Bangladesh briefings
...poverty, food and energy in a changing climate
...poverty, food and energy in a changing climate
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| Cyclone shelter in Bangladesh © David Swanson/IRIN / IRIN News |
The time-lag in collecting household data creates uncertainty as to the fate of the poor in Bangladesh in the aftermath of successive spikes in food prices. The unpredictability of climate change adds a further layer of apprehension for the years ahead. With its long experience of natural disasters, the Bangladesh government will be fighting its corner for appropriate financial support from those countries responsible for global warming.
updated March 2011
Poverty Reduction
Poverty and Hunger Thresholds
There are no recent objective poverty statistics available for Bangladesh. A new Household Income and Expenditure Survey is due to be published during 2011, updating its predecessor from 2005.
A further concern is that the definitions of poverty and hunger appear increasingly outdated and inadequate. The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in Bangladesh have been monitored by reference to national upper and lower poverty lines, the thresholds for poverty and hunger respectively.
International standards presume that the upper line allows for the cost of some essential non-food items of household expenditure. But in Bangladesh it is defined as the value of a “minimum dietary energy requirement” of 2122 calories per day. The hunger threshold is based on 1805 calories, significantly below the level normally recommended by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization.
The 2009 MDG Progress Report for Bangladesh concedes that “the 2122 kcals/day threshold looks to be the most appropriate threshold with regard to monitoring and reporting of progress in hunger.” The report does not suggest an amended basis for the upper poverty line and its conclusions are accordingly somewhat confused.
Progress
The 2005 Household Survey found that 40% of the population was below the 2122 calorie threshold. This compares with 59% in 1991, the baseline year for the poverty MDG in Bangladesh.
Prospects for achieving the Goal of halving this figure to 29% by 2015 may have been set back by events since 2005. In addition to external shocks relating to food prices and global economic recession, Bangladesh has suffered a sequence of natural disasters, notably Cyclone Sidr in 2007.
The country’s measure of poverty is so sensitive to the price of food that the Centre for Policy Dialogue, a Dhaka think-tank, has estimated that the increase in food prices in 2007/08 added 8.5% of the population to the ranks of the poor.
The profile of poverty in Bangladesh is uneven, the most severe deprivation being found in the southern coastal belt and in the northern monga regions prone to seasonal food shortages.
The capital, Dhaka, is believed to be the fastest expanding and most densely populated of the world’s major cities. In common with other Bangladeshi cities, informal slum areas accommodate as much as a third of the urban population, imposing a new and challenging dimension for poverty reduction.
Since the 2007 crisis, the government has responded with increasingly robust expenditure on a wide range of cash and food-based social safety net schemes.
However, inefficiencies of bureaucracy and corruption have jeopardised the targeting of this spending. As few as 13% of the poorest households may be in receipt of benefits intended for their welfare.
In an unprecedented acknowledgement of its shortcomings, the government devoted the opening chapter of its 2009 MDG Progress Report to the subject of “Democratic Governance and Human Rights.” And the current National Strategy for Accelerated Poverty Reduction (2009-2011) concedes that “unless governance improves, poor people will continue to suffer.”
Dr Saleemul Huq, Senior Fellow at IIED, discusses how the social and economic achievements of Bangladesh are threatened by climate change.
Food Security and Hunger
Progress
An accurate assessment of hunger may be elusive but the symptoms of inadequate diets are painfully clear in the incidence of malnutrition, the highest in South Asia. The World Food Programme also remains active in Bangladesh, supporting over two million people through 2011.
The MDG Progress Report records that the percentage of children aged under five who are underweight fell from 66% to 45% between 1990 and 2009. It also reveals that the rate of decline has slowed since 2000 and is now almost static. The 2015 target of 33% is therefore unlikely to be met.
A key uncertainty for the hunger situation in Bangladesh is the impact of the latest round of food price increases. By early 2011 the cost of a standard basket of food had risen by 36% in 12 months, with the price of rice edging ahead of its 2008 peak.
Unlike 2007, the current spike has not coincided with a year of catastrophic local disasters. Nevertheless, it amounts to a severe test for government measures taken in response to the earlier crisis.
Causes of Hunger
Food prices have risen sharply through 2010 because Bangladesh remains a food deficit country. Although importing only about 5% of its total need, the exposure to world markets forces up local prices, disproportionately affecting poor households which spend the majority of their incomes on food.
Households affected by food insecurity cite lack of income as the main cause, closely followed by lack of land, according to the 2009 Welfare Monitoring Survey conducted by the Bangladesh Bureau for Statistics.
