Bangladesh faces climate change with doubts about its survival

New Delhi, April 29, 2007. - More than 15 million people at risk of becoming "climate refugees" in Bangladesh where, according to the UN Environment Program, a rise of 1.5 meters in sea level would away 16 percent of its territory.
"We have no development or infrastructure. Just emit harmful gases into the atmosphere. So, while rich countries pollute and the earth warms, we are the victims, "said Efe from Dhaka a spokesman for the Center for Advanced Study in Bangladesh (BCAS), Jandakar Mainudin.
At home, set around extensive Sundarbans delta, formed by the rivers Ganges, Brahmaputra and Meghna, about 60 of its 140 million people-overwhelmingly poor, live less than 10 meters above sea level, making them particularly vulnerable to any change of the medium.
"There are many people affected. Our land is very flat and coastal people will have to flee northward. Still, we have the advantage that it is a process that happens slowly, "he told Efe AQM Mahbub professor of ecology at the University of Dhaka.
According to a report released this month, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change UN forecasts for the year 2100 an increase in sea levels that threaten coastal areas and plains of the country, dominated by the Sundarbans delta ("beautiful jungle" in Bengali).
Of the major rivers, Bangladesh gets the fertile source of its agriculture, dependent on monsoon rains, while the action of the ocean has allowed the extraction of salt and the development of fisheries.
And now, with the increase in global mean temperature and the melting of Himalayan glaciers and the polar areas, the coastline of the country, where the biggest beach in the world (Cox's Bazar, about 120 kilometers long), suffers and the pressure of the water.
"It's like time has gone mad: Too many or too few showers. The sea enters the delta and the rivers carry less and less water. Some offshore islands have already disappeared, "he said by telephone Mainudin.
Quantified in three millimeters per year by the World Bank, rising sea level is related to global warming, but also with decreasing flow of major rivers, drowned by the construction of dams and erosion.
The Ganges, Brahmaputra and Meghna drag tons of sediment that modify the ground and act as a powerful agent against environmental degradation of the riverbanks, where they have built shacks million people in defiance of the obvious risk involved reside at the level of water.
Each year, about 95 million farmers in Bangladesh expect with a mixture of fear and anxiety to drought and floods that come with the monsoon, so important for their livelihood and fertility of crops as dangerous to their lives.
"Our culture blessing because monsoon rains are very important for crops. But due to climate change, severe floods are becoming more frequent. Just check the dates of the last "maintains Mahbub.
Between the catastrophic flood of 1954 and the following similar effect spent 20 years as the teacher. Then, the interval was reduced to 14 years (1988), then to 10 (1998) and then to 6, in 2004, when was the last great flood, which caused 600 deaths and 4 million displaced.
The realization of climate change must take, according to the BCAS, to rich countries reduce their emissions of greenhouse gases, but also the development of pilot projects help, because Mainudin says, "apart from the great words to do something here and now. "
And as climate change looms as a threat to the future of the Bengalis, millions of poor peasants waiting in the Sundarbans delta arrival, like clockwork, the next monsoon.

Bhutanese Refugees, 100,000 people without a country in the Himalayas

New Delhi, November 10, 2006. - The situation of over 100,000 Bhutanese refugees in UN camps in eastern Nepal is deteriorating with no sign that they can return home, from which they were expelled in 1992, and a germ seeping radicalization among young people, according to a report today warning.
The organization india Indian Social Action Forum (INSAF) gave a news conference in New Delhi a document that addresses the concerns of the refugees and the fear, shared by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), to adolescents they know no other life but choose fields violence.
"We tried to solve our problems peacefully for fifteen years, but now we are angry and we are forced to take up arms," ​​according to testimony taken in the report.
The refugees were expelled by the king of Bhutan, Jigme Singye Wangchuck, arguing that instability caused by his membership in the Bhutan People's Party (BPP, an acronym in English), which called democracy.
"Teens that have grown in the fields, gather and cry out to be provided weapons. It's not just a threat to Nepal and Bhutan, but also against India, "he told a representative of INSAF EFE, Utkarsh Sinha.
The expulsion of these refugees, who are ethnic Nepalese Hindu religion, but were settled in the Buddhist Bhutan for 200 years, had the complicity of India, whose territory had crossed to reach Nepal.
But now, according to India, the problem of refugees is just a bilateral issue between Nepal and Bhutan, who have held 15 rounds of unsuccessful talks on the matter.
The Foreign Minister of Nepal, KP Sharma Oli, will later this month an official visit to Thimpu, the capital of Bhutan, and has publicly stated that a solution be achieved.
But his ministry source who asked to remain anonymous can not be assumed that "the meeting expecting anything" in Thimpu.
Another source of UNHCR, which manages the camps and provide a new census in mid-month, acknowledged privately that has lost hope of repatriation.
The refugees, however, prefer to pin their hopes on the announcement of the King of Bhutan to abdicate in his son and call an election in 2008 to restore democracy in this small eastern Himalayan kingdom.
"Bhutan should repatriate and return our land. If not, we collected here or Nepal or India lets us settle in between. If they are not ready for another option, should launch seven bombs on the camps and exterminate us, "she pleads in Shiva Prasad Pokharel a poem, a refugee 80 years, was quoted as saying Nepalese" Kantipur ".
The 86,000 expelled in 1992 and 110,000 refugees are now living in seven camps. "The truth is that your situation is very bad," he told Reuters Anand Swaroop Verma, another member of the INSAF that New Delhi has brought together representatives from the fields to submit their claims.
In its report, Amnesty International warns of a possible conflict stems from a similar scenario to the Palestinians, in line with other documents of the UNHCR which was seen by Reuters, underscoring the "rising young radicals" in the camps.
According to Verma, nearly half the refugees are young "and not want to go there. They repeat that there is a problem, but nobody understands the language of peace, and may have contacts with the Maoist guerrillas in Nepal ", in the process of dialogue with the government.
In search of a solution, the UNHCR offered U.S. a month ago accommodate 60,000 of them in its territory, and similar proposals were Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
"America just wants cheap labor, Sinha criticized. The Bhutanese refugees are and just want to return to Bhutan. But India will not happen, because it is the main ally of the king of Bhutan. "