by Carolyn D. Townes, S.F.O.
FAN Action Commission
I was privileged to receive an invitation from Oxfam America to an evening event on climate change and global poverty. The evening featured two speakers, Maria Hinojosa, Senior Correspondent for the PBS news magazine NOW, and Heather Coleman, Senior Policy Analyst for Climate Change at Oxfam America. After a screening of a piece about Maria Hinojosa's trip to Bangladesh, they would speak about the human face of climate change and the opportunities and challenges of the upcoming global climate negotiations in Copenhagen this December. The biggest lesson I came away with was that climate change is no longer an environmental issue, it is a humanitarian issue.
Oxfam America is an international relief and developmental organization founded in 1970 to create lasting solutions to poverty, hunger, and injustice. As part of Oxfam International, they are one of 13 Oxfams serving more than 120 countries, including the United States. For me, climate change was about global warming, global cooling and bizarre weather patterns, and as daunting as that is, I discovered it is so much more. After viewing the NOW piece entitled Water World, which aired in October on PBS, I came away shaken that I had not realized the severity of this global problem. I had seen the Al Gore film, An Inconvenient Truth, which in hindsight was more like Climate Change 101.
Water World put faces to the plight; and Maria and Heather’s presentations solidified the case. Maria shared that her trip to Bangladesh “transformed” her in ways she could not have imagined. Bangladesh had always been the poster child for famine, yet they are dealing with a new kind of evil.
Maria begins the film with this haunting statement: Imagine you lived in a world of water, where dry land is a scarce and precious commodity, something you dream about while fording rivers that used to be streets, while going about the daily business of living, up to your elbows in water. This is what the future could look like for much of the planet if the current pace of climate change continues.
Water is one of our most precious resources. It gives life and it can take life away.
From birth to death, water is with us daily. There is very little we can do without it. Yet, it has also become an ironic and deadly enemy. We are reminded in recent times of the tsunami of 2004 which slammed into the Indian Ocean killing and displacing an estimated one million people. And here on our own soil, Hurricane Katrina of 2005 which took nearly 2,000 lives; not to mention the numerous floods, mudslides, and out of season tornadoes and cyclones. Though these are tragic events, especially for a nation that has not had to deal with such catastrophes, we manage to get over and come through. Not so for the people of Bangladesh. For them, this is life.
People here are searching for innovative solutions to the enormous problems caused by climate change. Simple geography is what makes the country of Bangladesh so vulnerable. With 230 rivers and a huge coastline, water is everywhere. It comes from the sky, it comes from Himalayan glaciers melting to the north, and more and more, it comes from the sea. On May 27th, a devastating cyclone slammed the southern coast of Bangladesh. A 16 foot wall of water from the storm surge breached the protective embankment around Gabura Island in more than a dozen different places, flooding the interior with sea water. This is the fifth cyclone to hit Bangladesh in less than three years. Scientists now point to the increase in power and frequency of "extreme weather events" like cyclone Aila as evidence that global warming has arrived.
Because of nations like the United States and China, that produce the most greenhouse gases, these are the devastating results. In the capital city of Dhaka, Maria meets environmental scientist Dr. Atiq Rahman, who is considered one of the world's leading experts on the human impacts of climate change. Dr. Rahman is alarmed by the heavy toll climate change is already taking on the planet.
“We are using the word climate change, global warming, these are soft words. What really is happening is a catastrophic climate destabilization. Irreversible destabilization… what used to be a cyclone every 10 to 15 years, is now every 2 to 3 years,” states Dr. Rahman.
Oxfam aid worker Chayan Rozario sees the harshest effects of climate change strike the people in Bangladesh who are least able to protect themselves. “The poor and the extremely poor are suffering the most from environmental disasters. People who are better off they're able to afford better homes in better locations, so they are less affected,” says Rozario.
In Bangladesh, 20,000 refugees from the cyclone now cling to a man-made embankment barely 20 feet across. It was supposed to protect their island. Now, this fragile perch is the only safe place people have left to go. Here families crowd into makeshift housing. Food is in short supply, and so is the thing people need most to survive. It is a bitter irony: surrounded by water on every side, there is nothing for the people of Gabura to drink. All the wells on the island have been tainted with salt from the storm surge. The only reliable source of fresh water is a boat ride across the channel, on the mainland.
There is another gruesome side to the face of climate change in Bangladesh: the attack of the Bengal tigers. The islands just to the south are home to one of the world's largest populations the tigers. Now, rising tides are swallowing their habitat, and reducing their prey. The hungry tigers have taken to the sea, crossing the channels in search of a new food supply. It is an easy trip especially for a hungry tiger, so they come to the populated villages quite easily.
The striking part of the film was the essence of hope and resurrection. The Bangladeshi people are not just sitting around waiting for treaties to be enacted or aid workers to come and rescue them; they are taking their lives into their own hands. There is a Bangladeshi architect who is constructing “climate shelters,” floating schools and homes. There is an effort by Georgia Tech to contact some of the people via text messaging with climate forecasts, so they can alert their villagers of the coming floods.
Climate change also threatens Bangladesh's primary source of food – rice. Without it, the people will not survive. Because of the flooding, the crops are under water for up to two weeks and thus are ruined. But in 2007, having sought help from the International Rice Research Institute in the Philippines, farmers began field testing an experimental strain of flood resistant rice. The seedlings thrived. Even after being under water for 10 to 15 days there's no reduction in the harvest. This has been a miracle, especially for the flood prone areas.
Heather Coleman, Senior Policy Analyst for Climate Change at Oxfam America, says that this has become a primary issue at Oxfam. This is not just an environmental issue, but a humanitarian issue. Maria shared the “surprising” emails she has received from people who still believe this issue is a non-issue; the Americans who say this has nothing to do with “us.” The question she left us with was, “How do we take this mass problem and make it personal?”
Right now, the United States is obsessed with the economy, security and immigration – and health care is close on the heels. Someone else’s problems of not having proper shelters, food and water are not on our radars because we cannot feel this. One of the things Maria pointed out was the focus the Bangladeshi people had, which Americans lack. While filming on the library boat, the children had two hours to read. Any child would be fascinated with lights, cameras, and the excitement of television. Not these children – they had only two hours to read and nothing distracted them.
We Americans are the agents; Bangladeshis are the objects of this global plight. The time has definitely come for us to make this personal.