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Media coverage and the War of 1971

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The state of media in the '70s needs to be analysed to examine the importance of non-partisan reporting of news across the globe and its benefits for conflict resolution. Censorship exists in many forms, and censorship within the media is an issue that has spawned thousands of debates, especially in recent times.

Some say that media should be regulated to protect people from the backlash of their opinions, to protect children from explicit content and to remove social stigmas and negative influences. Conversely, it is also a widely held belief that once media is censored, it becomes a form of propaganda due to the government's bias, whether it is left or right-wing.

In her blog, Hana Shams Ahmed wrote that the birth of Bangladesh in 1971 'happened amidst widespread media blackout' due to the Pakistan Government's control of the national media.

When the military government was overthrown in Bangladesh, democracy was restored, thus giving the media the freedom to operate. While print media targets more urban areas, Bangladesh is a mostly rural country, and despite a modest circulation, the media plays a significant role and can have a strong impact on political outcomes.

In terms of broadcast media, telecommunications technology was not particularly developed and despite medium and short wave transmitters being installed, most radio facilities were destroyed during the Liberation War.

Protect farmers from Covid-19 fallout

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Experts and researchers from six Asian countries have called for implementing agrarian and social security reforms to protect farmers from the adverse impacts of Covid-19

They made the call at an international webinar yesterday. The event, titled "Ensuring land and food rights at a time of Covid-19 and beyond", was organised jointly by Association for Land Reform and Development (ALRD) and The Daily Star.

In his keynote presentation, eminent researcher Antonio B Quizon touched upon issues like increased rural indebtedness forces small farmers to sell off their homes and farmlands; agrarian reforms have slowed down as government's priorities have been shifted elsewhere; agricultural workers are not being properly paid; and pastoralist communities and indigenous people have been impacted as national borders have been closed.

"On the other hand, politicians and state leaders have taken advantage of the pandemic to consolidate their power by suppressing dissent," said Quizon, former chairperson and executive director of NGO Coalition for Agrarian Reform and Rural Development (ANGOC).

Overall, the Covid-19 health crisis has created an environment, where it is easier to violate the land tenure rights of vulnerable populations, he added.

 

At the webinar, participants from Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Cambodia, Indonesia and Philippines discussed farmers' land rights situation in their respective countries.

ALRD Deputy Executive Director Rowshan Jahan Moni said, "Despite bumper production of rice this year, harvested crops could not reach markets in time due to [the coronavirus-driven] lockdown. Incidents of land grabbing of minorities and indigenous people and violence against women, including their rape and torture, have also increased." 

Ujjaini Halim, executive director, Institute for Motivating Self Employment (IMSE), India, said at present, 60 percent of India's population or an estimated 812 million people live below the World Bank-determined poverty line of $3.2 a day for lower middle income countries. Due to the pandemic, 104 million more people could fall below that poverty line in India."

Dewi Kartika, general secretary of Konsorsium Pembaruan Agraria (KPA) from Indonesia, said, "Agrarian conflicts have increased during this pandemic due to increased land grabbing, intimidation and political suppression. Demonstration and street protests have been prohibited or restricted in many countries."

Jagat Deuja, former executive director, Community Self Reliance Centre (CSRC) and Expert Member of Land Issues Resolving Commission, Nepal said, "Violence and abuse have increased up to eight percent in Nepal during this pandemic. Farmers are also being forced to sell their products at much lower rate than the normal market price."

Vaing Samrith, programme manager, Star Kampuchea from Cambodia, said, "Many farmers who had taken loans from banks could not pay them back as they could not cultivate their lands or sell their goods during the lockdown. They are now selling their lands to repay the loan."

Nathaniel Marquez Don, executive director, Asian NGO Coalition for Agrarian Reform and Rural Development, said, " In the Philippines, more than two million hectares of lands have been contested in the last nine months which is way more than the normal times. An estimated 252,241 households have been adversely affected by these conflicts."

Followed by the participant's presentation, a panel discussion took place where panelists emphasised on immediate land reforms so that farmers' rights on lands can be protected legally. They also demanded reformation of social safety net programmes to include more farmers and small entrepreneurs in them.

Syeda Rizwana Hasan, chief executive, Bangladesh Environmental Lawyers Association (Bela), said, "We need to have law on right to food, we need to have legal promulgation on farmers' rights and we need to have law on the protection of agricultural land."

