Climate disaster in Bangladesh
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SOCIALIST ACTION SEPTEMBER 2015 5 for 20 years.
Since Clark’s helpful summary of the climate impact of fracked gas emissions a year ago, the EDF has been releasing the results of a research project designed to further quantify methane emissions. The astounding results forced the Environmental Protection Agency to propose new standards that are expected, when fi nalized, to force the industry to cut annual methane emissions by 20-40%.
The measurements gathered by one of the EDF stud ies and being used by the EPA, however, are likely to be greatly undercounted. On Aug. 4, Touché Howard, a methane emissions expert who actually helped to develop the emissions sensor technology, challenged the accuracy of the EDF study overseen by chemical engineer David Allen.
Socialist Action Badrul Alam, a representative of the BKF-BKS movement in Bangladesh, was in France in June 2015 and was interviewed by Pierre Rousset for the Fourth International on-line journal, Interna tional Viewpoint. For the last four years, the BKFBKS has organized caravans for climate justice, food sovereignty, and the rights of women. Below is a portion of his replies to the interview: We do not trust the governments and global in stitutions to curb global warming. However, Ban gladesh is one of the countries most immediately affected by the effects of global warming. It is sit uated on a flat and low delta, at the confluence of the Jamuna (Ganges), Padma (Brahmaputra) and Meghna rivers. It is a region with very fertile soils through the deposits of alluvium, but threatened by floods: the major part of the territory is at least 12 meters in height—of which 10% is located be low sea level, under the protection of dykes. In addition, the population density is especially high: we are the 94th biggest country by surface, but the 8th biggest by population. By and large we have a population density more than twice that of the Netherlands—for a population of approxi mately 160 million! So any rise in the ocean level and any extreme climatic phenomenon have dra matic consequences. We are truly on the front line in terms of climate!
To the overall effects of the contemporary capi talist mode of development on climate change, we must add its local effects. Let us take the example of the large-scale production, in the southwest of Bangladesh, of shrimp destined, inter alia, to the European market. The dikes in the polders have been opened, and the very rich land where poor peasants were working has been drowned under seawater to create pools for breeding. In the short term, the villagers have benefited from an attractive income through aquaculture; but this industry has destroyed coastal vegetation (mangroves and so on) as well as the biodiversity that was a refuge and a natural protection against the assaults of the ocean. It caused salinization of surrounding lands and their desertification, ren (continued on page 10, in “Climate disaster in Bangladesh”)