It was a great pleasure for us to visit Bangladesh in the momentum when the people are celebrating their 40th independent day. Being a citizen of an always independent country, I realized the peoples’ feelings, pride, and love to their country as her common citizen; may it be from children, youth, women, men and elderly ones. However, they are always threatened with the natural unexpected and unpredictable phenomena. Though the country is celebrating its independent day, it is ranked as the most vulnerable country from the hazards and impacts of climate change in the world, signifying that, it needs a tremendous effort, in terms of investment and collaboration, to let its people out of the risks and vulnerability from climate change. In order to acclimatize to the changed context of climate by seeing the impacts and community responses and learning lessons and replicable practices, and more importantly get interacted with the climate change context that Bangladesh is facing, a 3 day field trip was organized. It was Gaibandha district on our behalf to enjoy the trip!
Journey and Welcoming
We started our journey on 25th March 2011 from Dhaka at 9:20 A.M. Due to the heavy traffic, we reached the office of Gana Unnayan Kendra (GUK), Gaibandha at 5:30 P.M. In GUK, we had a wonderful warm welcome from its staffs and the representative from Practical Action Bangladesh. Just after getting refreshed, we were invited in the meeting hall for the brief orientation about the field trip and the activities being implemented by Practical Action Bangladesh and GUK for disaster risk management.
Community Initiatives
In the second day, we visited Belka village, has been flooding since 25 years during June-December. Flood accompanied with riverbank erosion, the major climatic hazard, has washed away the productive lands of so many people in Bangladesh, who are now reluctant to cultivate in the unproductive lands. But these unproductive sands are their unavoidable option to sustain their livelihoods. At the area and nearby Belka, there are 2500 households, affected with flood and riverbank erosion, living in the government managed embankment.
The devastating flood, which they are experiencing more frequently, has made the people from landlord to landless. Even the riverbank erosion has made a shock in the peoples’ livelihood even for a maximum of seven times in the history of some families. Nevertheless, it is those people who need to cope and adapt to these risks and impacts to sustain their livelihood. So, in order to adapt to the flood, the displaced farmers have started doing cage fish culture, floating garden, and sand bar cultivation with the technical support from Practical Action Bangladesh.
20 farmers of Belka have initiated floating garden and cage fish culture in the Khas land to adapt to the flooding. Each farmer is allowed to construct and manage 2 beds of floating garden, where they grow Cancong (a leafy vegetable) and red amaranthus (also a leafy vegetable). The floating garden is prepared by utilizing the water hyacinth that is abundant during the flooding period, by accumulating water hyacinth in the form of a nursery bed and decomposing. This type of farming has supported farmers to supply the family nutrition from vegetable and also earn some money by selling to the nearby market. In addition, the well decomposed manure or compost is also sold in the market. From the cage fish culture, they are able to produce 25-40 Kg fishes per cubic meter cage per culture cycle. If the flood persists for long time i.e. more than 3 months, they can go for 2-3 culture cycle.
Not only the flooded lands, but farmers were found to utilize the unproductive lands of the sandbar through cultivating pumpkin and squash. With technical and material support from Practical Action Bangladesh, 80 farmers (of which 60 are women and who can imaging for the burden to those women?) are cultivating pumpkin and squash on 24 acres of land in the sandbar. This cultivation has been possible due to the deposition of alluvial soil during flooding. And at current, they have benefited from this sandbar cultivation as most of the farmers have become able to buy livestock (goat and cattle) as a secured livelihood option in the changing context. And even some farmers have become a resource farmer and are teaching others about the cultivation of pumpkin and squash and even cage fish farming and floating gardens.
But, still there is a question of uncertainty of their right to use these unproductive lands once these become fertile after years they do cultivate, which does not belong to those landless people and neither is it a khas land, with the hope that government, if they lobby, will hand over to them in the future. However, it is their ultimate livelihood option and they are investing their huge efforts to produce more and more and make this land fertile over the due course of time. Let not think about the mechanism of payment or compensation to these people on behalf of transforming the unproductive lands to the productive ones, later when the land becomes fertile, the landlords produce the luxury crops (for example: rice and tobacco) and they must compel to find other unproductive lands and repeat the history several times.
Compared to the past 15 years, farmers have experienced increased temperature (mostly in April-May), decreased precipitation with its shifting patter in the later part of monsoon (June-July to Aug-Nov) but flooding, and increased intensity of cold. Community recalled the big floods and their devastating effects of 1988 and 2007. In this context, the initiative from Practical Action Bangladesh to construct a cluster village in Schumacher Pali is noteworthy to protect the people and their households, who previously were displaced, from flood and riverbank erosion. The cluster village is constructed in the khas land but it was taken in lease for 99 years from government. With the construction of cluster village, the livelihood option of the community is diversified than that of earlier. Earlier their livelihood option was only the water labor and they didn’t have their own house. Now, they do have their own house along the skills of producing pumpkin and squash in the sand bar and bamboo made products along with wage labor.
After visiting the cluster village, the transect walk along with motor boating along the Bhramhaputra river was ever memorable for us and the community consultation in Kundar Para with the empowered voices of women, never the least. The communities in this village have been living since 25 years. However, the major threat to this village is flood and riverbank erosion. In 1986, there was a flood that displaced them heavily, which remain submerged till 1992. After 1992, they found some char land there and some 14 families started making shelter in the area. During 1994, they experiences a prolonged drought followed by a heavy flood in 1995. So, people moved to the main land to avoid flood and came back to their land and there appeared more char land and many families started to stay in this area but still it is affected by the flood.
In order to protect the families and the land, the chairperson of the village asked GUK for some support. After then, GUK initiated its work by establishing a flood shelter in the village in 1995. During that period there were only 88 families living, which now has become 300. The female members of the community remembered the devastating impacts of flood as no access to school, market, disease outbreak, fear of loss of children, no movement, no drinking water, no access to health centers, and damage to their house and the crops they used to grow up and harvest. But after the support from GUK on Flood shelter along with capacity building activities and disaster preparedness plan, they have enhanced access to market, solar energy, portable stove (with firewood and essential medicine), safer drinking water, and basic services. Their capacity is also enhanced to understand the impacts and causes of climate change. As a symbol of socioeconomic progress, they have now flood shelter which they can use during flood, early marriage among the girl is reduced, and access to market has increased. They also have a flood shelter committee run by a 23 member committee, which has been responsible for preparing plan for disaster preparedness, monitoring river, identifying the vulnerable households and participatory planning. More importantly, it has given due attention to take care of pregnant and lactating women and save livestock by keeping them in separate place during flooding.
Key Learning
Personally, it was a unique and great learning opportunity to find out the community dealing with floods and river bank erosion to sustain their livelihoods. Not only to be shared the learning during the conference and through the blogs, the adaptation options and strategies initiated by the communities are replicable in my country in the areas having similar vulnerability context. However, I felt a need of Intergovernmental cooperation among Bangladesh, Bhutan, India and Nepal for integrated river basing management in order to manage the climate induced hazards in the long run. Certainly, there are efforts needed to link up these strategies to the national policy makers and planners so that they can prepare for the uncertain with robust planning and preparation.
Never the least, I found an answer of why community based adaptation to climate change just seeing the success of flood shelter constructed by local NGO but the failure of flood shelter from government simply due to the difference in approaching the experiences and knowledge of local community!!!
Keshab Thapa
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