Bangladesh Level One

BANGLADESH LEVEL ONE

COUNTRY OVERVIEW

Bangladesh is located between 20 º 34 to 26º 38 north latitude and 88.01 º to 92.42 º east longitude, with an area of 147,570 sq km). With a population of 164.000 million, Bangladesh is one of the world's most densely populated countries. It has a border on the west, north, and east with India, on the southeast with Myanmar, and the Bay of Bengal is to the south. Geologically, Bangladesh is a part of the Bengal Basin, one of the largest geosynclinals in the world. The Basin is bordered on the north by the steep Tertiary Himalayas; on the northeast and east by the late Tertiary Shillong Plateau, the Tripura hills of lesser elevation, and the Naga-Lusai olded belt; and in the west by the moderately high, ancient Chotanagpur plateau.

The floor of the Bengal Basin consists of quaternary sediments deposited by the Ganges, the Brahmaputra, and the Meghna rivers, known together as the GBM river system, and their numerous tributaries and distributaries. The sediments are washed down from highlands on three sides of the Basin, particularly from the Himalayas, where the slopes are steeper and the rocks less consolidated. Over 92 per cent of the annual runoff generated in the GBM catchment area flows through Bangladesh, although it comprises only about 7 per cent of the total catchment.

The whole country consists of mainly low and flat land, except for the hilly regions in the northeast and southeast. A network of rivers, with their tributaries and distributaries, crisscross the country. Physiographically the country can be divided into hills, uplifted land blocks, and the majority alluvial plains with very low mean elevation above sea level Of the total area of Bangladesh, agricultural land makes up 65% of its geographic surface, forest lands account for almost 17%, while urban areas are 8% of the area. Water and other land use account for the remaining 10%.

The total forest land includes classified and unclassified state lands and homestead forests and tea/rubber gardens. The Sundarban is the largest mangrove forest in the world. It lies at the southern part of the Ganges delta and is spread across the coastal areas of Bangladesh and West Bengal of India. The section of Sundarban that belongs to Bangladesh has been listed in the UNESCO world heritage.

The physical environment of Bangladesh is diverse, and there is a mix of both traditional and modern methods of land use, all very closely adapted to the heterogeneous conditions. This complexity of environment and utilization patterns has important implications for the vulnerability and depletion of the natural resource base. Bangladesh has a comparatively low natural resource base, but a high growth rate of population, with almost half of the population below fifteen years of age. Most of the people are among the poorest in the world, and depend mainly on the natural resource base for their livelihood. But now the resource base is under serious threat, as many natural resources are either being over exploited or used sub-optimally. Besides the effects of anthropogenic stresses, the low land-man ratio in the country is often further threatened by natural hazards. Thus, for the survival of the dense population, it is essential to have environmental planning and management that conserves and sustains the ecosystems that support their livelihoods. The high population density, low economic growth, lack of institutional infrastructure, an intensive dependence on agriculture and agricultural products, geographical settings, and various other factors, all contribute to make the country weak in its economic development and quality of life.

Food insecurity remains a critical issue in Bangladesh. Although the number of malnourished has decreased in recent years, it remains high: over 41 million people or 27 percent of the total population are malnourished, and just under half of all Bengali children are underweight. Approximately 82 percent of the population live in rural areas, and almost half depend on agriculture for their livelihoods, although the country’s agricultural imports outnumber its exports twelve-fold.

Bangladesh has an agrarian economy, although the share of agriculture to GDP has been decreasing over the last few years. Yet it dominates the economy accommodating the major rural labour force.

Although due to natural calamities like flood, loss of production of food and cash crops are almost regular phenomenon. Yet in recent years, there has been substantial increase in food grain production. Agricultural holding in Bangladesh are generally small but use of modern machinery is gradually increasing. Rice, Jute, Sugarcane, Potato, Pulses, Wheat, Tea and Tobacco are the principal crops. Crop diversification programme, credit, extension and research and input distribution policies pursued by the government are yielding positive result. The country is now on the threshold of attaining self-sufficiency in food grain production.

Bangladesh is rich in fish wealth. In the innumerable rivers, canals, tanks and other low- lying and depressed areas and paddy fields that remain under water for about 6 months in a year and cover nearly 12 million acres, tropical fish of hundreds of varieties are abound. Rice and fish constitute an average Bangladeshi's principal diet. Hilsa, lobsters and shrimps are some of the fish which are exported to foreign countries.

