SATKHIRA, Bangladesh -- The stench of the kerosene lamp fills the space under the roadway overpass. Two girls and their nephew, mother and father make their home here. They sit on a wide slab of concrete covered with a cloth mat that serves as their bed.
Sheik Zapharula's face glows in the lamplight as he recounts how his 15-year-old daughter was lured off by an admiring stranger who had been coming by the family's rooti store. It was only years later that they learned the worst of it: that within days, the girl had been hustled illegally across the border into India and sold into slavery.
Zapharula's family is among the poorest of the poor in Bangladesh. Not only landless and jobless, they lack even the community structure of village life. Aid workers say it's families like this one in Bangladesh and elsewhere that are most vulnerable to exploitation. Climate change, meanwhile, threatens to thrust millions more families into desperate conditions.
"The more the climate changes, the more destitute people are becoming," said Ruhul Amin, who runs a nonprofit agency that builds awareness in villages about trafficking and works with local authorities to locate victims and prosecute traffickers.
"The poorer people are, the more vulnerable they are to trafficking," Amin explained. "With all this flooding, people can approach poor families and say, 'Look, you have nothing here,'" luring women and girls off with visions of a financially secure marriage or a well-paying job in Dhaka's garment industry.
The Human Security Network, a coalition of 14 countries that meets at the foreign minister level to raise awareness about a range of humanitarian issues, has warned that climate migration could cause still more trafficking.
"Women and children refugees created by natural disasters or conflicts caused by scarcity of resources are exposed to increased risks compared to male refugees," a 2007 Human Security report on climate change found, adding that girls in particular "are vulnerable to exploitation, trafficking and other forms of gender-based violence."
As Amin spoke, he handed over a booklet of handwritten pages. On each line were the meticulously recorded entries of the missing:
Shamina Parvin, 5. Nature of incident: trafficking.
Rezia Khan, 14. Nature of incident: trafficking.
Monira Khatun, 13. Nature of incident: trafficking.
Girls younger than 17 fetch the best prices, about 200,000 taka -- the equivalent of almost $3,000, Amin says. Women between the ages of 25 to 40 bring about half that. Meanwhile, widows -- vulnerable in the villages with no man to protect them -- are sold for their work skills, as well. They're worth about 60,000 taka, or $870.
Amin described what they know about the trafficking system. Outright kidnappings, he said, are less common than they were a decade ago, and he credits awareness programs like his for that change. But traffickers are just as often people who are known in the villages, and it remains common for young girls to be approached by a seemingly concerned neighbor.
Children from large families make particularly good prey, Amin said. So do the adventurous ones.
The fifth in a series of stories on Bangladesh and climate migration. Click here to read previous installments of this special report.
DHAKA, Bangladesh -- Bangladesh may be Mother Nature's punching bag, but in the battle for survival against climate change, this tiny, riverine nation isn't going down without a fight.
Already, Bangladesh has invested 10 million taka, the equivalent of about $150,000, to build cyclone shelters and create a storm early-warning system. Earlier this year, it allocated another $50 million to the country's agriculture and health budgets to help "climate-proof" certain development sectors. The nation's agricultural research centers are devising salinity-resistant strains of rice. And the South Asian nation was one of first to deliver to the United Nations a strategy outlining what it needs in order to cope with the worst effects of climate change.
"They're not waiting," said Saleem Huq, lead author of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's most recent report on sustainability.
Leaders throughout Bangladesh say the nation desperately needs money from the West to adapt to problems that the world's leading climate scientists agree are caused by the emissions of industrialized nations. But they also point out that the country's history with catastrophe has in some ways given Bangladesh a head start in knowing how to cope with climate change.
Moreover, even as leaders here say they believe the West owes Bangladesh and other vulnerable countries compensation for global warming, they also bristle at those who view Bangladesh as just a hopeless, helpless nation forever in need of aid.
"We had a terrible famine in the 1970s, we've had every cyclone you can possibly think of, a huge series of natural disasters," said Omar Rahman, dean of the Independent University, Bangladesh. But while poverty abounds, he pointed out, starvation is rare, and the country's food production has improved tremendously in recent decades.
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| Omar Rahman, Dean of the Independent University, Bangladesh, is launching a master's degree program in adaptation. Photo by Lisa Friedman. |
Moreover, until the economic slump, Bangladesh's economy was growing at a pace not far behind India's, which Rahman attributed to a developing culture of entrepreneurship and a thriving garment industry. Indeed, in 2007 -- some 30 years after former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger declared Bangladesh "an international basket case" -- the World Bank predicted that Bangladesh could join the ranks of middle-income countries inside two decades.
"What I see is a country that has done spectacularly well in the face of very few advantages," Rahman said. "Bangladesh hasn't had a lot of things handed to it on a platter."
Added Rabab Fatima, South Asia representative for the International Organization for Migration, "This country is quite a miracle, I must say."
"It's completely people-driven. Despite all natural odds, despite bad politics and bad governance, people don't starve here. The country is almost self-sufficient in rice production. And for the size of this country, this tiny country, to feed 150 million people -- that itself is a miracle," Fatima said.