Only 1% of the country's farms comprise more than 3 hectares. Most of the poverty and hunger in Bangladesh is found on the 86% of farms which are less than one hectare.
Agriculture engages 65% of the workforce, many of whom own no land. Furthermore, it is reported that 1% of cultivable land is lost each year to encroachment of urban settlements, industry and infrastructure - pressures which are unlikely to diminish.
Up to a point, these small farmers are paying the price of the Green Revolution. Food grain production in Bangladesh has more than trebled over the last 30-40 years but soil quality has been degraded and groundwater resources depleted.
The almost universal practice of saving their own seed has many advantages for subsistence farmers but may be degrading the stock. Rice yields are known to be 25%-40% below those achieved in China and Vietnam.
Inland lakes and waterways have been exploited unsustainably, to the increasing distress of over ten million poor fisher-folk whose catch provides vital protein.
Farmers must also contend with the casino of natural bounty and disaster which is inherent in Bangladesh. Most of the country is a fertile alluvial plain fed by over 200 rivers, dominated by the Ganges, Brahmaputra and Meghna. Annual flooding of a quarter of the landmass is not unusual and farmers can anticipate such events to their benefit.
However, the flooding is prone to frequent extremes, combined with and provoked by tropical cyclones formed in the Bay of Bengal. Drought is also a regular hazard in the northwest. Cyclones and floods in 2007 are estimated to have affected the food security of 25 million people.
Bangladesh has been praised for the success of its reproductive health programmes, halving the population growth rate in a generation. Nevertheless, the continuing addition of two million people each year puts pressure on all the fault lines of the country’s food insecurity.
One looming threat lies beyond the government’s control. Powerful neighbours such as China and India may tackle their own food self-sufficiency by damming the rivers on which Bangladesh depends. A test of diplomacy lies ahead.
Solutions
In common with many other developing countries, Bangladesh has responded to the 2007/08 food crisis by abandoning the neo-liberal prescription of minimal state involvement in food markets.
The government now has a clear goal of self-sufficiency in food production and is building up state reserves to about 3 weeks’ consumption. Aware that expanding its land under cultivation is not an option, Bangladesh has opened discussions with countries in Africa and with Cambodia with a view to leasing foreign land to grow food for import.
At local level, the government has been active in subsidising improved seed varieties and fertilizer, contributing to the record harvest of staple rice in 2009 and again in 2010. Investment in more efficient irrigation will run in parallel.
In 2010 the government became the first Asian country to produce a national action plan in response to the 2009 L’Aquila G8 Agriculture and Food Security Initiative. The Plan calls for investment of $8 billion in food security over 5 years, much of which will be sought from international donors.
Climate Change
Effects of Climate Change
Bangladesh is a central point of reference for the injustice of climate change. Its per capita energy consumption is the equivalent of about one litre of oil per week, contributing a small fraction of 1% of global greenhouse gas emissions. Yet international climate change risk assessments published in 2010 identify Bangladesh as the world’s most vulnerable country.
Rising sea levels threaten inundation and saline intrusion in the southern coastal region, the risk accentuated by prediction of greater cyclone intensity. The population of this area is projected to reach 44 million by 2015.
With 40% of coastal land already affected by salinity, the Bangladesh Climate Change Strategy and Action Plan published in 2009 anticipates permanent displacement of 6-8 million people by 2050.
In a climate pincer movement from the north, melting Himalayan glaciers may disrupt the flows of the three great rivers, first with excess flooding and eventually with diminished volume. Erratic monsoon patterns and longer periods of drought in the north complete the roll call of climate predictions for Bangladesh.
Scientists disagree over the upper and lower boundaries of these effects and how much rice yields may fall. But there is no dispute that the underlying temperature will rise by about 1.5 degrees by 2050.
Whatever the eventual resolution of these debates, there is consensus that the relationship between people and the land in Bangladesh is subject to increasing risk of destabilisation. Anthropogenic global warming will to a greater or lesser degree aggravate a range of environmental stresses that already expose the economic limitations of very poor families.
October 2010: just another monsoon storm causes death and destruction. But these events are becoming more intense and more frequent, from Oxfam and Al Jazeera News.
Adaptation and Disaster Management
The broad goal of adaptation in Bangladesh is to increase the country’s resilience to these environmental stresses. The country’s vulnerability to climate change is such that adaptation is closely allied with disaster management, an all too familiar discipline in Bangladesh.
Spending over the last 30 years is believed to have exceeded $10 billion. This has been invested in polder defences along the coastline, river dredging, emergency shelter construction, early warning systems and public education. The shelters were credited with protecting tens of thousands of lives from Cyclone Sidr.
