Commercial logging and firewood extraction for domestic use have accelerated Myanmar's deforestation rates in the last three decades. Credit: Amantha Perera/IPS.

By Amantha Perera
YANGON, May 6 2014 (IPS)

Between 2008 and 2013, when Myanmar remained largely closed off to the rest of the world, it suffered a terrible toll at the hands of nature that remained largely unknown.

In those five years, the country of 60 million suffered at least eight major natural calamites that killed more than 141,000 people and affected 3.2 million.

The worst of these was Cyclone Nargis in May 2008 that killed more than 130,000 and affected 2.4 million.Myanmar is still covered with some of the most pristine jungles in East Asia, but the deforestation rate is alarming.

Myanmar has been vulnerable to increasing extreme weather events like many of its neighbours. But as the Disaster Risk Reduction Working Group of Myanmar noted in an extensive analysis last year of the nation’s disaster preparedness levels, the dangers have been amplified because the country has been slow to take remedial measures against changing climate patterns.

The East Asian country’s ranking 167 out of 176 countries surveyed by The Global Adaptation Institute “is as much a reflection of Myanmar’s exposure to climate change as it is of the country’s low capacity to manage climate risks,” the report said.

Such under-preparedness comes at a terrible cost. The same report found that over 2.6 million people live in areas vulnerable to natural disasters ranging from cyclones in the south to earthquakes in the north.

Since the reformist Thein Sein government took office in May 2011, there has been renewed attention to put in place measures that will help the country meet the challenges posed by changing climate patterns.

“I think the government is pretty serious about taking action on this, they know how important it is,” Helena Mazarro, the focal point for disaster risk reduction in Myanmar at the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) told IPS.

In June 2013 the government unveiled the new Disaster Management Law and the National Natural Disaster Preparedness Working Committee under the President’s Office. A new building code is being formulated to make sure the current building boom does not undermine standards and put more people at risk.

On Apr. 1 this year a total ban on exporting of unprocessed timber was put in place to bring about controls on logging.

“Disaster preparedness levels have improved substantially since Cyclone Nargis. In mid 2013, Myanmar was significantly better prepared to respond to the approaching Cyclone Mahasen,” said Maciej Pieczkowski, programme manager with the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) in Myanmar.

Mahasen caused limited damage and around 200 deaths. More than 120,000 persons were evacuated from the cyclone’s path in the western Rakhine region before the storm made landfall.

Pieczkowski said that after Mahasen the government carried out further evaluation of its disaster preparedness levels.

But despite the new disaster management law, coordination with the government and various non-governmental agencies is yet to be streamlined. While the international agencies tend to be structured along clusters working on different areas like emergency shelter or water or sanitation, the government still does not have such a structured approach, the OCHA’s Mazarro said.

The main government agency that coordinates relief and preparedness work is the Ministry of Social Welfare, Relief and Resettlement. “We are trying to bring clarity to such coordination and further enhance the disaster management laws. It is a work in progress,” the OCHA official said.

Jaiganesh Murugesan, a disaster risk specialist with UN-HABITAT told IPS that while at the national level preparedness levels had improved, rural areas still lag behind. “The focus should be on long-term risk reduction while preparedness is essential for immediate work,” he said.

Peeranan Towashiraporn, director at the Asian Disaster Preparedness Centre (ADPC) said that lack of resources was a major concern given the list of vulnerabilities the country faces.

“Different geographical areas of Myanmar face different kinds of risks. The Delta region, as we have seen from Cyclone Nargis, could suffer from the impact of cyclone and coastal flooding. Rakhine state in the northwest is facing threats of cyclones, river and coastal flooding, earthquakes. The central plain along the Irrawaddy River faces not only the risk of flooding, but also earthquakes.”

Towashiraporn said that the new building code which takes into account threats posed by earthquakes and storms, would need to be implemented strictly to be effective.

Myanmar is still covered with some of the most pristine jungles in East Asia, but the deforestation rate is alarming. About half of the country is still covered in forest, but Myanmar could be losing 466,000 hectares of forest a year if not more, according to the United Nations Programme on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation (UN-REDD).

Between 1990 and 2005, its forest cover reduced by 18 percent. Many experts say deforestation has accelerated due to commercial logging and firewood extraction for domestic use.

