"Fund constraints are a big barrier to development works in Bangladesh," said Mihir Kanti Mazumder, secretary of the Ministry of Environment and Forests
DHAKA (AlertNet) - Residents in Sandwip, an island sub-district in southeast Bangladesh, have appealed to the government to fund a multi-million-dollar, three-kilometre-long stretch of concrete and earth wall to curb worsening erosion, which threatens the earthen embankments that protect the island of 400,000 people.
But Bangladesh's government, faced with a surge of similar requests from other threatened regions of the country and limited funds, will struggle to carry out the project, which has been proposed since the 1960s, officials say.
"Fund constraints are a big barrier to development works in Bangladesh," said Mihir Kanti Mazumder, secretary of the Ministry of Environment and Forests.
The proposed "dam," which would connect the island to Urirchar, another island near the Noakhali district mainland, is designed to stem worsening sea erosion, which has dramatically reduced the size of the island, to an estimated 80 square miles (200 square kilometres) today.
High tides have gradually washed away part of the island's eastern protective embankments, leaving a growing number of people homeless, said Jamal Uddin Chowdhury, president of Sandwip-Noakhali Dam Implementation Council, a local organization pushing for the dam.
FAMILIES DISPLACED
"Sea erosion outside the embankment is intensifying," he said. Altogether, a quarter of the island's people are now living on its remaining elevated embankments after losing their land and homes, he said.
Over the last 30 years, nearly 200,000 other islanders displaced by erosion have fled to the Chittagong mainland and elsewhere in the country, he said.
Sandwip residents, most of them fishermen and farmers, fear things may be about to get worse after Bangladesh's government allocated $5.3 million to build a one-kilometer-long dam connecting Urirchar island with Noakhali district on the mainland. The project's aim is to reclaim nearly 600 square kilometers (230 square miles) of low-lying land.
Money for the project is to come from the country's Climate Change Trust Fund, which was created and funded by the government.
But the project may put Sandwip's residents at greater risk if the wall changes sea currents, intensifying pressure on their own embankments, Chowhury said.
Council members said the cost of bridging the full four-kilometer-long gap, which separates Sandwip from Urirchar and Urirchar from the mainland, would be about $21 million.
"Climate scientists say low-lying areas like islands and coastal belts are under threat of vanishing due to sea level rise. There is no long-term solution except to try to save the island through increasing its size by building a dam," Chowdhury said.
REALLY NECESSARY?
However, Ainun Nishat, a climate change expert and vice chancellar at BRAC University, a Bangladesh institution focused on development issues, said islands like Sandwip are unlikely to disappear entirely as most are protected by substantial earth embankments.
Sandwip has a more than 12-foot (3.5 metre) embankment encircling it, he said, which suggests a predicted one-meter (3 foot) sea level rise by 2100 would not lead to the destruction of the island.
But he emphasised the need to properly maintain the embankments to ensure their effectiveness, particularly in standing up to the storm surges that are hitting Bangladesh's coastal belt with increased frequency and intensity.
Sandwip residents have been asking for construction of protective dams since the 1960s without result, despite a series of government promises to help.
Bangabandhu Shekh Mujibur Rahman, considered Bangladesh's "father of the nation", in 1970 pledged help building the dam during an election campaign. The region received another pledge of help in 1979 from President Aiaur Rahman, one from Hussain Mohammed Ershad, who came to election in a coup in 1986, and another from present Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina in 2008.
None of the promises were met, residents say.
Part of the problem has been a lack of funds. In 1984, Holland's ambassador in Bangladesh proposed that two-thirds of the cost of the dam could be collected from the Netherlands and other donor countries, and the rest covered by Bangladesh.
In 1986, five countries including Holland and Canada agreed to provide financial and technical assistance to build the dam. But the project was put off by Bangladesh's government in favour of channelling funding for construction of a bridge over the Jamuna River.
Members of the Sandwip Dam Implementation Council said they were assured in October by Hasan Mahmud, the state minister for environment, and Ramesh Shen, the country's water resources minister, that the project remains under consideration, said ABM Wahidur Rahman.
But because of its high cost, the project cannot be funded by the government's Climate Change Trust Fund, which has a cap of $3.57 million for projects, said Mazumder, of the Ministry of Environment and Forests.
The Urirchar-Noakhali dam was funded by the Trust Fund only after the project was broken into two phases, bringing it under the $3.57 million cap.
The lack of adequate funding is a key reason many climate adaptation projects remain unimplemented, Mazumder said.
Syful Islam is a freelance journalist in Bangladesh. He can be reached at youths1990@yahoo.com.
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