In the context of food production, adaptation and disaster management embraces modern research into the development of seeds which can survive flooding for a longer period or whose yield is unaffected by salinity. There are programmes exploring the potential of micro-insurance to cover total crop failure.
Future government intentions are articulated in the Bangladesh Climate Change Strategy and Action Plan. A National Climate Change Committee coordinates ministries to ensure that there are no climate blindspots in government policy.
Bangladesh is therefore well positioned to play a leadership role amongst developing countries on climate change adaptation and disaster management. The country is a forceful advocate for new international laws to protect the rights of climate refugees. And it is active in researching the scope for international litigation to recover climate-related losses from the countries responsible for global warming.
The Minister of Environment, Dr. Hasan Mahmud, discusses the impacts and challenges of adaptation to climate change in Bangladesh, from OneWorld TV
Climate Finance
Bangladesh estimates that it needs $5 billion in the period to 2015 to kickstart its adaptation programmes. The government has committed $100m per annum from its own budget and takes an assertive position in international negotiations, claiming as much as 15% of any climate funds earmarked for developing countries. The justification is that more people will be affected in Bangladesh than elsewhere.
In anticipation of donor support, the government approved a Bangladesh Climate Change Resilience Fund during 2010 with initial capitalization of $110 million. The fund is designed to be a channel for international climate finance for adaptation and low carbon growth. Distribution will be controlled by the Bangladesh government.
A further stream of climate finance is governed by the World Bank under its Pilot Program on Climate Resilience. An initial tranche of grant and concessionary loan finance is designed to leverage multilateral funding of over $500 million, largely for coastal protection programmes.
Climate Change in Bangladesh: Who will pay? From Angel Eye Media.
Electricity Access
About a third of rural households in Bangladesh are connected to grid electricity. As in the cities, the service is intermittent and faces overwhelming projections of growing demand.
More than 50 million people in rural villages beyond a grid connection use kerosene for lighting and an assortment of biomass for cooking – principally straw, wood fuel and dried cow dung. The increasingly desperate search for these resources is illustrated by the estimate that 15% of biomass fuel comprises leaves and grass.
The country’s Poverty Reduction Strategy recognises that rural electrification is vital and the government has set a target of universal coverage by 2020. Given the preponderance of rivers across the country, a national grid structure is impractical, even if the necessary capital investment were available.
The government’s Rural Electrification Board supports a local grid structure managed by cooperatives, the Palli Bidyut Samitis (PBS). More remote regions are targeted with an innovative public/private facility which promotes solar home systems, taking advantage of a climate averaging 300 days of sunshine each year.
A government agency, the Infrastructure Development Co Ltd (IDCOL), provides finance for selected NGOs and businesses which market the systems. The standard package requires households to repay over 4-5 years with no subsidy. With over 30,000 solar home systems installed each month, the government has a target of 2.5 million by 2014.
Grameen Shakti is the leading provider of solar home systems in Bangladesh, from Ashden Awards
Poverty and Hunger Thresholds
There are no recent objective poverty statistics available for Bangladesh. A new Household Income and Expenditure Survey is due to be published during 2011, updating its predecessor from 2005.
|
| Signing a white band for poverty reduction in Bangladesh © Millennium Campaign |
International standards presume that the upper line allows for the cost of some essential non-food items of household expenditure. But in Bangladesh it is defined as the value of a “minimum dietary energy requirement” of 2122 calories per day. The hunger threshold is based on 1805 calories, significantly below the level normally recommended by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization.
The 2009 MDG Progress Report for Bangladesh concedes that “the 2122 kcals/day threshold looks to be the most appropriate threshold with regard to monitoring and reporting of progress in hunger.” The report does not suggest an amended basis for the upper poverty line and its conclusions are accordingly somewhat confused.
Progress
The 2005 Household Survey found that 40% of the population was below the 2122 calorie threshold. This compares with 59% in 1991, the baseline year for the poverty MDG in Bangladesh.
|
| Bangladeshi woman and child © Shahidul Alam/Drik / New Internationalist |
The country’s measure of poverty is so sensitive to the price of food that the Centre for Policy Dialogue, a Dhaka think-tank, has estimated that the increase in food prices in 2007/08 added 8.5% of the population to the ranks of the poor.
The profile of poverty in Bangladesh is uneven, the most severe deprivation being found in the southern coastal belt and in the northern monga regions prone to seasonal food shortages.
