If you’re going to be the victim of a humanitarian disaster, there’s a lot to be said for choosing one with an obvious villain to blame. It’s easy to arouse sympathy for the 7 million people affected by radiation from Chernobyl as the cause is obvious. However, if you’re one of the huge number of people in danger of arsenic posioning in Bangladesh – possibly as many as 57 million – then no-one really seems to care.

At least UK taxpayers can now sleep soundly in their beds, as the House of Lords has finally decided it’s not the UK Government’s fault. A case to establish liability has wound its tortuous way through the English legal system before being finally thrown out as as “hopeless”. However, in terms of positive action, it appears that it’s the affected Bangladeshis who are in danger of being treated as the real hopeless case.

There are no shortage of candidates as to whose fault it might be – unfortunately, they aren’t negligent Soviet bureaucrats (good hate figures), but the very NGOs who are supposed to be the good guys – such as UNICEF, the World Bank, etc. Maybe this is one reason why the international community lets this crisis continue to grow year after year with little attempt to prevent it. Comparisons are particularly invidious in humanitarian disasters, but compare this with the enormous efforts expended to help the 40 million people or so living with HIV/AIDS.

So, the crisis continues to get worse. It seems staggering that the first research paper into the knock-on effects on foodstuffs was only published last week. And the findings? Eating rice grown in southwestern Bangladesh could be as dangerous as drinking arsenic-contaminated water. [The lead`researcher reports] “The situation is worst for subsistence farmers in the high arsenic regions as they both drink high levels of arsenic in the water and ingest it from rice” adding that between 25 and 50 per cent of the country is affected.

If these results are confirmed, then the whole Green Revolution approach to development in Bangladesh – High Yield Varieties of rice requiring intensive irrigation – may prove to be one of the greatest man made humanitarian disasters on record – all done with the best of intentions.

In the meantime, how does this crisis achieve the focus from the international community that it deserves?

This entry was posted on Sunday, July 16th, 2006 at 3:15 pm and is filed under Greenery. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.