Bangladesh An Ecological Basket Case

[hatrack]

DHAKA, June 9 (OneWorld) - "Air and water pollution coupled with human encroachment in Bangladesh's forests are destroying flora and fauna and endangering the country's long-term economic sustainability, warn environment experts.

A World Bank study estimates that at least 15,000 people have died of diseases caused by air pollution in four major cities — Dhaka, Chittagong, Khulna and Rajshahi -- and an estimated 6.5 million people suffer from acute respiratory infections. The Asian Development Bank puts the economic cost of such deaths and illnesses at US $800 million a year.

According to the Department of Fisheries, as many as eight species of fishes have become extinct and the existence of nearly 42 species is threatened in Bangladesh's rivers due to pollution, the loss of habitat and excessive fishing. In the last century, five out of 650 bird species in Bangladesh were wiped out, and many fear the rate of extinction will accelerate in the years to come, especially because of the loss of habitat.

In and around Bangladesh's capital Dhaka, the Environment Department found nearly zero levels of oxygen in the rivers Buriganga, Shitalakhya and Turag in recent times. According to the Dhaka Water and Sewerage Authorities, the ground water table -- the source of drinking water for one third of this city's 10 million people -- has become contaminated with harmful bacteria."

EDIT

And much, much more at:

http://southasia.oneworld.net/article/view/87799/1/

[SHRED]

1. bhang-cannabis, la-land, desh-people

"In the formerly lush
Himalaya region of Bangladesh, Nepal and Tibet there is now only a light
moss covering left as flash floods wash thousands of tons of topsoil away.
In 1964, Bangladesh (from bhang-cannabis, la-land, desh-people) signed an
'anti-drug' agreement with the U.S. not to grow hemp. Since that time the
'marijauna-land-people' have suffered disease, starvation and decimation,
due to unrestained flooding. Hemp seeds sown free from airplanes flying
over eroding soil could reclaim land the world over. The farmed out desert
regions can be brought back year after year, not only slowing the genocide
of starvation but easing threat of war and violent revolution."

http://www.jackherer.com/chapters.html

[NNadir]

2. This country is slated to largely go underwater

should the sea level rise a few meters.

Typhoon storm surges have already killed hundreds of thousands there.
A cyclone on April 30, 1991 killed almost 140,000 people and a little over a year later, on June 10, 1991, another storm killed 125,000. (A storm in 1970 killed between 300,000 and 500,000 in the same country.)

I am sure that the swamping of this country will be an environmental and human disaster of incomprehensible proportions.