Prof Rashed Al Mahmud Titumir of Dhaka University's Department of Development Studies said, "To increase resilience against food insecurity and poverty induced by this pandemic, we need to introduce a universal social security system which covers formal education, nutrition, medical services and skill development training. This social security system is based on the human life cycle, which provides support for every phase of our life cycle."

Mohammed Helal Uddin, director research at Centre for Integrated Rural Development for Asia and the Pacific (Cirdap), said, "According to the current vaccine development trends, we can estimate that the pandemic may last for at least another one to three years."

"This duration will prove fatal for many small farmers and entrepreneurs who don't have enough savings to sustain for such a long time. The governments should bring these extremely vulnerable populations under the social safety net programmes," he added.

 

https://www.thedailystar.net/frontpage/news/protect-farmers-covid-19-fallout-2013605

Women’s contribution to agriculture and access to land: Covid-19 and beyond

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The Daily Star and Association for Land Reform and Development (ALRD) jointly organised an online discussion titled “Women’s contribution to agriculture and access to land: Covid-19 and beyond” on December 27, 2020. Here we publish a summary of the discussion. Speakers’ serial has been maintained as per the flow of the discussion.

 

Khushi Kabir, Chairperson, ALRD and Coordinator, Nijera Kori

The issue of women's contribution to agriculture as well as access to land is a crucial issue but it is not given proper recognition. Women play a huge role in agriculture, be it the cultivation of land or processing of the produce or even in households.

Globally, women own very little land compared to men and with the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, this issue has become all the more important to be addressed.

We need to change our perception of women's role in the work that they are doing, especially in production in rural areas. Women contribute so much but do not gain recognition. Women's roles in agriculture are rarely represented in reports. New policies and legal recognition on paper is not sufficient; there has to be proper implementation. We are from a culture that does not value women, so we must find a way to change the mindset of the society itself.

Bangladesh is on the brink of preparing its eighth Five Year Plan and this is a timely opportunity to incorporate a separate section for women.Creating a new bank for rural women in agriculture entails a bureaucratic process, and would be problematic and time-consuming since the banking sector is going through a difficult time. I would suggest influencing existing banks to reserve separate windows for rural women in agriculture, so they receive the financing required to produce as much as they need.

 

Getting women parliament members interested in this cause will create a strong force to raise these issues in parliament. We need to be heard, and we need to be taken seriously. We have to be recognised. There must be meaningful changes in our mindsets, actions, policies, and laws. Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman has always emphasised on agriculture, land reform, and land rights. That is the Bangladesh he had dreamt of.  

Dr.Sanzida Akhter, Associate Professor and Chairman, Department of Women and Gender Studies, Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Dhaka

Women constitute almost 60 percent of the agricultural labour in Bangladesh. Their contribution is well-known but they still have not gotten official recognition as farmers. As a result, they also do not have access to the various services that they are deserving of. COVID-19 has worsened this overall economic condition of Bangladesh, putting women farmers in further jeopardy in terms of their economic and social status and food security.

We carried out a mixed-method study to assess the current situation of women farmers in four locations which include Rangamati, Sunamganj, Pabna, and Dinajpur. A wide range of areas were chosen to bring regional variation and capture perspectives of the indigenous communities and of people living in haor and plain land areas. This study has revealed that in terms of women's contribution to agricultural work, they are always labelled as "assistants''. Their involvement in agricultural work is also associated with lower socio-economic status. Women with upper social status are expected to be completely detached from agricultural activities.

In crop production, we have noticed that women, on average, contribute more hours than men in the harvesting and post-harvesting processes. A similar pattern is seen in the participation of women raising livestock.

Men are thought to be more involved in the fishing sector. But our quantitative data shows that in terms of caretaking, women are equal participants. Women contribute by making and repairing nets, organising the tools and equipment before fishing, preparing and clearing fish after catching, and processing them. Processing local dry fish is completely done by women but they neither have the ownership of this business nor recognition from family members, community, or administration.

Women's activities in crop production, on average, contribute to 48 percent of the financial needs of the family which is also supplemented by involvement in raising livestock, fisheries, and homestead gardening.

Women's income and involvement in agriculture work remain absent in the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of Bangladesh. Accounting for women's involvement in the agricultural sector, whether formal or informal, or productive or reproductive, would boost the country's per capita income as well as women's status in the country. The study found a stark picture of inequality in terms of women's access to government-led agricultural services and credit in comparison with their male counterparts, in all the four districts.

