train professionals to work within the country but also make them desirable as immigrants to other countriesâsort of a planned brain drain. Emigration could relieve some of the pressure thatâs sure to slam down in the decades ahead. Itâs also a way to bolster the countryâs economy; remittances sent back by emigrants account for 11 percent of the countryâs GDP. âIf people can go abroad for employment, trade, or education and stay there for several years, many of them will stay,â he says. By the time climate change hits hardest, the population of Bangladesh could be reduced by 8 to 20 million peopleâif the government makes out-migration a more urgent priority.
For now, the government seems more interested in making climate adaptation a key part of its national development strategy. That translates, roughly, into using the countryâs environmental woes as leverage in persuading the industrialized world to offer increased levels of aid. Itâs a strategy thatâs helped sustain Bangladesh throughout its short, traumatic history. Since independence, it has received tens of billions of dollars in international aid commitments. And as part of the accord produced at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen in 2009, nations of the developed world committed to a goal of $100 billion a year by 2020 to address the needs of poor countries on the front lines of climate change. Many in Bangladesh believe its share should be proportionate to its position as one of the countries most threatened.
âClimate change has become a kind of business, with lots of money flying around, lots of consultants,â says Abu Mostafa Kamal Uddin, former program manager for the governmentâs Climate Change Cell. âDuring the global financial meltdown, trillions of dollars were mobilized to save the worldâs banks,â he says. âWhatâs wrong with helping the poor people of Bangladesh adapt to a situation we had nothing to do with creating?â
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TWO YEARS AFTER the cyclone, Munshiganj is still drying out. Nasir Uddin and his neighbors are struggling to wring the salt water out of their psyches, rebuild their lives, and avoid being eaten by the tigers that prowl the village at night, driven from the adjacent Sundarbans mangrove forest in search of easy prey. Attacks have risen as population and environmental pressures have increased. Dozens of residents around Munshiganj have perished or been wounded in recent yearsâtwo died the week I was thereâand some of the attacks occurred in broad daylight.
âItâs bad here, but where else can we go?â Uddin says, surveying the four-foot-high mud platform where heâs planning to rebuild his house with an interest-free loan from an NGO. This time heâs using wood, which floats, instead of mud. The rice fields around his house are full of water, much of it brackish, and most local farmers have begun raising shrimps or crabs in the brine. Deep wells in the village have gone salty too, he says, forcing people to collect rainwater and apply to NGOs for a water ration, which is delivered by truck to a tank in the village and carried home in aluminum jugs, usually balanced on the heads of young women. âYou should take a picture of this place and show it to people driving big cars in your country,â says Uddinâs neighbor Samir Ranjan Gayen, a short, bearded man who runs a local NGO. âTell them itâs a preview of what South Florida will look like in 40 years.â
As the people of Munshiganj can attest, thereâs no arguing with the sea, which is coming for this land sooner or later. And yet itâs hard to imagine millions of Bangladeshis packing up and fleeing en masse to India, no matter how bad things become. Theyâll likely adapt until the bitter end, and then, when things become impossible, adapt a little more. Itâs a matter of national mentalityâa
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