The capital, Dhaka, is believed to be the fastest expanding and most densely populated of the world’s major cities. In common with other Bangladeshi cities, informal slum areas accommodate as much as a third of the urban population, imposing a new and challenging dimension for poverty reduction.
Since the 2007 crisis, the government has responded with increasingly robust expenditure on a wide range of cash and food-based social safety net schemes.
However, inefficiencies of bureaucracy and corruption have jeopardised the targeting of this spending. As few as 13% of the poorest households may be in receipt of benefits intended for their welfare.
In an unprecedented acknowledgement of its shortcomings, the government devoted the opening chapter of its 2009 MDG Progress Report to the subject of “Democratic Governance and Human Rights.” And the current National Strategy for Accelerated Poverty Reduction (2009-2011) concedes that “unless governance improves, poor people will continue to suffer.”
Dr Saleemul Huq, Senior Fellow at IIED, discusses how the social and economic achievements of Bangladesh are threatened by climate change.
Food Security and Hunger
Progress
An accurate assessment of hunger may be elusive but the symptoms of inadequate diets are painfully clear in the incidence of malnutrition, the highest in South Asia. The World Food Programme also remains active in Bangladesh, supporting over two million people through 2011.
|
| Food market in Bangladesh © David Swanson/IRIN / IRIN News |
A key uncertainty for the hunger situation in Bangladesh is the impact of the latest round of food price increases. By early 2011 the cost of a standard basket of food had risen by 36% in 12 months, with the price of rice edging ahead of its 2008 peak.
Unlike 2007, the current spike has not coincided with a year of catastrophic local disasters. Nevertheless, it amounts to a severe test for government measures taken in response to the earlier crisis.
Causes of Hunger
Food prices have risen sharply through 2010 because Bangladesh remains a food deficit country. Although importing only about 5% of its total need, the exposure to world markets forces up local prices, disproportionately affecting poor households which spend the majority of their incomes on food.
|
| Rice vendor in Bangladesh © David Swanson/IRIN / IRIN News |
Only 1% of the country's farms comprise more than 3 hectares. Most of the poverty and hunger in Bangladesh is found on the 86% of farms which are less than one hectare.
Agriculture engages 65% of the workforce, many of whom own no land. Furthermore, it is reported that 1% of cultivable land is lost each year to encroachment of urban settlements, industry and infrastructure - pressures which are unlikely to diminish.
Up to a point, these small farmers are paying the price of the Green Revolution. Food grain production in Bangladesh has more than trebled over the last 30-40 years but soil quality has been degraded and groundwater resources depleted.
The almost universal practice of saving their own seed has many advantages for subsistence farmers but may be degrading the stock. Rice yields are known to be 25%-40% below those achieved in China and Vietnam.
Inland lakes and waterways have been exploited unsustainably, to the increasing distress of over ten million poor fisher-folk whose catch provides vital protein.
Farmers must also contend with the casino of natural bounty and disaster which is inherent in Bangladesh. Most of the country is a fertile alluvial plain fed by over 200 rivers, dominated by the Ganges, Brahmaputra and Meghna. Annual flooding of a quarter of the landmass is not unusual and farmers can anticipate such events to their benefit.
However, the flooding is prone to frequent extremes, combined with and provoked by tropical cyclones formed in the Bay of Bengal. Drought is also a regular hazard in the northwest. Cyclones and floods in 2007 are estimated to have affected the food security of 25 million people.
Bangladesh has been praised for the success of its reproductive health programmes, halving the population growth rate in a generation. Nevertheless, the continuing addition of two million people each year puts pressure on all the fault lines of the country’s food insecurity.
One looming threat lies beyond the government’s control. Powerful neighbours such as China and India may tackle their own food self-sufficiency by damming the rivers on which Bangladesh depends. A test of diplomacy lies ahead.
Solutions
In common with many other developing countries, Bangladesh has responded to the 2007/08 food crisis by abandoning the neo-liberal prescription of minimal state involvement in food markets.
|
| Flood in Bangladesh © Kamrul Hassan/Machizo |
At local level, the government has been active in subsidising improved seed varieties and fertilizer, contributing to the record harvest of staple rice in 2009 and again in 2010. Investment in more efficient irrigation will run in parallel.
In 2010 the government became the first Asian country to produce a national action plan in response to the 2009 L’Aquila G8 Agriculture and Food Security Initiative. The Plan calls for investment of $8 billion in food security over 5 years, much of which will be sought from international donors.