Women's limited access to farmers' cards not only denies women the access to a wide range of agricultural services, but also depicts the policy level failure to give women farmers the due recognition they deserve.

Our study also found that women farmers were paid less but none of the respondents were able to provide any reason as to why this inequality in payment existed.

The idea should not be to allow more women to have access to the existing structure but to completely revise and restructure the existing infrastructure to make it women-friendly.

Rowshan Jahan Moni, 

Deputy Executive Director, ALRD

In Bangladesh, property rights of women and girls fall mainly in the domain of family laws. Most of the family laws including Muslim and Hindu inheritance laws are discriminatory against women. Rules and procedures of khas (public) land distribution also often disempower women. As per Khas land management and distribution policy, single women and widows are not eligible to apply for khas land unless they have "an able-bodied son". Only 15.8 percent of rural land is owned by women; while one-fourth of that land is effectively controlled by them. The ownership ratio of water-bodies by women is also very insignificant. Women farmers constitute 72.6 percent of the total agricultural labour force but they are not recognised as farmers.

Moreover, Bangladesh is a signatory to several international conventions and covenants such as the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR). Unfortunately, the reports for all these international covenants are not always submitted regularly and often capture only the achievements and not the targeted actions. Data gap in the reports is a stumbling block in measuring progress. Women's rights and women's land rights are correlated issues and should be persuaded through these instruments.

Vidya Bhushan Rawat, 

Founder and Director, Social Development Foundation, Delhi, India

We conducted a study on women's land rights issues in India, Nepal, Bangladesh, Cambodia, and Indonesia. We observed that in all these countries, around 15 to 20 percent women own properties but despite having land under their names, most cannot effectively access it due to cultural biases in the caste system.

Property rights or their lack thereof form the basis of violence against women. In rural India, women do not have access to ancestral properties and therefore in the case of a divorce, she is left completely powerless. Although laws have been amended, in joint families, the agrarian properties are still passed on to the males in the families.

Women belonging to minority groups, such as indigenous and Dalit women face further prejudices. The mainstream women's rights movements need to be more vocal about the issues of these marginalised women. Women from these groups also need to be provided with the platform to voice their concerns. Women's leadership needs to be diverse and consist of women from various social and cultural backgrounds.

Through our studies, we found that in most of these countries the personal laws guiding the families usually supersede the civil laws imposed by the government. During the COVID-19 situation, the women belonging to the labour class faced severe difficulties; they have been unable to receive even basic healthcare services due to the ongoing pandemic.

At present, there is a huge inequality in wages among males and females in the unorganised agrarian sector. With time, we see this inequality increasing due to the economic downturn. It is the duty of the civil society and the media to focus on these real issues and work jointly.

Kalpana Karki, 

Campaign Manager, Community Self-Reliance Centre (CSRC), Kathmandu, Nepal

In our constitution, we have a provision for the elimination of discrimination based on class, caste, religion, language, and gender. According to Article 18, we have the right to equality.

There is a provision stating both spouses shall have equal rights in property and family affairs. 19.71 percent women have ownership over land and houses. 10,118 couples have acquired Joint Land Ownership (JLO) Certificates covering an area of 2779.01 hectares of land.

Guidelines of JLO have been approved by the federal level Ministry of Land Reform, Cooperatives and Poverty Alleviation. Based on this provision, we are advocating for the local government to include this JLO provision in their programmes and policies. It has provided a strong basis in taking the land rights movement forward, linking it with human rights, economic security, and social justice for women. Women's land entitlement has enhanced women's economic power, socio-economic security, social dignity, and political participation.

Some challenges include implementing pro-women policy provisions, the absence of disaggregated data, and the COVID-19 situation, which has impacted women's mobility and participation in claiming their land rights. COVID-19 has also reduced women's linkages to the market to sell farm products and made them vulnerable to economic insecurity.

Land Issues Resolving Commission (LIRC) is mandated to solve landlessness and informality of land tenure. It will ensure tenure security of around 1.4 million people. While providing land certificates, it will issue JLO. There is a special provision for grant support to women farmers to help them recover from the losses due to the pandemic.

We should hold extensive debates and discussions on daughters' ownership rights to ancestral property and emphasise on implementing existing policies such as JLO and advocate for gender-friendly policies. There needs to be more emphasis in implementing existing policies through collaboration with the government bodies at federal, provincial, and legal level.

