Country Profile: Bangladesh

The largest delta in the world with little land more than 40 metres above sea level is home to the most densely populated country on earth. In recent years Bangladesh has escaped famine but not the brute force of natural disasters, such as the serious flooding of 1998, which pose major setbacks to progress. Pitied as one of the poorest countries in the world, admired for the productive beauty of its landscape, ever-resilient Bangladesh is determined to farm, fish and manufacture its way out of poverty and dependence on donor support.

From deficit to surplus

Just thirty years since one of the worst famines of the twentieth century food-grain production has doubled and Bangladesh is now largely self-sufficient: food import dependency has fallen to 14%. In addition, increasing amounts of fish, as well as jute, have been exported. This has been achieved through investment in agricultural research; promotion of high-yielding varieties; liberalisation of restrictions on irrigation and the importation of pumps and diesel engines; the privatisation of fertilizer distribution; and marketing of rice. Government policy has encouraged planting of two successive crops of rice on the most fertile lands while many smallholders cultivate up to 70 different grains, vegetables, pulses and fruits during the year, as well as producing a range of livestock products and fish. But Bangladesh still imports twice as much as it exports, 95% of the government's budget is taken up with interest payments on its foreign debt, and poverty and landlessness account for 50% of newborn children being underweight.

Water is Life...

The nutrient-rich alluvial soils are annually rejuvenated by the floodwaters when a third of arable land (seven million acres of cultivated land) disappears under the muddy flood waters of the Ganges, Brahmaputra and Meghna on their final journey from the Himalayas to the Bay of Bengal. Farmers practise intensive successive cropping to grow one crop of rice with the flood waters (June-October), a second rice crop with irrigation and finally a third winter crop in the dry season from November to February.

Although the donor-backed Flood Action Plan (FAP) has attempted to analyze and control the problem of flooding, environmentalists argue it will never be possible, or beneficial, to control the water as sluice gates silt up and the great rivers move and flow outside the embankments built to restrict them.

Moreover, natural and deliberately flooded areas of brackish water support a thriving fish-farming industry. The production of shrimps for export has grown at a dramatic rate contributing to £125 million of sales of frozen fish and seafood to Japan, Europe and the US in 1991.

Water is death...

Bangladesh not only has to cope with the disasters frequently wrought in the monsoon season by the floods that engulf homes but, in the longer term, any rise in sea level due to global warming threatens the land and livelihoods of millions. Meanwhile there are serious threats to human health from water below ground. Over the last two decades 80% of households have been encouraged to stop drinking surface water, often contaminated with disease-causing bacteria, and to drink, cook and wash with supposedly safer water drawn up from below ground by tubewells. However, the unusual underlying geology of Bangladesh has contaminated many aquifers with natural arsenic and recent estimates warn that more than half the population is drinking groundwater with up to 100 times more arsenic than the safe level set by WHO. Early stage symptoms are being found in children as young as 8 years of age, while secondary symptoms, such as calloused and infected palms of the hand and soles of the feet, are found mainly in those aged 25 and older. There is no treatment and, if consumption of arsenic-contaminated water continues, fatal cancers develop. Unless alternative sources of safe water can be provided, the arsenic problem will be the largest mass poisoning in human history and millions of men and women of working age could suffer ill health and reduced life expectancy leading to social and economic problems for the nation.

Resource Management

While yields of rice have almost doubled in thirty years, and production of some livestock products and fish have kept pace with population growth, other subsectors of agriculture - such as jute fibre production - have grown moreslowly or even declined. There are also fears that the very effective push for productivity has been at the expense of diversity; a handful of varieties of rice has largely replaced the 7000 varieties of rice grown before the "green revolution". In addition, intensification has contributed to land degradation of soils already low in organic matter and has resulted in the increasing size of farms and number of landless. The rapidly growing labour force is not being absorbed by farming and rural-based industries and the rural population is migrating to the major cities of Dhaka, Khulna and Chittagong at a rate, according to UN estimates, of about 5% a year. The urban population is predicted to reach 35 million by 2001.

Government and NGO's are trying to stem the flow. The Grameen Bank's initiative to help people make the best use of their resources by loaning small amounts of money to very poor people in Bangladesh has become a role model for development. Of the million borrowers from the Bank 92% are women and prove themselves credit-worthy with repayment rates exceeding 95%.

The labour force is another key resource. Low rates of pay still attract and keep the garment industry in the country employing more than a million workers (80% women) to use imported machinery and materials to manufacturer clothing for export.

Although use of natural resources above ground has been extensive, progress in exploiting the vast reserves of natural gas that lie beneath the rich alluvial swamp that characterises so much of the country has been slow. However, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina Wajed's Awami League government has recently negotiated with foreign firms for oil and gas exploitation.

Bangladesh, in the face of repeated floods, cyclones and droughts, has survived circumstances that would totally defeat a less resourceful people. The challenge in the 21^st century is to make optimum use of its natural and human resources to build lasting rural and urban prosperity .

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