Climate Change
Effects of Climate Change
Bangladesh is a central point of reference for the injustice of climate change. Its per capita energy consumption is the equivalent of about one litre of oil per week, contributing a small fraction of 1% of global greenhouse gas emissions. Yet international climate change risk assessments published in 2010 identify Bangladesh as the world’s most vulnerable country.
|
| Bangladeshi farmer on his 'floating garden' © Siraj / Machizo |
With 40% of coastal land already affected by salinity, the Bangladesh Climate Change Strategy and Action Plan published in 2009 anticipates permanent displacement of 6-8 million people by 2050.
In a climate pincer movement from the north, melting Himalayan glaciers may disrupt the flows of the three great rivers, first with excess flooding and eventually with diminished volume. Erratic monsoon patterns and longer periods of drought in the north complete the roll call of climate predictions for Bangladesh.
Scientists disagree over the upper and lower boundaries of these effects and how much rice yields may fall. But there is no dispute that the underlying temperature will rise by about 1.5 degrees by 2050.
Whatever the eventual resolution of these debates, there is consensus that the relationship between people and the land in Bangladesh is subject to increasing risk of destabilisation. Anthropogenic global warming will to a greater or lesser degree aggravate a range of environmental stresses that already expose the economic limitations of very poor families.
October 2010: just another monsoon storm causes death and destruction. But these events are becoming more intense and more frequent, from Oxfam and Al Jazeera News.
Adaptation and Disaster Management
The broad goal of adaptation in Bangladesh is to increase the country’s resilience to these environmental stresses. The country’s vulnerability to climate change is such that adaptation is closely allied with disaster management, an all too familiar discipline in Bangladesh.
|
| Polder earth defence in Bangladesh © David Swanson/IRIN / IRIN News |
In the context of food production, adaptation and disaster management embraces modern research into the development of seeds which can survive flooding for a longer period or whose yield is unaffected by salinity. There are programmes exploring the potential of micro-insurance to cover total crop failure.
Future government intentions are articulated in the Bangladesh Climate Change Strategy and Action Plan. A National Climate Change Committee coordinates ministries to ensure that there are no climate blindspots in government policy.
Bangladesh is therefore well positioned to play a leadership role amongst developing countries on climate change adaptation and disaster management. The country is a forceful advocate for new international laws to protect the rights of climate refugees. And it is active in researching the scope for international litigation to recover climate-related losses from the countries responsible for global warming.
The Minister of Environment, Dr. Hasan Mahmud, discusses the impacts and challenges of adaptation to climate change in Bangladesh, from OneWorld TV
Climate Finance
Bangladesh estimates that it needs $5 billion in the period to 2015 to kickstart its adaptation programmes. The government has committed $100m per annum from its own budget and takes an assertive position in international negotiations, claiming as much as 15% of any climate funds earmarked for developing countries. The justification is that more people will be affected in Bangladesh than elsewhere.
In anticipation of donor support, the government approved a Bangladesh Climate Change Resilience Fund during 2010 with initial capitalization of $110 million. The fund is designed to be a channel for international climate finance for adaptation and low carbon growth. Distribution will be controlled by the Bangladesh government.
A further stream of climate finance is governed by the World Bank under its Pilot Program on Climate Resilience. An initial tranche of grant and concessionary loan finance is designed to leverage multilateral funding of over $500 million, largely for coastal protection programmes.
Climate Change in Bangladesh: Who will pay? From Angel Eye Media.
Electricity Access
About a third of rural households in Bangladesh are connected to grid electricity. As in the cities, the service is intermittent and faces overwhelming projections of growing demand.
More than 50 million people in rural villages beyond a grid connection use kerosene for lighting and an assortment of biomass for cooking – principally straw, wood fuel and dried cow dung. The increasingly desperate search for these resources is illustrated by the estimate that 15% of biomass fuel comprises leaves and grass.
The country’s Poverty Reduction Strategy recognises that rural electrification is vital and the government has set a target of universal coverage by 2020. Given the preponderance of rivers across the country, a national grid structure is impractical, even if the necessary capital investment were available.
The government’s Rural Electrification Board supports a local grid structure managed by cooperatives, the Palli Bidyut Samitis (PBS). More remote regions are targeted with an innovative public/private facility which promotes solar home systems, taking advantage of a climate averaging 300 days of sunshine each year.
A government agency, the Infrastructure Development Co Ltd (IDCOL), provides finance for selected NGOs and businesses which market the systems. The standard package requires households to repay over 4-5 years with no subsidy. With over 30,000 solar home systems installed each month, the government has a target of 2.5 million by 2014.
Grameen Shakti is the leading provider of solar home systems in Bangladesh, from Ashden Awards
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