Chet Charya, 

Director, Star Kampuchea, Cambodia

Women's access to land and agricultural rights in Cambodia remains a challenge due to limited law enforcementand opportunities. Agriculture is the backbone of Cambodia's economy, contributing 23.5 percent to the GDP. There is a lack of farmers' access to credit because banks give limited loans to low-income farmers. There is a lack of women in decision-making, even though the land law provides equal ownership rights to all genders. The economic impact of COVID-19 on Cambodia is enormous, affecting women in particular. Even though agricultural inputs are high, access to credit and market is still challenging for smallholder farmers, especially women, indigenous peoples, and other vulnerable groups. Access to food and nutrition security are also areas of concern.

The government of Cambodia has allocated two billion dollars for the economic response to the pandemic. There are more than one hundred million dollars to support farmers in the form of cash transfer and agricultural inputs. The United Nations in Cambodia and development partners have repurposed their strategy for economic recovery after the pandemic. The government, led by the Ministry of Economy and Finance, has prepared the Economic Recovery Strategy to be implemented by UN agencies and development partners to support farmers beyond the COVID-19 crisis. Civil society organisations (CSOs) are also repurposing their plans toward supporting farmers during and beyond the COVID-19 situation. Development partners provide support to CSOs and communities to raise awareness on COVID-19 prevention.

Dr Nazneen Ahmed,

Senior Research Fellow, Bangladesh Institute of Development Studies (BIDS)

While advocating for land rights, we should also demand a supportive environment to help women move forward. Data from focus group discussions with women in agriculture from eight different districts of Bangladesh showed that even though women did not have inheritance rights on land, their involvement in agriculture allowed them to generate income and buy their own land. Crop insurance helped them overcome harvest risks. Therefore, if women can be linked to the value chain, they can grow and have their own resource base. Another claim was that people hold a misconception that not many women participate in agriculture. This is untrue since the only time that women do not participate is during the rainy season. Advocacy for changes in policies are important, but in the meantime other supporting factors should be identified and facilitated.

Dinesh Desai,

Director, Maldhari Rural Action Group (MARAG), Ahmedabad, India

Almost 26 percent of women have lost their jobs due to the pandemic. In Bangladesh and India, 85 to 90 percent women are unpaid workers in agriculture. A change in mindset is required to accept that women can also be farmers, livestock keepers, fisherfolk, etc. Livestock keepers and farmers faced enormous mobility challenges during the shutdown, in terms of entering the market, livestock keeping, and migrating between districts or countries. These people are fighting climate change and only working in small groups, yet the government is restricting their mobility.

The role of women is restricted to the production system as labourers. The wages of women should be looked into. In India, the private sector is involved in cotton farming, which is affecting women's respiratory health as well as the air quality. Women are usually unable to bargain for their agricultural products. Therefore, women should be included in decision-making roles.

Mirgul Amanalieva,

Asia Regional Coordinator, International Land Coalition (ILC)-Asia, Indonesia

The pandemic has increased the challenges faced by women farmers manifold. There is an urgent need to put all our efforts into strengthening women's land rights in every sector. In Kyrgyzstan, more than 64 percent of women live in rural areas. They are essential to rural development and the economy. They account for a significant portion of the agricultural labour force, play a crucial role in food production, especially subsistence farming, and do most of the unpaid work in rural areas. Even though Kyrgyz law provides women and men with equal ownership and rights to property regardless of their marital status, through customary laws and traditions, men are more likely to inherit and own land and property. As a result, women are asset poor, without ownership or property rights. There is room for growth and for us to bring more attention to women's land rights.   

Shamsul Huda,

Executive Director, ALRD

Studies have shown that women are major actors in every sphere of agriculture, including livestock and fisheries. The non-recognition of women's contribution to agriculture and in society as a whole is a big issue. Women facing discrimination in terms of land ownership, control and market access, and in every other sphere of society, is, unfortunately, a common occurrence in the South Asian region. For decades, there has been wage discrimination between male and female day labourers. Restructuring of agricultural policies and management is required. The entire societal structure should be reviewed and restructured. Since land and agricultural issues are regional, it is essential to have a regional strategy, coordination, and cooperation.

Women in rural areas who are engaged in agriculture or other economic activities do not qualify for bank loans. Therefore, they have to obtain loans from the microcredit programmes of NGOs and CSOs. These loans, in many cases, are not agriculture-friendly. Their service charge and interest are much higher than that of bank loans. Women should have access to formal credit from banks. A separate bank should be established for rural women in agriculture, including fisheries and livestock. These banks should be women-friendly, collective farming friendly, and gender justice friendly.