Now the country's leaders are hoping to launch another miracle: survival of the greatest combinations of natural disasters that the heavens can rain down upon them.
Above: Members of a community near Khulna, Bangladesh, clear water hyacinth from a main drainage canal in a bog. The work is part of a participatory water management pilot project that encourages local communities to make sure their drainage systems can handle major storm surges. Courtesy of the Embassy of the Netherlands, Dhaka.
The current focus is on a method known as community-based adaptation, which Huq and others say will help the very poorest communities access funding and information. Advocates say the initiatives, still being formed, are aimed at helping villages most at risk launch projects, with the money going to them instead of trickling down through global and national funds.
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| Scientists at the Bangladesh Rice Research Institute are working to develop a strain of rice that can withstand higher salinity levels. Photo courtesy of Wasama Doja. |
That's something that could help in places like Gabura in southwest Bangladesh, where nearly six months after a tidal flood rocked the village and left thousands homeless, a local environmental activist continues to send out e-mails pleading for philanthropists and others to help the people who live there.
Exactly how much funding Bangladesh needs overall is unclear. Leaders here estimate it will cost $500 million just to raise embankments in some areas about 20 centimeters (7.8 inches) -- a level that by the time construction is complete might not even be high enough to keep growing storm surges at bay.
"Adaptation sounds very easy, but it's a costly proposition for us," said Hamidur Rashid, former director-general for multilateral economic affairs in Bangladesh's foreign ministry.
Ainun Nishat, Bangladesh representative for the International Union for Conservation of Nature, called food security the country's top short-term priority.
Two years ago, he said, Bangladesh lost 10 percent of its crop to flooding. The IPCC estimates that Central and South Asia can expect a 30 percent drop in yield by 2050. For a country that depends on rice for survival, a major loss of production could translate into a widespread nutrition crisis.
Sitting in a glass jar on the wooden ledge of a bare classroom, the 47th strain of salt-resistant rice developed by the Bangladesh Rice Research Institute doesn't look like much at the moment. But it could help save the country.
It is a product of the waist-high plots of numbered and labeled rice paddies at the institute on the outskirts of Dhaka. Researchers at BRRI said they have spent more than 15 years testing new, high-yielding varieties of rice that can grow in the salty waters that, because of rising sea levels in the Bay of Bengal, have already moved into rice-producing areas, causing crop yields to shrink.
Meanwhile, in the heart of town, engineers with Bangladesh's Center for Environmental and Geographic Information Services are creating a storm early warning system that can be sent out via cell-phone text message. Cell phones are widespread, even in remote villages.
Already, vast improvements in the country's early warning storm systems already have been credited with saving countless lives during Cyclone Sidr in 2007. Ahmadul Hassan, senior water resources planner at CEGIS, said the cell phone is ideal for disseminating warnings even more rapidly.
Even so, Hassan said, more development aid is required to address the threat of climate change. Warnings are important, and so are the building of new cyclone shelters and the strengthening of embankments. But the real work of preparing for climate change, he said, lies in population control, increasing access to education, and raising income levels.
As night fell in Dhaka, Nishat sat at the rooftop table that he said was the place where Bangladesh's leaders agreed on how best to prepare for climate change. He said he is eager to see his country do things that won't cost much money but that could spark dramatic changes in governance -- like establishing climate change divisions in every ministry.
"We're not talking about additional manpower. We're talking about making climate change an inroad into everything," he said. "Climate change is still something abstract to people."
Rahman, meanwhile, is busy setting up a major center for studying adaptation at his university. Spearheaded by Huq and leading Bangladeshi scientists like Atiq Rahman, the proposed center works on the theory that students will learn more in the living laboratory of Bangladesh than in a sterile classroom in Cambridge or Oxford about what vulnerable countries need to cope with climate change.
Omar Rahman pointed to the country's successful, decades-long campaign to drive down population growth as a measure of what Bangladesh can accomplish. Three decades ago, he noted, the average family had seven children. Now the average family has three, and the number is reducing still. There's a climate change lesson in that, he insists.
"We have established a record of doing very complex things," he said. "In a traditional, conservative country, to make it acceptable to talk about birth control shows that we are capable of sustaining social change, if we have enough support."
He said it's important to him that Bangladesh's achievements be understood, and to avoid having his country labeled as an "eternal victim."
"You basically give up as soon as you label a country a victim. There's fatigue," Rahman said. "Bangladesh is a resilient country. We have shown the world that we can adapt, that we can confront things, that we are not just passive victims of disasters."
Sarder Shafiqul Alam, a research fellow at the Bangladesh Centre for Advanced Studies, said there's a larger picture to consider. Alam said he doesn't want the world to become so focused on helping countries cope that it ignores the need to reduce emissions. All the cyclone shelters in the world, he said, will only go so far.
"Our adaptation will not last very long," Alam said. "Adaptation has some limit."
BHOMRA, Bangladesh -- A high, heavily reinforced barbed wire fence cuts a jagged line through an otherwise empty field of tall grass and tamarind plants here. Climate change didn't bring this fence, but it is providing a fresh reason for its existence and ongoing expansion.