The timber export ban that came into effect in April is partly aimed at controlling illegal logging. In the 12 months prior to the ban, export earnings through timber were estimated to be above one billion dollars, up from the average annual rate of between 600 to 800 million dollars, according to the Myanmar Timber Merchants Association.

Kevin Woods, the author of the report ‘Timber Trade Flows and Actors in Myanmar: The Political Economy of Myanmar’s Timber Trade’ told IPS that the government was making all the right statements but needed to shore up on implementation.

“The government also has plans to dramatically decrease the quota for cut logs. So far nothing has been implemented to the best of my knowledge, although there is increasing political will to see this through.”

A bridge in Mandalay: rickety infrastructure makes Myanmar prone to greater damage in disasters. Credit: Fawzia Sheikh/IPS.

By Fawzia Sheikh
YANGON, Jan 11 2014 (IPS)

As Myanmar nurses a fragile democracy after long years of military rule, a new danger has reared its head. Climate change, say experts, has the potential to spur migration and exacerbate conflict in the country.

NGOs point out that more than five years after Cyclone Nargis killed 146,000 people and severely affected 2.4 million, inhabitants of the Ayeyarwady Delta are yet to find their feet.

Dr. Lynn Thiesmeyer, vice-president of the Environmental and Economic Research Institute of Myanmar, says the sheer number of livelihoods left in tatters made a rebound difficult.“A major natural disaster on the scale of Cyclone Nargis could pose a threat to government legitimacy and reverse progress made toward democratisation.”

Delta residents who lost farms to salinisation or lost a season’s crop with no money to plant a new one “either subsist on debt or occasional day labour,” said Thiesmeyer, who has knowledge of recovery operations and the status of disaster management plans in the region.

Another option, she said, was for family members to move to newly established Export Processing Zones, known as free-trade areas.

After Cyclone Nargis, the Myanmar government organised recovery initiatives in the form of community-based projects in many districts, but little could be implemented due to lack of resources, including money and trained personnel, she said.

“The government did ensure that everyone received radios and knew how to tune into emergency news. But escape from another storm would still be problematic given that they would need to travel by boat. What they really need is shelters,” Thiesmeyer told IPS.

The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs last June ranked Myanmar – with a 53 million population – as the most “at-risk” country in the Asia-Pacific region in 2011. It noted that the country has a high chance of medium to large-scale natural disasters occurring “every couple of years.”

Since Cyclone Nargis – the most devastating natural event for Myanmar in recent years – local and international NGOs have accelerated efforts to counter climate related impacts.

The pivotal question is how the next major natural disaster will now affect Myanmar’s social and economic progress, with a civilian government having come to power in 2011.

Linda Yarr, director of partnerships for international strategies in Asia at George Washington University in Washington DC, said Myanmar suffers from “many of the anticipated deleterious impacts of climate change.”

These include coastal erosion, vulnerability to more frequent and severe weather events such as cyclones, extensive and unpredictable drought in the dry zone, and heavy precipitation leading to flooding and landslides in mountainous areas, she said.

“We can’t be complacent and we need to prepare,” said Win Zin Oo, humanitarian emergency affairs director at the NGO World Vision Myanmar.

The “hard evidence” suggesting the elusiveness and complexity of natural disasters came last spring when Cyclone Mahasen was tracked to Myanmar, he argued. The country was spared the brunt of the damage that was largely borne by other countries in South and Southeast Asia.

He said the most prominent hazard within the last two years has been flooding, which hurt local livelihoods and social stability.

World Vision offers communities both disaster preparedness and disaster risk reduction (DRR), and has assisted residents affected by Cyclone Nargis, the Shan State earthquake, the Ayeyarwady flood and the Kayin State flood.

Win Zin Oo said that after the Nargis disaster, his NGO realised that aid coordination among response stakeholders is still challenging, but DRR, including community-based initiatives, may significantly curb the negative effects of climate-related events.

According to Dear Myanmar, a Yangon-based NGO focused on environment-friendly agriculture, the main roadblocks to adequate preparation include the lack of meteorological news in the country, limited advance warnings, and the failure of some residents to consider disaster forecasts seriously.