Almost all countries in the region have provisions that state that men and women have equal access and property rights, but discriminatory laws still exist. We need to do away with these discriminations. To achieve this end, we must fight together, collaborate, cooperate, and learn from each other.

Shamsuddoza Sajen,

Commercial Supplements Editor, The Daily Star & Moderator of the Session

We are aware that women play a significant role in agriculture but they do not have secure land tenure and property rights. Even in countries where women constitute the majority of the agricultural workforce and contribute more than 70 percent of the agricultural work, we see that they are still routinely denied the right to own the very land they cultivate. These women are not even given recognition as farmers. In Asia, the percentage of land owned by women is very low. In India, this percentage is only 28.3 percent; in Indonesia, it is 23 percent; in Nepal, it is 19.9 percent; and in Bangladesh, it is only 13 percent.

Women farmers continue to be classified by the state as unpaid family helpers rather than independent cultivators and decision-makers. The main reason leading to this scenario is the patriarchal mindset of Asian society. Therefore, the issue of women's access to land remains at the margin of any development agenda.

 

Water and Climate Change: Fostering Regional Cooperation and Sharing

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The Daily Star, Bangladesh Environmental Lawyers Association (BELA) and Association for Land Reform and Development (ALRD) jointly

organised an online discussion titled “Water and Climate Change: Fostering Regional Cooperation and Sharing” on December 29, 2020.

Here we publish a summary of the discussion.

 

Shamsul Huda, Executive Director, ALRD

Rivers are nature's gift to us. The international rivers in our region have contributed to the expansion of civilisation since ancient times. In recent history, sharing water of international rivers by two or more countries led to concerns and frustrations throughout the region. Nevertheless, international rivers can be looked at as a symbol of expanding cooperation and an opportunity to foster friendships across the region.

Climate change is a similar global issue. Unprecedented human interventions have resulted in global warming and we are observing an increased frequency of natural disasters throughout the globe. The countries in the South are the most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. Today's regional consultation hopes to widen the scope for sharing knowledge and experience among the stakeholders and lead to a concerted and coordinated approach towards a positive change. This discussion will also help encourage the relevant actors of the different states to negotiate through meaningful dialogues the issue of sharing water and promote wider cooperation on climate change responses.

Dr Imtiaz Ahmed,

Professor, International Relations & Director, Centre for Genocide Studies, University of Dhaka

There is a need for reconceptualization of certain terms. Rivers need to be reconceptualised to be thought of consisting of not just water but also of energy, biodiversity, and sediment. Whenever we talk about river sharing, we only talk about sharing of the water. Furthermore, we need to reconceptualise how we want to share waters.

Bangladesh is a water-centric country. Unfortunately, Bangladesh's entire development agenda is land-centric. There are two political perspectives towards rivers. According to the statist perspective, the upper riparian/lower riparian discourse focuses on why and how states cooperate or do not cooperate in sharing water only. The Water, Energy, Biodiversity, and Sediments (WEBS) perspective focuses on the experiential challenges of living beings. What needs to be done is to make this WEBS perspective more mainstream.

On the side of Bangladesh, there is a serious issue of river erosion. In 2015, a survey was carried out with the help of ActionAid where it was found that river erosion is the main cause of relocation for people. When discussing erosion, we seem to focus only on land loss. There is no system for calculating land gain caused by erosion through the piling up of sediments over the years. In some areas, on average there might be a loss of land but in others, there might be a greater volume of land gain. A problem arises due to the people losing the lands not being compensated for it.

Dr A Atiq Rahman, Executive Director, Bangladesh Centre for Advanced Studies (BCAS)

South Asia has the second largest population in the world. We have two island countries, two landlocked countries, and three riverine countries, making the whole region quite complex. The South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) was supposed to be the regional cooperation mechanism but it has failed because the two greater powers within the South Asian region do not talk to each other. But the South Asian eastern sub region consisting of Bangladesh, India, Bhutan, and Nepal have been able to cooperate in regards to the Himalayan, Ganges, Meghna, and Brahmaputra system. Within this whole system, climate change has been wreaking havoc. Bangladesh itself is facing the various impacts of climate change which include frequent floods, droughts, cyclones, and so on.