Bangladesh has a few proven mineral resources. The country has enormous deposit of natural gas. So far, 17 gas fields have been discovered from which natural gas is available for power-generation, industrial and other uses. Fertilizer factories in operation including the petro-chemical complex at Ashuganj and those to be set-up are and will be using sizeable quantity of natural gas. Coal deposits have been found and efforts are under way to explore them with international assistance. Electricity is produced by both thermal and hydro-electric process. The total generation of electricity amounted to 22742 million kilowatt hours in 2005-06. The solitary hydro-electric project having installed capacity of producing 230 m.w. electricity is located at Kaptai in the Chittagong Hill Tracts. Limestone, the basic raw material for the production of cement, has been found in some places and cement factories are being set up for their utilization. Other minerals found include hardrock, lignite, silica sand, white clay, etc. Salt is manufactured on small scale at several thousand evaporation sites in the coastal areas of Chittagong and Cox's Bazar.

Although Bangladesh is predominantly an agricultural country but a large number of large-scale industries based on both indigenous and imported raw materials have been set up. Among them readymade garments, cotton textile, pharmaceuticals, fertilizer, wood product, iron and steel, ceramic, cement, plastic product, chemical are important. Other notable industries are engineering and ship building, oil refinery, paints, colours and varnishes, electric cables and wires, electric lamps, fluorescent tube lights, other electrical goods and accessories, matches, cigarettes, etc.. Among the cottage industries, handlooms, carpet-making, shoe-making, coir, bamboo and cane products, earthenware, brass and bell metal products, bidi and cheroots, small tools and implements, ornaments, etc. are important.

ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES

A. SHIP BREAKING

Decommissioned ships from around the world are sent to Bangladesh and dismantled by hand on the beaches by unskilled workers who are often paid less than one dollar per day. Coveted for their valuable steel and other scrap metals, aging vessels are sold to ship breaking yards and taken apart piece by piece with torches and other small tools, resulting in toxic contamination of the coastal waters and serious health hazards for the 20,000 workers. The ships, laden with asbestos, polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), lead, arsenic and other substances, leach toxic chemicals into the environment. Ecosystems have been heavily polluted and hundreds of workers have been maimed or killed in the process, as they dismantle the ships with little or no protective equipment. If 150 or so ships go through Bangladesh's yards every year, labour and environmental laws remain mostly in papers, while the international guidelines against toxic waste-dumping are seldom met.

B. SHRIMP CULTIVATION

Bangladesh, with a large deltaic flood plain, has a long tradition of fishing and fish culture. In recent decades, due to an increased international demand, shrimp has become one of the most important export products. Although shrimp farming has had a significant impact on the economy of Bangladesh, it has created irreversible damage in one of the most densely populated and poorest countries in the world

C. SOLAR ENERGY

Bangladesh is a poor, densely populated country, with about 162 million people. In 2002, only about 40 percent of them had access to electricity, which loomed as a major constraint to economic growth and quality of life. Furthermore, since Bangladesh is a delta with more than 400 rivers, extending a grid system is complex and often prohibitively expensive. For this reason, the Government of Bangladesh established a goal of providing electricity to its entire rural population by 2020. However, with the Rural Electrification Board connecting only about 400,000 households every year, it was on pace to take more than 35 years complete the task. Considering the fact that the government has identified about 30 remote sub-districts where grid expansion is not possible in the next 10 to 15 years, SHS sets seem a crucial alternative to meet the government’s social commitment of electricity for all by 2020. In June 2011 The number of households in the electricity-starved South Asian nation using solar panels has crossed the one million mark -- the fastest expansion of solar use in the world.

D. ARSENIC CONTAMINATION

It was thought that Bangladesh had succeeded in offering safe drinking water to the vast majority of its population through tube wells with hand pumps by the early 1990s. However, during the same decade this success was challenged by the discovery of widespread arsenic contamination exceeding the Bangladesh drinking water standard of 50 microgram per liter. In the 1970s, aid agencies encouraged the drilling of hand- pumped wells so that people did not have to drink surface water contaminated with waterborne microbial diseases such as cholera. Geologists failed to realize that the pumps would be tapping into arsenic-laced aquifers beneath. According to the existing theory, arsenic is an intrinsic part of the affected areas' geology, and the groundwater sources got contaminated when wells were dug indiscriminately during 1970s, leading to the leaching out of arsenic from rocks. Nearly 90 per cent of the country’s population depends on groundwater for daily needs. Water wells in Bangladesh have exposed up to 77 million people to toxic levels of arsenic since 1970s.