Building a secure future in Bangladesh

BBC News 2 Jul 09;

Bangladesh is the most crowded place on Earth and will become even more impossibly packed in the next 30 years.

Approximately 20% of its land will be lost to the rising waters brought about by climate change.

Today's 150 million Bangladeshis also have to face cyclones and arsenic-contaminated water. About half of the population is illiterate and a third live on less than one US dollar a day.

While others make plans for overpopulation, global warming mitigation and sustainable development, in Bangladesh, it is time for action. And the leadership is coming from within.

BBC presenter Paul Rose has travelled to Bangladesh to meet Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus, the pioneer of micro-credit and visionary of hope for the world's poor.

He will also visit villages, field projects, and schools; and talk to the country's leading innovators to report on life at the "front line of sustainable development".

DAY ONE: SO MUCH WATER, BUT NOT ALWAYS THE RIGHT STUFF

"We must do everything we can to provide enough safe water for every Bangladeshi," says a representative of the environmental services firm, Veolia.

"Climate change has meant that our monsoon is no longer reliable and we are desperately short of water."

In the small village of Goalmari, about a hundred local people gathered to celebrate the opening of the first arsenic water decontamination plant built by Veolia.

It is the result of another successful partnership between Grameen Bank and big business. Professor Yunus set up Grameen Bank in the 1970s to provide financial services for the rural poor.

On the stage, Muhammad Yunus, Grameen Bank officials and local dignitaries all agreed enthusiastically with the opening remarks.

But at the exact moment we all applauded, the heavens opened with the mother of all thunderstorms.

The noise of the heavy rain on the tarpaulins overhead made it almost impossible to hear the presentations. When the fabric began to sag and leak there was a scramble to cover those on stage with umbrellas.

We all moved around to the dry spots, and young lads pushed up on the sags with long poles and drained the water to the sides. Then then the music started.

Girls danced on stage, everyone bopped to the music, while rain poured in through every seam.

There were no dry places now so we took photographs of our wet selves and had lovely laughing conversations with the villagers.

It didn't matter that I speak no Bangla or that their English was limited; we were having a great time.

And the event was worthy of a celebration; The Grameen and Veolia partnership means that these people will now have clean water to drink.

Throughout their lives so far, the only water that has been available to them was contaminated with arsenic.

Traditionally, people here have used rivers and ponds for drinking water. But by the 1970s, the lack of sanitation and water-borne disease was killing an estimated 250,000 children each year.

The solution seemed simple: Tube wells for every village. Millions of wells were sunk and the unlimited cool water and reduction in the child death rate seemed evidence of success.

But no-one had checked to see if the ground water was safe; in fact it contains large amounts of naturally-occurring arsenic.

It took over 20 years before testing of the well water over the border in West Bengal showed that it was contaminated, and that it was poisoning large numbers of people.

Early symptoms of arsenic poisoning include skin blisters and dark blotches. This is followed by internal organ damage and arsenic-induced cancers.

Solving this crisis is a huge task. It will take longer to test all of the tube wells than it took to drill them.

It will take longer still to set up decontamination plants. And even longer than that to communicate the problem to the millions of people who remember the well water as something marvellous that saved them from the surface water diseases.

In the meantime, over 50 million people are still drinking water that is poisoning them.

So we really did have something to celebrate at Goalmari. The innovative partnership of Grameen and Veolia started to save lives from the first batch of clean water.

The music stopped, the final messages of congratulations were sent from those on stage; and the rain stopped immediately. Surely a good omen for the success of this essential project.