There is an urgent need for planning when it comes to migrations resulting from these various impacts of climate change. Rapid and non-voluntary migration of millions of people is a huge issue.

The reality of global climate change is impact on agriculture, food security, and water security and these impacts are far more complex than the political impacts. Our only way of moving forward is increasing trans-regional cooperation.

M Zakir Hossain Khan,

Senior Program Manager (Climate Finance Governance), Transparency International Bangladesh (TIB)

The coastal people are the most vulnerable when it comes to issues of climate change. Globally, around 56 percent of the people reside in coastal regions.

In the context of South Asia, the Himalayan glaciers are melting more rapidly than anything else in the world. In Bangladesh, due to the rising sea level, more than 570 coastal cities could be affected by 2050. 46 percent of the poor of the world live in climate-vulnerable countries and 897 million people lack climate-adaptive capacities. The Paris Agreement needs to work in favour of these climate-vulnerable countries. The developed countries have the capacity to reduce carbon emissions and to mobilise funds and other resources. But the targets of the developed countries are not ambitious enough in the submitted Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs). Ultimately, the Least Developed Countries (LDCs) are targeting emission of less pollution, and are forced to bear the inequitable burden of reducing emissions.

Although climate finance is supposed to focus on the adaptation of the LDCs, the money is only provided as loans to the developing countries. Hence, climate-vulnerable countries are at risk of the climate debt burden.

LDCs need to come together at the national level to demand ambitious and human rights-compliant climate action. The developed countries should create concrete and meaningful commitments under the Common but Differentiated Responsibilities (CBDR) principle. The legal tools under the Paris agreement should be touched upon so that the lack of transparency and ambiguity can also be addressed. Time-bound mobilisation of required funds for climate adaption is also essential.

Community-led adaptation should be the key to adaptation and resilience.

Farah Kabir,

Country Director, ActionAid Bangladesh

We must help decision-makers, legislators, and policy-makers move beyond land-centric thinking and shift to water-centric thinking to formulate legislation and policies accordingly. This cannot be achieved unless there is pressure from the community. Conversations around rivers in South Asia are about managing and controlling the rivers. We must move away from this dialogue and think about how we can learn to live with rivers, recognising them as living beings. If the upper riparian has the psyche and mindset that they control the water, I would recommend they rethink it because it will be difficult for anyone to control rivers.

The economic and funding aspects are usually discussed, but the loss and damage go beyond that. When there is river erosion or the water level rises, people have to move and they lose social capital and entire communities due to uncertainty. Cities are not planning with water and migration in mind. These aspects should be given importance in conversations with policy-makers across South Asia.

Professor Dr Liyan Zhang,

Tianjin University, China

I believe people are the core elements here instead of land and rivers. The common people at the grassroots who have missed out on formal education are creative because there aren't many limitations in their minds. Their innovative initiatives are valuable. They happen to have many good practices. Therefore, it is crucial to develop a mechanism of sharing knowledge and learning even across different countries' borders. In South Asian countries like India, Bangladesh and Nepal, educating people can be challenging. Still, if the common people, like garment workers, took on this challenge, they may succeed. Learning and sharing valuable information would benefit everybody.

Water issues are mostly related to pollution because people in different countries pollute their water resources. This leads to suffering for people from other countries who happen to share the same river. But climate change occurs for other reasons, though being closely linked to river issues. Therefore, when it comes to water issues, we should concentrate on pollution over everything else.

Dharitri Kumar Sarker,

Deputy Secretary, Ministry of Environment, Forest, and Climate Change, Bangladesh

Bangladesh's two-fold strategy for facing the climate-change scenario is focused on increasing our resilience to the impacts of climate change. We are also working to achieve lower carbon emissions and more resilient development through mitigation. The mitigation measures that have been undertaken include developing utility-scale solar energy, scaling up wind energy, expanding the Solar Homes Programme, scaling up biogas production from waste, and building elevated express highways and Dhaka mass rapid transit systems.

Adaptation priorities include improved early warning systems for cyclones and floods, disaster preparedness for cyclones, climate-resilient infrastructure and communications, climate-resilient housing, stress-tolerant variety improvement and cultivation, biodiversity and ecosystem conservation, research, knowledge management, and capacity building.

