Women and climate change in Bangladesh
There is no doubt about it: women in agriculture on Bangladeshs southern coast are on the frontline of the global battle against climate change
Finlay Green
The Bengal Delta has always been prone to unpredictable and extreme weather, a place where people live on a constantly shifting boundary between land and water. The country was placed first in the recent UNISDR Mortality Risk Index, which judges which populations are most at risk from earthquakes, floods, tropical cyclones and landslides. All of these types of disasters are set to increase in severity and frequency as a result of climate change.
The southern coast of Bangladesh is far and away the most vulnerable region of an already vulnerable country. In the future, it is set to suffer most from all four key types of hazard (flood, drought, cyclonic storm surge and salinity ingress).
The key vulnerable group when it comes to the impacts of climate change, a group far too often over-looked in international agreements and negotiations, is women. Thus, the aim of this report is to identify what problems women living in Bangladeshs most vulnerable region face, and how they are already adapting and coping. They largely take responsibility for providing the food, fuel, water and care that the family needs (all for no pay), as well as contributing to earnings.
Climate change greatly increases the pressure on women to deliver these daily essentials, while also undermining the natural resources they depend on to do so. When floods and cyclones hit, women like men lose their crops, belongings and livelihoods. But as the whole community tries to recover, women like Monowara have to spend much more time each day fetching water that isnt contaminated with salt. Often, with their land wiped out, their husbands have to go the city to find work for weeks on end, leaving women like Bish to shoulder the burden of the family completely on their own, often in extremely tough circumstances: Anima had to carry her son to school on her shoulders for eighteen months until the embankments surrounding her village were repaired, allowing the water that destroyed their lives when cyclone Aila struck in May 2009 to recede back into the sea.
The impacts of climate change eat away at the family too. With money and food so scarce, women like Lakchunhar are being subjected to violence at the hands of their husbands. All of these problems are further exacerbated by the other key issues on Bargunas south coast, namely the recent and vast expansion of the shrimp farming industry, and the inability of many farmers, particularly female farmers, to get a fair price for their products.
There is no doubt about it: women in agriculture on Bangladeshs southern coast are on the frontline of the global battle against climate change.
The link between shrimp farming and man-eating tigers is not obvious until you travel to Gabura, a slowly eroding island on Bangladeshs southern coast. The many cases of tiger attacks are but one more symptom of the collapse of natural resources and the livelihoods that depend on them. Fifteen, twenty years ago, we were happy, recalls one woman. They and their husbands could provide for themselves and their children, keep livestock and sell their milk or meat, and work the paddy fields. Their fall from a sustainable livelihood is remarkable.
With the viral growth of the shrimp farming industry along Bangladeshs coast, traditional forms of agriculture, namely the cultivation of paddy, have experienced massive decline, much to the detriment of those small farmers they support. The list of problems brought by the shrimp business is a long one. One of the most serious is its use of saline water. The shrimp farms bring in salt water from the coast, which pollutes the fresh water of the surrounding land, forcing those landowners to sell it. The salinity contaminates the fresh water ponds too, forcing women to spend the best part of their day walking several kilometres to the nearest water supply. We usually have to walk around three kilometers to get there, says one such woman, Amirunnnesa. Cyclone Aila further contaminated their land with salt, its effects worsened by the fact that, in order to bring salt water into their coastal farms, shrimp farmers make illegal channels in the embankments, greatly diminishing their effectiveness. The other big problem is the amount of labour they use; a hundred Bighas of paddy farmland employs more than a hundred people. But the same amount of shrimp land employs only one or two. Unemployment is soaring.
Thus, local people lose their land, their income, and their time. As a result, more and more people have begun to depend on the Sundarbans mangrove forest and its natural resources, a place already experiencing the impact of climate change: rising sea levels, constant erosion and increasingly salty waters have made life much harder for the life it supports. This pressure on one of the worlds most unique ecosystems has had unplanned and deadly consequences. With their natural resources in the Sundarbans depleting at an alarming rate, more and more tigers have been forced to eat the humans that are now in abundance in this massive mangrove forest. Fifteen years ago, there might be only one or two tiger deaths a year. Now, there are more than a hundred, says Monuwara Katun, one of Gaburas two hundred ninety-one tiger widows. These women blame the shrimp farming industry for their husbands deaths.