Yarr says Myanmar’s ability to adapt to climate change is also impeded by the “lack of an up-to-date census, insufficient infrastructure like roads and electrical grid, outdated agricultural practices and poorly regulated logging and mining.”

Yarr’s organisation, along with a Yangon-based NGO called ALARM, offered a programme known as the Myanmar Leadership Institute on Climate Change last February to 45 government officials from 12 different ministries and departments. Homegrown organisations and institutions are trying to boost the country’s resilience.

At the government level, Myanmar chose the coastal provinces of Tanintharyi and Ayeyarwady in December for a pilot project to integrate disaster and climate risk management into regional development plans for 2014-2015.

Dr. Win Myint, director of the NGO Environmental & Economic Research Institute in Yangon, also initiated a revitalisation project after Cyclone Nargis to support farmers with technology and rehabilitate damaged soil.

“After the cyclone, they had to survive,” Dr. Win Myint told IPS, but the challenge was to help them “escape from a poverty cycle.”

Working with the Asian Institute of Technology, administrators of the programme chose nine families in 11 villages, targeting landless, poor residents and women in particular. Some wanted to raise pigs or livestock to sell, or to fish for shrimp or grow vegetables, he noted. The NGO then offered the families training and materials to fulfil their goals.

In another example of an NGO aiding local livelihoods, Dear Myanmar has been promoting sustainable agriculture among the farming community.

The organisation offers a monthly knowledge-sharing programme that teaches farmers how to use organic fertiliser which, it argues, is better than methane producing chemical pesticides that harm soil quality and hasten climate change.

Chemical fertiliser gets washed away during severe weather and is not conducive to food security for the local population, Nyan Lin, founder of Dear Myanmar, told IPS.

The devastation brought on by Cyclone Nargis forced the Myanmar government to accept international assistance. Experts argue that it also mobilised local actors to play a crucial role in strengthening the state against catastrophe.

Despite these efforts, the final report of George Washington University’s Myanmar Leadership Institute on Climate Change offered a caveat: “Climate change is a new and unpredictable threat to the transition process.

“A major natural disaster on the scale of Cyclone Nargis could pose a threat to government legitimacy and reverse progress made toward democratisation.”

A young man from the Paudi Guhiya tribe salvages crops from the agricultural fields in Lahunipada in northern Orissa that were battered by floods in October following Cyclone Phailin. Credit: Malini Shankar/IPS.

By Malini Shankar
BHUBANESWAR, India, Nov 30 2013 (IPS)

More than a month after Cyclone Phailin battered Orissa, tribes in the eastern Indian coastal state are still feeling its wrath. Besides the damage to their homes and hearths, it has also meant a loss of their traditional food.

“Calamities like Cyclone Phailin affect all equally, but the tribes are far more vulnerable to the impact of calamities because of lesser resilience,” Special Relief Commissioner P.K. Mahapatra tells IPS.

This is particularly true of a state like Orissa where natural disasters play out repeatedly and where 24 percent of its 42 million population are tribespersons who live off the land.

“Powerful cyclones have battered Orissa like heat-seeking missiles in 70 of the last 110 years,” Mahapatra says. The native diversity of food consumption has critical significance in terms of culture-sensitive food security during calamities.

“The tribes need at least one season to rebuild,” he says.

Phailin that made landfall Oct. 12 was the most powerful storm to hit India in a decade. Administrative preparedness helped keep the toll at a low 21, according to official data.

But as the state picks up the pieces, many are emphasising the importance of locally procured food during emergencies and pointing out how new consumption patterns introduced during natural disasters can adversely affect tribes.

Take, for instance, Gajapati district where 70 percent of the population is tribal and which was severely affected by Cyclone Phailin.

“Ten percent of the district’s population, including tribes, were evacuated to cyclone shelters and given emergency food aid like everyone else. They have suffered crop loss and damage to thatch roof dwellings,” B.K. Hota, emergency operations officer tells IPS.

A tribal woman in Sundargarh district, which was affected by flooding after the cyclone, says women are concerned that crop loss would affect children’s nutrition.

Bijay Kumar Sahoo, inspector of supplies, told IPS, “Accessing the remote tribal hamlets in the dense jungles is very difficult, so distributing food and civil supplies during calamities is very challenging.”