Over the last decade, the government has allocated over two billion dollars annually for climate change-sensitive project implementation. So far, Bangladesh has created 200,000 hectares of coastal plantations as shelter belts to save the coastal people from climate change. We are also successfully managing 601,700 hectares of the Sundarbans mangrove forest, which saves lives and resources from natural calamities. Due to lack of upstream water flow in winter, saline water intrusion increases coastal soil salinity. We are coping with this problem by raising embankments and changing planting times.

Rohan D' Souza, Associate Professor, Graduate School of Asian and African Area Studies, Kyoto University, Japan

We must reconceptualise the language and understanding surrounding rivers. If we want to formulate new solutions for climate change, we must rethink what we mean by rivers, water, and so on. We need to think of rivers through WEBS rather than their statist concept. We have to go beyond cooperation and think of the idea of sharing and radically rethink how to position the beneficiaries and the cost. We cannot think about sharing without ideas of empowerment. Empowerment is about enabling people to secure their livelihoods, improve their abilities, and build their capacities. We must address that adaptation is not merely about dodging the damages caused by climate change; it is about what people are gaining as benefits and who are paying the costs.

Rivers being accorded the status of legal entities is fascinating and, in many ways, a significant step. However, there is a big debate today about justice versus rights. Sometimes, those who command legal resources have rights and vice versa. So, how will the river represent and speak for itself?

We must de-centre engineers from the discussion surrounding rivers and move forward with new concepts, taking different perspectives into account. The government should be told that implementing policies requires plural methodologies and more understandings than the narrow engineering view of rivers.

Advocate Syeda Rizwana Hasan, Executive Director, BELA

The rights of the river as an ecosystem should be put above everything else. That should, in turn, dictate the rights of the people and the rights of the state. Rivers or ecosystems are destroyed because there is an upper riparian or mega political power. At the national level, the current mode of development is also contributing to the mass destruction of major ecosystems. We have failed to respect rivers as ecosystems and we treat them as cesspools and mining centres. The damage is happening on both the regional and the national level.

The main problem in South Asia is that, when we talk about protecting rivers as ecosystems, we consider rivers to be a bilateral issue, hence a matter for negotiation between the states. We fail to see the river as an agenda for discussion and dialogue. There is only state-level negotiation, which is devoid of any public consultation. People's voices should be given a place in discourse or negotiations. There is a need for information to be shared among nations and with all relevant communities. A set of guidelines and principles are required to guide future discourse. Climate change, climate challenges, and climate vulnerabilities should shape the agenda.

Mr Dipak Gyawali, Former Minister of Water Resources of Nepal; Academician, Nepal Academy of Science and Technology

We are all victims of climate change. The energy sector created climate change, and the impact on societies came through the water sector. When Kyoto was first developed, there was a concept of equal but differentiated responsibilities. The equal but differentiated responsibility issue has been thoroughly watered down now and taken a new turn with the China versus US rivalry.

We put the responsibility of the climate issue with the bureaucracy and we expect this bureaucracy to lead us towards finding a solution to this issue. But we have to understand that this bureaucracy might be good at management after a framework has been set but they are not good at setting the framework. The current fight resides at a moral and market level as well. The market can be pressured through moral activism of environmentalists. We are expecting our government and ministries to take the lead and come up with brilliant solutions for us to follow. This will not happen.

We also need to look at water through a much wider lens. The biggest portion of trans-boundary water is not actually the river water but water present in the atmosphere. This water transports far more moisture than rivers, especially in the tropics, and does not recognise any boundaries. The cooperation on meteorology is far more serious and far more doable than the cooperation in trans-boundary river sharing.

We also need to shift our focus to the issue of water storage. Climate change is going to make the water more erratic. There will be more water present at the wrong times and less when we need it. But storage does not only mean storage in dams. Water needs to be stored as groundwater, and in ponds, wetlands, and so on.

Barrister Raja Devasish Roy, Chakma Circle Chief

We do not know much about the rivers in the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT). Most of the sources of these rivers lie within Bangladesh. The Ministry of Environment, Forest, and Climate Change is supposed to protect forests from deforestation and from loggers. But, instead, the indigenous peoples are forced to tell the ministry to do its job.

Indigenous peoples need to be part of the dialogue and work with the Bangladesh government for the benefit of the environment. We can bring vast knowledge and experience to the table. The government of Bangladesh alone does not hold the capacity to stop the logging in the hill forests of CHT. The indigenous forest dwellers, on the other hand, know who these loggers are. So, indigenous peoples working together with the government can bring in more meaningful forest management, water resource sharing, and water resource management.