On this side of the fence, rising sea levels caused by climate change are beginning to inundate low-lying Bangladesh. Scientists estimate that by midcentury as many as 15 million people could be displaced.
On the other side of the fence, India isn't taking any chances. Already alarmed about illegal immigration, it is nearing completion of about 2,100 miles worth of high-tech fencing along its long and porous border with Bangladesh.
HARINAGAR, Bangladesh -- Environmentalists call the two young men who sneaked into India from this coastal village "climate refugees." Government officials call them "migrants."
Shumitra calls them her sons.
Squatting on the porch of her mud and thatch home, Shumitra clutches a photograph of 15-year-old Topon and 27-year-old Jogodish and wonders if she will ever see them again. Unselfconsciously, she lets her orange headscarf fall away as she describes how her eldest left two years ago as work in the rice fields dried up. The other boy followed after a devastating flood in July drowned the year's crops.
DHAKA, Bangladesh -- The towering new orange condominium glistens in the sun, beckoning the city's wealthy to enjoy its luxurious rarities: central air conditioning and a heated pool. In the trash-strewn, sprawling shantytown just below, thousands of the city's poorest live crammed in rows of metal shacks the size of packing crates.
There are sharp contrasts here. The newest-model BMW competes for lane space with ancient wooden rickshas. Stylish teenagers flock to the gleaming mega-mall, watched by shirtless beggars crouched in gutters. The physical space between rich and poor is already narrow. It's going to get even thinner.
Nearly 500,000 people -- about the population of Washington, D.C. -- move to this city on the banks of the Buriganga River each year, mostly from coastal and rural areas. More than 12 million people live in Dhaka, twice as many as just a decade ago. It's one of the world's most densely populated countries on a planet that is seeing rapid urbanization.
GABURA, Bangladesh -- The dam burst before dawn. The men of the village knew it could happen. All day and all night they trudged by the hundreds, shirtless and shoeless, up a slippery hill, hauling baskets of mud on their heads. It was Ramadan, the Muslim holy month of daylong fasts. But the men had a only few hours to try to strengthen the mushy barrier that protected their homes from the dangerously rising tide. Together, in between grueling shifts, they broke fast and prayed for the mud to hold.
When the dam finally collapsed, there was nothing to do but run.
"You cannot believe the strength of the water when it broke. I've never seen the strength of the water like this," recalled Shaidullah, 35, sitting in the boat he paddled to safety that September night. "We were panicking."
That night, the embankment was breached in eight places along the Kholpetua River and other waterways that branch out like a network of arteries from the Bay of Bengal. No one was killed, but local officials said more than 35,000 people were marooned. About 6,000 were left homeless.
Water risks are a part of life in this low-lying country dominated by the reaches of the Ganges, Brahmaputra and Meghna rivers. But scientists and environmental activists said the September flood, which happened during a lunar high tide, was deeply unusual for the time of year.
Cyclones. Monsoons. Floods. Hurricanes. Nature has never been gentle with Bangladesh. Climate change will accelerate its cycles.
"We are nature's laboratory on disasters," said Ainun Nishat, the International Union for Conservation of Nature's representative for Bangladesh. "We don't have volcanoes. But we have every other natural disaster you can think of."
As the international community debates how to proceed with a post-2012 climate treaty, many developing nations, like Bangladesh, are already seeing the impacts of climate change. People in villages throughout this country are trying to adapt to their changing climate, but for many villagers, migration is the only option. In this special report, E&E reporter Lisa Friedman tours the village of Gabura and witnesses the plight of its villagers as they rebuild after a damaging storm.
HARINAGAR, Bangladesh -- One by one, the men in Gaurpodomando's family walked out of this mud-caked village and never returned.
First, his uncles went. Both fishermen, they suffered as their catch declined year after year, before they crossed illegally into India to find work in construction. His brothers earned so little fishing that they braved tiger attacks in the nearby Sundarbans forest to forage for honey and timber. Finally, they left, too, and brought their father with them.
Now, Gaurpodomando, who said he is about 35 years old and who goes only by his first name, is the last man in his family still living in the waterlogged village along Bangladesh's Indian border.
His brothers still don't know about the angry tidal flood that burst through a dam and swallowed the family home and dozens of others in September. Those who live here say that between the disappearing fish, brackish flood waters destroying the rice fields and the ever-fiercer cyclones that seem to inhale entire villages, life is becoming almost unbearable.
But Gaurpodomando, who earns the equivalent of $1.50 a day standing hip-deep in the salty river casting a net to collect shrimp fry, said he is doing everything he can to hang onto his way of life.
Any way you look at it, the numbers on climate migration are staggering. The problem is, there are a lot of ways to look at it.
One study says 100 million people will be displaced by global warming. Another puts it at 250 million. Meanwhile, a sweeping report from Christian Aid warns that 1 billion people, an almost unthinkable crush of humanity, could be forced from their homes by midcentury because of climate change and the increase in natural disasters, which will exacerbate regional conflicts.
How can the numbers be so wildly disparate? The truth is, researchers acknowledge, that though climate migration may be the defining issue of the century, it is calculated with fuzzy math.
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