It is largely for this reason that India’s Central Rice Research Institute in Cuttack town in Orissa has developed varieties of rice that can withstand Orissa’s extreme weather: varieties that can grow in irrigated areas, saline water, drought prone areas, shallow lowlands and water logged areas.

But then the native diversity of food consumption has critical significance in terms of culture-sensitive food security during calamities. In fact, native food diversity dispenses with infrastructure support for food aid distribution.

In the first few days after disasters, the administration provides “flavoured, uncooked beaten rice, high protein biscuits, water and oral rehydration kits” which are easy to pack and distribute.

But the logistics of transporting cargo can be offset by harvesting locally produced yams or sprout/millet porridge, leaving water and sanitation to the administration.

According to the State Emergency Operations Centre of Orissa, in the second phase when relief starts, the administration hands out rice, lentils and monetary subsidies to those affected.

And this is where culture-sensitive food security is critical for communities like tribes.

Doling out partial or pre-cooked food to homeless tribes may be a necessity to avoid starvation, but sustaining them with entirely new consumption patterns can have a long-term impact on their health and constitution.

“Traditionally, tribes walk such long distances to fetch their meagre forest-based foodstuff like tubers or fish catch that they will never get sedentary disorders like diabetes,” Jupiter Das, a Red Cross official in Puri district tells IPS.

Native wisdom defers to seasonal sources of supplementary nutrition, alternate cropping and sustainable development of the economy and society. If a sustainable means of harvesting such native food diversity could be evolved, food aid distribution becomes a lot less complicated, aver experts.

“Tribals’ food includes coarse grains, fish, millets, lentils, mushrooms and tubers. Rice and millet consumption among tribes is a consequence of forest conservation laws that deprive tribes access to forest produce,” says Tushar Dash of Vasundhara, an NGO that works on community forest rights and land tenure in Orissa.

In a study titled ‘Genetic resources of wild tuberous food plants traditionally used in Simlipal Biosphere Reserve, Odissa, India’ conducted between 2008 and 2012, researchers have documented tribes’ traditional food security.

“A total of 55 wild edible tuberous species representing 37 genera and 24 families were inventoried, including 17 species used during food deficiency to meet seasonal shortages,” it says.

“Ten species were domesticated by tribes, thus reducing threats on wild tubers, and 20 species were traded in local markets to generate additional income exemplifying economic benefits from wild tubers.”

“We don’t have information on climate neutral crops. However, some reports reveal that some of the tribes may consume mango kernels during drought and scarcity conditions,” Dr. Avula Laxman of the National Nutrition Monitoring Bureau at the National Institute of Nutrition, Hyderabad, tells IPS on e-mail.

Native wisdom has practical advantages during calamities.

Sambit Rout, a district administration official in Puri district, still remembers what a fisherman near Chilka Lake told him on the night that Cyclone Phailin made landfall: “There is no more cause for worry because the wind has changed direction.”

Rout told IPS: “I was floored by his native wisdom.” He also alludes to an almanac anointed day when tribes in north India stock food grains and fuel wood for imminent calamities.

The World Food Programme of the United Nations also stresses the advantages of local procurement of food resources. Perhaps it’s time India turned to native knowledge to mitigate food insecurity during calamities.

The now landless family of Abdusattar Jaman (holding umbrella). Credit: Robert Stefanicki/IPS.

By Robert Stefanicki
KHULNA, Bangladesh, Oct 25 2013 (IPS)

It has been four years since Cyclone Aila struck Bangladesh, triggering floods and widespread destruction. But the villagers of Koira subdistrict, among the worst affected of the 11 districts hit by the cyclone, are yet to recover from its impact.

The Jaman family was among the 41,043 families in Koira affected by Aila. Like most of their neighbours, they remained homeless for eight months, surviving on supplies from humanitarian organisations.

Some 23,820 houses were totally damaged in Koira. When the waters receded, the government gave them 20,000 taka (260 dollars) each to build a new house.“We experience all natural disasters except perhaps a volcanic eruption: cyclones, floods, droughts, even earthquakes."

The Jamans used the money to build three cottages of clay, wood and corrugated sheets. But the family has no illusions; they know the next cyclone, which will hit them sooner or later from the Bay of Bengal 20 km away, will blow their new dwellings away again. Only the brick houses of the rich will survive.