Ajaya Dixit,

Editor, Water Nepal and Chairman, Board of Directors, Nepal Water for Health (NEWAH)

The local ecologies have changed vastly over the last few decades. We need to recognise how these different ecologies interact with each other and how people living in those ecologies respond to environmental stress. In the water terrain, we can see two different universes. One is the world of the experts and the other is the universe of the people who learn from nature. Unfortunately, there is a huge gap between these two groups of people. We do not train our engineers about the social context and challenges present at the local level. Revisiting education can therefore be a good starting point.

Everybody discusses taking water away from rivers but not about putting water back into rivers. So, how can we change the fragmentation of rivers and the loss of biodiversity? The way forward would be to put the vulnerable first such as the smallholders, fisher folk, women and other marginalised groups. Data transparency is also an important issue. How do we then bring in the holistic ecological paradigm? How do we put an economic value on water? We also need to look into depleting upstream dry season river flow. To solve these issues we need a much greater dialogue and conversation across geographical regions.

Shamsuddoza Sajen,

Commercial Supplements Editor, The Daily Star & Moderator of the session

We are aware that the trans-boundary freshwater resource management in South Asia has become complex due to water scarcity and climate change impacts. The water basins in these regions show the impacts of climate change on ecosystems and on society more visibly now. In terms of building resilience, it becomes a major issue as climate change affects water quantity, quality, temperature, water-related ecosystems, and the magnitude and occurrence of extreme weather events such as floods and droughts.

Through its impact on water resources, climate change is affecting many sectors including agriculture, fisheries, tourism, health and biodiversity. These impacts will eventually affect the lives of the millions of people dependent upon these sectors. The poor and vulnerable communities are affected in particular. To address this situation, trans-boundary cooperation is a necessity. Trans-boundary cooperation can also help in terms of conflict prevention, socio-economic development, and overall human well-being.

International Indigenous Day

IMG

For detail please go here

alrd.org

Ensure equal land rights for women

IMG

Speakers at a memorial lecture yesterday stressed the government's initiative to ensure equal rights for the country's women.

Besides, they urged the government to withdraw its reservation on two articles of the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (Cedaw) treaty and its full implementation to ensure women's equal rights.

Association for Land Reform and Development (ALRD) and Dil Monowara Monu Shajan Parshad jointly organised the "Dil Monowara Monu Memorial Lecture" at the capital's Jatiya Press Club, said a press release.

The third death anniversary of writer-journalist Dil Monowara was observed on October 14.

Chairing the event, ALRD Vice President Rawshan Ara Firoz said the main subject of Dil Monowara's writings was the plight of underprivileged women.

Delivering the memorial lecture, Prof Sadeka Halim, chairperson of Dhaka University's sociology department, stressed ensuring equal land rights for women by bringing the necessary change to relevant laws.

Besides, she stressed formulating new laws and full implementation of the Cedaw treaty.

In his welcome speech, ALRD Executive Director Shamsul Huda said while submitting a review report on the Cedaw from Bangladesh in the past, little importance was given to women's land rights issues.

However, as a civil society organisation, ALRD prepared a shadow report highlighting the issue and submitted it to the UN committee concerned, he said.  

Ensure equal land rights for women | The Daily Star

Land is power: act now to end inequality

IMG

By Rowshan Moni, ALRD and Beth Roberts, Landesa

On International Women’s Day this year, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres issued a bleak assessment of progress toward gender equality, noting the world is 300 years away from winning equality for women and girls. Why is this the case? There are many reasons, but one stands out: the tie between land, patriarchy, and power is centuries old, and cinched tight. Globally, land—and the wealth and power it generates—is primarily owned and controlled by men.

Violations of women’s land and inheritance rights too often go unrecognized. This discrimination is normalized by social custom in approximately half the world, and it takes place in private, among families and within households. While we must end all forms of discrimination, this particularly pernicious denial of women’s rights and economic opportunity forms a foundation for many other violations, from child marriage to dispossession of widows.

The world cannot wait three centuries for women to be treated as equals. Gender discrimination is the most urgent human rights issue of our time, undermining efforts to accelerate climate action, alleviate poverty, promote food security, and fully realize rights for women and girls. Our collective response to climate change hangs in the balance. We cannot effect meaningful climate action if half the population lack the equal rights and access to resources necessary to become agents of change.

Land is power: act now to end inequality