Spring in the time of pollution

Spring is here in the most polluted city of the world. Spring has arrived at the dunghill of development. During the movement to protect the Sundarbans, our slogan was to save the forest at the cost of our lives. But now frustration and a sense of hopelessness have set in and these words seem meaningless. We have given up worrying about nature. We have accepted all sorts of dreadful development formulas. We rank at 1979 about 180 countries when it comes to the environment index. We are the 10th worst country polluted with plastics. According to the EPI (Environmental Performance Index), we have fallen back 40 places over the past 8 years in environmental protection. Just imagine!

Bangladesh has signed 29 agreements for coal-fired power plants. Every year at a cost of Tk 160 billion, 5 million tonnes of coal will be imported into the country. Foreign researchers say Bangladesh is going to be the next ‘carbon bomb’. If so many coal-fired power plants run at the same time, in a matter of 10 years this small country will be gripped by an additional 115 million tonnes of carbon dioxide. How will our rivers, the land, the bees, the trees and the crops in the fields survive? What about are already contaminated lungs?

Over the past four years 600 rivers of Bangladesh have disappeared. There are just sandy river beds remaining. Dhaleswari is no longer navigable and is not just a thin canal. Upstream, Teesta, Dharla, Punarva, Rangon are all bereft of water. From Rupsha to Pathuria, it is all dry. Atrai can be crossed by foot now. Rice is now grown in numerous wetlands up North. There is a layer of polythene around two storeys high on the bed of Karnaphuli.

The Bhawal forest has disappeared, shrimp farms have destroyed the mangrove forest of Chakoria. Around 65 hectares of forest land has been destroyed in 25 years. Excessive salinity and the uncontrolled use of chemical fertilizer and pesticides have wiped out 250 varieties of fresh water fish. Fish like mola, dhela, baila, malanda, poa, taki, khalisha, foli and shal chopra are vanishing. The fish that remain contain lead, cadmium and polythene.

I read in Prothom Alo about the fishermen Montu Rajbangshi and Gopinath Burman who would catch fish in Buriganga for decades. But the water of Buriganga is now toxic. In nine months of the year there are no fish in the river. The fisher-folk have been forced now to take up jobs in the Kaliganj industrial belt.

This city has no crows, no frogs, no worms, no jackals, no grasshoppers. It has no parrots, no woodpeckers nor weaver bird nests. Friend of the flowers and crops, the bee is near extinction.
Before, bees would appear at the window sills and at the trees in the villages. There were village people who made a living collecting honey. But with hardly any beehives, that too has dwindled. Commercial production has caused a decrease in honey from the mustard, sesame and linseed flowers. Bees have been killed by air pollution, pesticides and chemical fertiliser. How will the commercially crazed state understand the deep linage between the bees and the blooms? Does Digital Bangladesh have any such technology that can keep the farmers’ tomatoes, cauliflowers, carrots and onions growing on the green fields with pollination?
Crows, vultures and frogs were the friends of the city folk. The crows would live off the kitchen waste, vultures would eat the carcasses of animals, and frogs would eat mosquito larva. Last year a few thousand people died when the dengue epidemic spread. If the frigs had lived in hundreds of thousands as we saw in our childhood, would the millions of mosquitoes have been able to breed so easily?
During the movement to save the Sundarbans, a journalist of the government camp has written that these activists were out to save the ferocious tigers and deadly crocodiles. What a journalist!
Who will explain to him the intricate ecological link between the Sundarbans and these ‘ferocious’ beasts? The ‘deadly’ crocodiles dig a hole in the mud where fish, turtles and insects lay eggs. If the crocodile disappears, so will the fish eggs, washed away n the current of the river. What good will it do for the Sundarbans if the tigers all die? If tigers become extinct, deer rapidly multiply. If there is a population boom among the deer, they will finish off all the tender saplings of the kewra, goran, bain and gewa trees. There will be a rapid fall in the forests new leaves, grass and tree barks. Then if the number of tigers suddenly increases, the number of deer decreases. Then there is an overgrowth of grass, shrubs and saplings which decompose and fall into the river bed. These absorb the oxygen needed for the fish. The fish suffer, die and float up. What an amazing balance in creation!
There as a special story about America’s Yellowstone National Park. It points out how every living being in the ecological food chain is so vital, from the wild animals to the microscopic phytoplankton. Last century was a move America to kill the wolf, taken up under the government’s ‘predator control programme’. All the wolves were killed by the 30’s and then the deer population grew uncontrolled. All the small plants and saplings were devoured. Then after much effort by scientists, wolves were finally reintroduced in Yellowstone 1995 and an amazing occurrence took place. The deer, in fear of the wolves, moved from the open spaces to the interior of the forest. The park gradually filled up again with trees, grass and shrubbery. Within a year this deer-grazing ground became a forest of cotton and willow trees. With the forest rapidly spreading, the birds, beards, squirrels and eagles all came back to Yellowstone. The river banks grew sturdy with the protection of the trees. The ‘predator’ wolves made all the difference.
Thos who do not understand the strong link between the animals and the forests, those who do not understand the deep relationship between the trees and the sun, between the soil and nitrogen, the bond between the butterfly and the caterpillar, those who fill up water bodies in the name of development, who cut down forests, block rovers, empty toxic industrial water into the lakes and marshes, do they really not realise that if this beautiful, pure and mysterious cycle of nature is destroyed, nature will certainly take revenge, today or tomorrow.
During his Great Leap Forward movement in 1958 in China, Chairman Mao took several initiatives to increase the crop yield. The Four Pests Campaign was undertaken, to kill mice, mosquitoes, flies and sparrows. It was said that the sparrows would come in flocks of thousands and eat up all the grain from the fields and so these were killed. The very next year, with no sparrows around, insects swarmed in and destroyed the crops. An acute food shortage broke out. Then in 1960, at the orders of Chairman Mao, the killing of sparrows was halted.

Then there is another story in Africa. A company bought up thousands of hectares of land to commercially cultivate corn in Tanzania. Tractors came in overnight and corn grew. Then rhinoceros came in hordes to devour the crops. In the past the farmers would be ready at night with sticks to drive away the rhinos. The company people had no such patience and shot the rhinos dead. That year the crops survived, but from the next year there were no fish. The canals and ponds had no fish and the fishermen were at a loss. The fish in the region would lay their eggs in Rhino faeces by the river. With no rhinos and no rhino faeces, the fish could not lay their eggs safely anymore.
Those who do not understand this close link between man and nature, who cut down the last free, fill the last river with toxic water, will they cook rice while they count note in the midst of the tangle of flyovers?
Even so, spring arrives in the city. Winter is over and the sun rises bright. After the lull of winter in the highest air pollution, the trees finally get energy from the sun rays, inhale carbon dioxide to produce oxygen for us. Temperatures increase in the months Falgun and Chaitra, humidity in the air increases and flowers bloom in the trees. Spring means new leaves, news plants and a new life cycle in this city under a layer of cadmium. Spring reminds us that palash, shimul, kathalichapa and sonalu still bloom in this city. There is still hope.
This country must survive and emerge from the crass commercial corruption, the looting and contract manipulations, the extravagant mega projects, state repression in all sectors and the destruction of life and nature in the name of development. We have nowhere else to go.
* Maha Mirza is a researcher on international political economy. This piece has been rewritten in English by Ayesha Kabir