Fifteen years ago, Monuwaras husband went out into the Sundarbans to collect honey, only to be mauled to death by a Bengali Tiger. The men refused to carry his body back. It was a waste of time, they said. But my brother-in-law forced them. He demanded he be brought home. When I saw his body, I just cried and cried. Life was a struggle for their family even when he was alive. After his death, their world darkened still further. Her husband was the only male in the family; Monuwara has four daughters, with two now married off. She and her remaining 2 children sometimes go for three days without food. Most days, they eat nothing but rice, split into two small meals. Despite this, we live harmonious lives she says. One thing she is thankful for: two of her daughters are safely married off, to gentlemen she says they did not demand a dowry.
Despite how bad the past ten years have been, she sees her decline deepening in the decade to come. There is nothing good in my life. I have nothing to say. I am hopeless about what will happen in the future. Totally hopeless. Being fifty years old, she knows she is coming to the point when she will no longer be able to work. She hopes she will be able to really on her daughters, but she doesnt know if theyll have the resources to take her in. What will I do then? she asks.
The increase in tiger attacks in the Sundarbans is a harrowing symptom of an underlying crisis; the unchecked growth of the shrimp farming industry and the increasing dependence of those living in and around the Sundarbans on the mangrove forests natural resources.
Minati and Anima are just two of thousands of women living in the southern district of Khulna, whose lives were destroyed by Cyclone Aila. It was only a couple of months ago, a year and a half after the cyclone hit Bangladeshs coast, that the embankments were repaired sufficiently for the sea water to drain out. Before Aila, Minati continues, we grew vegetables in our homesteads, we grew mango trees, jackfruit trees, all kinds of life. Now, the land is inundated by salt and the trees are dead.
Now the majority of women in this region have to make a living by selling the fish they catch in their area, which penetrated the region when Aila struck. Fishing is their sole source of income, while their husbands go out and look for whatever work they can find in the city, but it is nowhere near enough to sustain their family when the government supply of rice runs out each month, they have to buy more. One kilogram of rice costs 25TK (US$0.30), but a family of 4 needs at least two kilograms every day to sustain them. They can only sell their catch for around 30TK a day, a shortfall of 20TK, even if they spend all their income on rice.
And yet, in the market, they see the fish they caught selling at 120TK per kilogram. The reason behind this disparity is the Aratdar. These are middlemen who buy the fish from these women at low prices, then sell it at 150% the price they bought it for. We have neither the time nor the money to sell the fish ourselves says Minati. We have no choice but to sell it to the Aratdar, and they know this. We cannot bargain we must sell as quickly as Sonatola lies near the city of Barguna. Its close proximity to the districts largest town, and the fact that the women there possess their own land, has drawn the attention of local non-governmental organisation (NGOs), who have helped to greatly improve the quality of life for these women and their families.
Every morning, Fatima wakes up at 5 a.m. to prepare breakfast for her husband and children, aged twelve and seven. She manages to put in several hours of work on her farmland until the family must be fed their pre-prepared meal at 10 a.m.. On stomachs holding wet white rice and little else, her children go to school, her husband goes to the city on his rickshaw, and she goes back out to the field, where she works until she has to prepare lunch. Once everyone has eaten, she gets a half-hour rest until she leaves for the field again, where she works until dusk. Often, she uses her evenings to prepare the food for market. There is a lot of pressure on my time, she says. There is no time for leisure or enjoyment, I must work. I wish I could spend more time with my family, but I must work. I am very grateful that I have land. It gives me a role to play. This is the best job a woman in rural Bangladesh can do, The other women in the group fervently agree: It is our most valuable asset. We cannot let it go to waste. Fatima is strong, keen and self-confident. She knows she is the largest earner in their family her husband earns little on his rickshaw and this gives her power, and a clear and commanding voice in the house. She is relishing the opportunity to work on her own land.
She attributes a lot of her newfound strength to the work of NGOs in her neighbourhood. They were very, very useful in improving our lives, says Fatima. Several organisations have led training programmes in agriculture, as well as womens empowerment programmes in the region. The latter showed the women of Sonatola that they did not have to accept domestic violence it could and should be reported to the Chairman of the local council. Now, I am not scared to shout at a man who tries to steal from my farms. I will tell him to go away! she says.
Access to credit for women has also massively improved their opportunities. Out of the 50 decimals of land that Fatima works, 80% of it is borrowed. It has given her an invaluable opportunity to improve her lot, and she is now ambitious to expand my business. All these factors land, access to credit, womens empowerment sessions, training in agriculture have greatly strengthened and emboldened the lives of these women, including
their voice in the home and in the community. Their futures look brighter than that of many other women living on Bangladeshs
south coast.
The writer recently graduated from the University of Sheffield in Economics and Politics
