Excerpt
IN the spring of 1991, Bangladesh experienced a natural disaster in the form of a typhoon. The storm came up in the Bay of Bengal and, within a matter of hours, 130,000 people were dead. These storms are not unusual in that part of the world. There have been a number of severe storms in recent decades that have affected Bangladesh, one in 1970 taking a half million lives.
There is one thing about these phenomena that stands out. The heavy loss of life that occurs from time to time in Bangladesh is a result of severe land hunger. People know they are risking their lives and the lives of their families when they move onto the lowlying land just a few feet above sea level. But they make a carehl calculation, and they decide that their chances of survival are better there than if they have no land at all.
It's an enormous tragedy, and it's a manifestation of pressure on the land, some of the most intense anywhere in the wrld. But it …
Footnotes
Lester Brown is president of World watch Institute, 1776 Massachusetts Avenue, N.W, Washington, D.C. 20036. This article is based on his presentation at SWCS's recent 46th annual meeting in Lexington, Kentucky
- Copyright 1991 by the Soil and Water Conservation Society
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