Right to live

Photo: AFP

Natural calamity, once again, has caused havoc in the country. Triggered by a storm in the Bay of Bengal, tropical cyclone Sidr -- packing winds of up to 220kph with a 15-foot high tidal surge -- swept through the southwestern coastal districts of our country. It wreaked mayhem and left its mark of utter destruction, death, displacement and immense human suffering.
Thousands of people confirmed dead and scores more injured after it slammed into the coast, destroying homes and forcing millions to flee. Food stocks, crops, livestock and drinking water sources, as well as entire stretches of road, have been washed away by the waves that smashed into the coast. Experts described Sidr as similar in strength to the 1991 storm that triggered a tidal wave, killing an estimated 138,000 people.
It is impossible to perceive the inner feelings of the dumb-founded people who lived through the horror. The smell of death, destruction of frail dwellings, loss of near and dear ones, uncertainty about the future, and the panic surrounding the carnage, has left everyone benumbed. Perplexity has replaced their moans.
People and animals lying dead side by side, blown off roofs of abodes, and uprooted trees which long carried the tales of many generations, are the only sights across the horizon of vision. The country has been absolutely brought to its knees from an infrastructure perspective.
Along the coast, the furious winds flung small ferries ashore like toy boats, cutting off migrant fishing communities who live on and around hundreds of tiny islands across the area's web of river channels.
Hundreds of fishing boats caught in cyclone Sidr failed to return to shore. The hunt for missing relatives, dead or alive, continued, while people frantically searched for their belongings in the debris.
The cyclone has gone leaving behind its trail of devastation, the imminent impact of which will be felt for many months to come as rice and other crops have been badly damaged.
We have always lived with nature, at times with its fury and at other times its bequest, and it was a balance that gave us more than it took away. Now things are changing, changing with rapidity from favourable balance to sheer suffering. We changed nature for a lavish and extravagant life and disrupted the dynamic equilibrium, now it is the turn of nature to take vengeance.
Bangladesh, a poor nation desperately struggling to free its vast population from hunger and striving frantically to keep its marginalised populace above the poverty line, is struck repeatedly by the curse of nature.
The recent back-to-back floods, causing intense misery, ruthlessly scarred our impoverish nation, and only a few months later cyclone Sidr with its furious strength ravaged us with horrendous annihilation and thousands dead.
Our suffering has been the creation of rich countries. Every step they take towards their ever-increasing luxury and opulence we, the poor, pay the cost. In the US, every 2 persons own a car, and for every gallon of fuel they burn they emit 25 pounds of CO2 into the air.
For every thousand tons of CO2 (carbon dioxide) produced elsewhere, a Bangladeshi family suffers a natural disaster. The more the fuel-hungry industries increase to meet their rising need for material comfort and luxury, the more they pollute nature and, consequently, we the poor become more vulnerable to catastrophe.
Each American produces 3.66 tons of CO2, and we Bangladeshis, who produce just 148 kilograms of CO2 -- a mere drop in the bucket -- suffer the worst from the natural imbalance they create.
The first recorded mass extinction of species took place 440 million years ago, the Ordovician extinction. During that era, fossil records show an abrupt dying-off of two-thirds of the Earth's species. During the late Devonian period, about 375 million years ago, another mass extinction occurred that resulted in most of the planet's fish species dying. About 250 million years ago, the third and most severe mass extinction took place, the Permian-Triassic extinction, or the "great dying."
This resulted in the loss of almost all-marine life and most of the land species. The fourth mass extinction took place about 205 million years ago at the end of the Triassic period.
The fifth mass extinction took place about 65 million years ago. The majestic era of the dinosaurs ended when about half of all species died, having existed 165 million years. Now the sixth mass extinction is probably underway by natural calamities induced by the affluent nations by indiscriminate exploitation of nature. Their profligacy is bought at the cost of each of our lives.
While cyclone Sidr did have an enormous impact, it might be little compared to the impact of future storms with increased intensity caused by warmer oceans and higher baseline sea levels; especially after the damage done to the best natural protection from storms that Bangladesh has -- the Sunderbans.
The UN has said that the recent onslaught in Bangladesh was so severe and so sweeping that a mass humanitarian crisis is looming. International aid organisations promised initial packages of $25 million as aid, and UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said in a statement that several million dollars would be available from the UN's emergency response funds. Other governments and organisations might give millions of dollars in aid. A lot of money had come in the past to rescue us after natural disasters, and much more will be funneled in if more calamities strike us in future. But aid is a palliative and not a preventive.
A strong collective voice to push for our right to live is the only way against those forces to ensure a safer earth.
Dr. Zulfiquer Ahmed Amin is a physician and specialist in Public Health Administration and Health Economics.