Climate bell tolls

Pia Rani sees a bleak future. At Chokoria's Jaladash neighbourhood in Cox's Bazar, many fishermen like her husband Ranjan are deserting the village or changing their profession failing to cope with a changed weather and a changed sea. Inset, two rickshaws kept at a corner of this house in the village indicate that fishermen are now pulling rickshaw instead of fishing. Photo: Star

Inside her small dark, musty hut, Pia Rani looks like a haunted animal. Fear and insecurity etched in her desperate eyes; she is even hesitant to open the bamboo door just a crack to see her visitors.
"My husband is away. He has left the village," she then says quietly. "What else could he do?"
Well. What else could he do? The villagers agree. In fact, what should we all do? Follow Pia Rani's husband Ranjan Jaladash? they ask. At Chokoria's fishermen's colony, everybody is desperate to find a way out, to know what lays ahead for them.
This year, Ranjan tried and failed repeatedly to make a single successful trip to the deep sea. Each time he sailed out, the sea turned rough after a few days. The danger signals were raised. The waters roiled and darkened. The fishing trawler tossed madly. And Ranjan had to abandon his trip.
"With every trip he abandoned, our loans piled up," Pia says. "He borrowed from the mahajans. A lot of it. And then he just lost the battle."
Every trip involves a cost of around Tk 50,000 or more. And it is a stiff task to recoup the cost -- fishermen have to sell their catch to the mahajans [loan sharks] at a predetermined price, and the loans have to be repaid first. Whatever fish remain after the loan repayment, that is again divided in half by the mahajans and the fishermen.
"We buy diesel, food and ice to preserve fish, and then sail to the sea," says Amalesh, another fisherman. "Each trip needs about 14 days, and if we fail to complete, we cannot catch enough fish to pay off the loans, and make out a living. Ranjan could not pull it off and he abandoned his wife and children to go over to Kakdwip in India. He now works there as a hired fisherman."
Ranjan is not an isolated case. Like him, many fishermen are either abandoning the village to find work elsewhere or are changing the profession. The jaladash, or the serfs of the sea as they are known, are today finding themselves in a bleak situation. Suddenly the sea that has sustained their livelihoods for generations has become stranger to them. It is becoming rougher by the day, cutting their fishing days and trips. And with it goes the livelihood as well.
"The weather has changed. The sea has changed," says Sushil Jaladash, an old fisherman who has stopped going to the sea for the last two years. His white beard flutters in the gusty wind that blows strong in the Bangla month of Kartik. Clouds gather overhead. The old man gestures to the flying clouds getting darker.
"Whoever has ever heard of bad weather in Kartik?" he asks. "When Bhadro was over, we knew the sea would be safe. It no longer is. See, even in Kartik we had to abandon our trip today. The sea is changing."
And changes they talk.
"Waves have become larger," says Sushil. "And the sea is strangely warm. And storms have become frequent. Before, there used to be rain in depression and storms would pass over. Now it hardly rains and the storms have become stronger."
Experts also mention similar changes in sea behaviour. And they find a direct co-relationship between the sea behaviour and the climate change.
"This is probably the only direct evidence of climate change impact on Bangladesh," says Dr Ahsan Uddin, executive director of a research organisation, Centre for Global Change. "The sea is warming up and it has been warming up by .05 degrees Celsius every decade. This is leading to frequent occurrences of storms and cyclones. The fishermen community has become totally vulnerable to the climate change."
In 2007 alone, 83 warnings were issued by the met office.
And the result of the change is visible in the Jaladash neighbourhood. The shacks have broken down in many ways. The thatched roofs are half gone. The men and women are wearing tattered clothes. The children simply go naked. Two rickshaws stand in a corner of the village -- signs that fishermen are pulling rickshaws instead of fishing.
The latest victim of the climate change is too shy to appear before the crowd. After much persuasion he tentatively steps out of his house.
Soumendra Chakrabarty is just broke. The mahajan who gave him loans, has taken possession of his boat, as he failed to complete trips to the sea and repay the loans.
What will he do now? He has no answer. He looks blank. Just as Pia Rani and Ranjan and hundred other fishermen and their families at Taros Vanga village of Chokoria.