp. 5-40 (As part of Peace and Conflict Studies Program, University of Toronto, Canada.
India claims that there are as many as over 2 million illegal Bangladeshis in India. Additionally, the Hindu minority population of Bangladesh has shrunk from having comprised over 15% of the population to a little over 10% of the total population today.
Indian territory bounds Bangladesh geographically on three sides; when conflict erupted within East Pakistan following the army crack-down on the Bengalis, 10 million refugees streamed into India during the next nine months of the ensuing conflict, to seek shelter in camps there, thus effectively drawing in India as an interested party with its own security and other concerns.
The Nixon administration, for Cold War geo-political considerations, was fiercely opposed to the splitting of Pakistan and Bangladesh’s creation, despite the fact that the movement for separation by the Bengalis of East Pakistan was universally recognized as a nationalist movement driven by a combination of economic, cultural and political factors, just as the atrocities committed by the West Pakistani military and its local (largely non-Bengali, but some Islamic parties as well) were also universally condemned, some even going to the extent of terming military action as genocide. China (also for geo-political reasons flowing from its stand-off with India and strategically close ties with Pakistan), as well as most countries of the Arab Middle East, did not extend recognition to it until 1974 (Saudi Arabia held off recognition for much longer). Even the United Nations did not admit it as member until late 1974.
As Leader of the Awami League Party of East Pakistan, he and his party had won an overall majority in the general elections held in Pakistan in 1970 to the Pakistan national Assembly; but the army and West Pakistani politicians (notably led by the late Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto) were averse to transferring power to the East Pakistan-based leader and Party, that led to the resultant conflict between the two wings of the already geographically-divided nation. Mujib and almost his entire family (excepting his two daughters who were abroad at the time) were assassinated by disgruntled army elements on 15th. August, 1975.
The four provinces of Punjab, Sind, Baluchistan, and the North West Frontier Province in the western wing of Pakistan were lumped together to comprise one political unit and re-designated as “West Pakistan” in 1957. This new dispensation also propagated “parity” between the eastern and western wings in allocation of national resources, thus abjuring the federal principle and origins of Pakistan, and also ignoring demographic considerations – a move viewed by the Bengalis of East Pakistan, who had hitherto constituted the majority population of the country in the previous federal configuration, as an instrument of deliberately depriving and disadvantaging them economically and politically.
Marked the fall of General Ershad’s authoritarian regime. Also marks a defining moment in Bangladesh’s political evolution.
Jyoti M Pathania, Environment - Unconventional Threat To Bangladesh, South Asia Analysis Group, Paper no. 799, 26 September, 2003
Floods of 2007 have been more devastating and claimed more human casualties than the earlier floods.
Bangladesh Department of Environment and IUCN report, National Action Programme of Combating Desertification in Bangladesh, August 2005
World Bank Report, Bangladesh Country Environmental Analysis, Main Report, South Asia Environment and Social Development Unit, August 23, 2006
World Bank Report, Bangladesh Country Environmental Analysis, Main Report, South Asia Environment and Social Development Unit, August 23, 2006
“Coastal Living – a growing global threat”, Catherine Brahic, in NewScientist Environment, 28 March, 2007
Op cit Alister Doyle, “UN Climate panel: Global Warming to raise Earth’s seas for 1,000 years”, Reuters, January 26, 2007
op cit Reuters publication of IRIN report released by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, September 23, 2007
In 1989-90, the author with a Bangladeshi scientist had met with Chinese (and later Indian) officials to discuss their receptivity to undertaking a cooperative project on harnessing the Brahmaputra waters at the great bend of the river (where it drops sharply by several miles) before entering India, for generating electricity as well as for other uses, for the common benefit of all countries served by the river. It was an idea much before its time, and the response was predictably negative given the state of relations between India and China at that time. The same Bangladeshi scientist was ridiculed by Bangladeshi authorities at that time who laughed derisively at his ‘naiveté’.
About the Author
Ambassador Tariq Karim joined the Foreign Service in 1967. Among key assignments he held at Headquarters were Additional Foreign Secretary (1995-1997) with responsibility for the South Asian region and Director General for United Nations and Economic Affairs (1982-84). He served in Bangladesh Missions abroad, notably as Ambassador to the United States, and earlier as High Commissioner to South Africa, Ambassador to Iran and Lebanon, and Deputy Chief of Mission in Beijing and New Delhi. Opting for early retirement, he joined academia at the University of Maryland, College Park in 1999. State fragility, civil society, democratic transition, governance issues, political Islam and globalization issues are among his primary areas of research interest and expertise. He has been teaching courses on Government and Politics at the University of Maryland and on Politics and Business at the Virginia International University during the last few years.
No comments:
Post a Comment