But that is not their immediate concern. More worrying is the lack of a stable income. The Jamans are among the 40 percent of Bangladesh’s 155 million people who live below the poverty line. Before, it was a hand-to-mouth existence, but they never went hungry. Koira being an agricultural region, people could make a living off the land; the landless were employed by the farmers. In times of crisis, the poor could count on help from their more affluent neighbours.

Aila changed all that. Not only were 502 acres of crops destroyed in Koira, according to the damage summary by the local UNO office, but the cyclone left the fields waterlogged for three years. Now, since the water has receded, the soil has become salinated, allowing nothing to grow.

The newly pauperised rich therefore are no longer willing to share with their neighbours. Nor do they employ them in their barren fields any more.

“Before Aila, I had a garden here in my yard, so thick that the sunlight could not penetrate,” Shafiqul Islam tells IPS. The garden wilted because of the cyclone and the salinity.

Islam is the local representative of the ruling Awami League and “rich” by local standards, because he owns a brick house. But there is nothing remarkable about his three huts, covered with rusty metal and cane.

According to Islam, around 40,000 of Koira’s 193,000 people migrated after Aila, of whom a quarter are now back.

Among those who left are the three brothers of his neighbour, Robiul Islam, who stayed behind in the village with his mother and five-year-old son.

Robiul Islam drives a rented rickshaw, earning 80 taka a day (one dollar). His ambition? To earn 200 taka (2.5 dollars) a day. That is how much a five kilo bag of rice costs, which the family consumes in two days.

Besides, 200 taka is what Robiul’s brothers, all rickshaw pullers too, earn in the city. After the cyclone, they moved to Khulna, a three-hour drive away.

IPS visited a few refugees from Koira there. They live in the suburbs, in huts like the ones they have left behind, each accommodating four people. The rent is 200 taka per month.

Most men drive rickshaws and earn enough to be able to send money back home. One of them, Abdullah, tells IPS he sends 1,500-2,000 taka every month to his parents in Koira.

Hafeeza, on the other hand, is the poor among the poor. She cooks for the rickshaw pullers, earning 200 taka like them – but in a month. She says it is enough for her and her seven-year-old son. “At least, I do not have to pay for accommodation or food,” she tells IPS.

Back in Koira, the villagers say they do not know about climate change, never mind that Bangladesh ranks first in the world in terms of vulnerability to the impacts of climate change, according to German Watch’s Global Climate Risk Index.

“We experience all natural disasters except perhaps a volcanic eruption: cyclones, floods, droughts, even earthquakes,” says M.D. Shamsudoha, head of the Centre for Participatory Research and Development, a Dhaka-based NGO.

“After each natural disaster, 50,000-60,000 people migrate to cities, but the perpetual migration is not included in the statistics,” Shamsudoha tells IPS.

Experts expect about 250 million climate refugees globally by 2050. Of these, 20-30 million will be from Bangladesh.

Politicians and environmental experts associated with the government claim they are well-prepared to fight the effects of climate change. The country, they stress, was the first among the least developed countries to adopt a national strategy on climate change in 2009.

But local NGOs are sceptical. The government, they say, is good at formulating policies, but not at implementing them.

According to Shamsudoha, the state funds mostly large-scale projects, like the construction of coastal embankments and shelters or reforestation, while priority should be given to local development and adaptation. There are enough such programmes in risk areas, they say, but they do not address the scale of the problem.

Among the inventions tested by some NGOs and U.N. agencies are ‘disaster-resistant villages’, ‘floating solar-powered schools’ and “multi-tasked flood shelters’.

Bangladeshi scientists have also developed a variety of rice resistant to moderate salinity. But according to forecasts, cereal production in Bangladesh will fall by 32 percent by 2050. And the population of the country will grow by 130 million people.

Many farmers, instead of waiting for the saltwater to leave their fields, have taken to lucrative shrimp farming. The poor, however, lack the necessary capital for investment. Besides, shrimp farming spells another disaster for them: saltwater from the shrimp ponds seeps into the adjacent fields.

Shrimp also does not contribute to food security in the primarily rice-and-dal (lentil pulp) country. Yet, more and more farmers are selling their paddy fields to shrimp or mango cultivators – and leaving for the cities. They do not have any other option.