Bangladesh

Bangladeshi Communities Set Development Priorities

Saleha Begum was determined. Over the last couple of years, a number of children in her village had tragically died, their families left behind shocked and shattered. Memories were all that remained of these young lives cut short, and Begum was now determined to do her bit to stop the untimely deaths and accidents caused by the proximity of a highway to a community school.

We had arrived at Baishakanda Union Parishad in Dhamrai just before the local community meeting started. (Union Parishads are the lowest tier of local government in Bangladesh.) Begum had already taken her place among men and women from her village. A number of women threw anxious looks toward her. That day, Begum was going to play a vital role in advancing their agenda.

More and Better Jobs in Bangladesh

We launched South Asia’s first regional report, ‘More and Better Jobs in South Asia’ in a series of events in Dhaka early last week.

Through events including a seminar with youth at the University of Dhaka, a formal report launch the next day, a TV interview with the South Asia Chief Economist, Kalpana Kochchar, and an op-ed in the leading English language newspaper, the report helped generate discussion on core economic challenges facing Bangladesh, as job creation are highly correlated with the challenges of faster growth.

Bangladesh, along with other South Asian countries, has seen steady job growth and a substantial decrease in poverty over the past three decades. The country has added nearly 1.2 million new jobs every year over the last ten years, and this has been accompanied by increasing real wages and declining poverty amongst all categories of workers. This performance will have to be improved in the future, owing to Bangladesh's early progress in its demographic transition. With substantial reductions in infant and child mortality following a significant decline in fertility rates, Bangladesh's working age population is growing more rapidly than its young and old dependents. In turn, this can be attributed to Bangladesh’s success in nurturing the desire for smaller families, through its reproductive health program as well as its emphasis on girls’ education.

What Women Can Bring to the Asian Century

Today we celebrate International Women’s day. Like every year, hundreds of events will happen worldwide to highlight the importance of rebalancing the global gender equality and integrating women in economic, development and peace processes. We will probably read or hear the phrase “women’s empowerment” many times, but tomorrow, people will refocus naturally on other day to day issues, as there is still concern about the effects of the financial crises, its impact on people’s pockets and the lack of employment for new generations.

It is true that South Asia navigated the financial crisis better than most regions and that over the last two decades it has experienced a long period of robust economic growth, averaging 6 percent a year. The idea that the world has entered the Asian Century is now becoming a reality and some countries in the region are working hard to become global leaders and getting ready to give the world economy a big boost. But if South Asia wants this boom to happen, the region needs to go far beyond today’s celebration to bring women on board now: women are a key force to shape the region’s future.

Global Youth Conference 2012: Addressing Youth Unemployment in South Asia

I’ve just concluded a discussion on addressing youth unemployment around the world with experts at the Global Youth Conference currently happening and wanted to hear your thought as well as share some of my own on South Asia. Indeed, South Asia has grown rapidly and has created more and mostly better jobs. The region created 800,000 new jobs per month in the last ten years boosting economic growth and reducing poverty. Arrive in any South Asian metropolis and you’re often hit by the richness of activity throughout its busy streets.

The region’s coming demographic transition of more young people entering the work force is expected to contribute nearly 40 percent of the growth in the world’s working age (15—64) population over the next several decades. However, youth in South Asia still face many challenges during their transition to adulthood including malnutrition, gender inequality and lack of access to quality education. More working age people with less children and elderly dependants to support will either become an asset for the region to continue growing or a curse depending on the enabling environment for the creation of productive jobs.

When it comes to female education, have we gotten it all backwards?

To get children to attend school in developing countries, our approach has been primarily to assume that the schooling that is available is worth pursuing, meaning that the problem must be with some barrier to go to school despite a great desire to do so: perhaps the family cannot afford the costs of schooling; perhaps the schools are not good or too far; perhaps the children want to be in school but the parents prefer food today to educated daughter tomorrow; maybe people don’t know the value of schooling, etc.

Cleaner Bricks for Better Air Quality in Dhaka

Dhaka. Chittagong. Khulna. Just a handful of cities where construction is booming. In Bangladesh, the construction sector is driven by a single fuel: bricks. But making bricks is not neat. It is messy and backbreaking. In Bangladesh, most bricks are manually made from mud, and then burnt in kilns. Workers have to use hammers to break up tons of coal every day. Then they carry the coal on their shoulders to the ovens used to fire bricks. There are more than 4,500 traditional kilns in Bangladesh that operate this way.

The country’s capital, Dhaka, is surrounded by more than 1,200 kilns. Most kilns operate only 6 months during the year (between November and April). Because more than 90% are located in low-lying areas which experience flooding during the rainy season. During the 6 months of operation, Dhaka becomes one of the most polluted cities in the world. Every day, the chimneys blow black smoke that clouds the city’s sky. The smoke is dense and contains fine particulates, which are very damaging to health. They cause no less than 20 percent of the premature deaths related to urban air pollution in Dhaka.

How long can the country afford to make bricks in this way? The current status is by no means sustainable. To make 100,000 bricks, one needs to burn 20 tons of coal, which has high sulfur content. China, the world’s leading brick producer, uses only 6 tons of coal to make the same amount of bricks. China’s experience suggests that adopting cleaner and more energy-efficient technologies is key to success.

Road Accidents in Bangladesh: An Alarming Issue

At least 46 people were killed and more than 200 injured in 31 road accidents across the country in the last four days including the three-day Eid holiday --- The Daily Star, November 10th 2011.

There has been an alarming rise in road accidents, significantly highway accidents, in Bangladesh over the past few years. According to a study conducted by the Accident Research Centre (ARC) of BUET, road accidents claim on average 12,000 lives annually and lead to about 35,000 injuries. According to World Bank statistics, annual fatality rate from road accidents is found to be 85.6 fatalities per 10,000 vehicles. Hence, the roads in Bangladesh have become deadly!

But these statistics, numerically shocking as they may be, fail to reflect the social tragedy related to each life lost to road accidents. One accident that remains afresh in my memory is the death of 44 school children last July, after the truck they were travelling in skid and fell into a pond. 44 young dreams and hopes lost due to reckless driving. Only a month after this tragedy, Bangladesh lost two brilliant citizens, filmmaker Tareq Masud and journalist Mishuk Munier, to yet another road accident in August.

Bangladesh Youth Take On Leadership Reflections

It was a special day on Sunday, December 11, 2011 at the Bangladesh Youth Leadership Center (BYLC) as Special Advisor to the State for Global Youth Issues, Mr. Ronan Farrow and Ms. Lauren Lovelace, Director of the American Center, visited the institute in Baridhara. Mr. Farrow gave a lecture and engaged in discussions on global youth leadership issues with a classroom packed with enthusiastic BYLC graduates. In his address to the graduates, he expressed his strong belief that they are to play a key role in confronting challenges of the world. He shared that one of the greatest lessons in life that he received is “the realization that how powerful youth can be when given voice and equipped with tools.”

Stitching together the future: the effects of the garment industry on girls’ schooling in Bangladesh -Guest Post by Rachel Heath

We want to increase (girls) education… but what’s the best way to do this?

Don't see the world through your own eyes; see it as your stakeholders envision it!

How we took this approach to popularize SEZs in Bangladesh, against a backdrop of regional resistance

Imagine that you are starting an economic zones development program in a region while next door, riots are already flaring over a proposed Special Economic Zone (SEZ). Imagine that news of the protests is already all over the media in the country you are operating in and your clients and other stakeholders are bound to take note. How do you assuage their concerns and move ahead with the design of your economic zones program?

“The Green Will Double our Happiness”

Farmers in Bangladesh adapting to increased soil salinity and climate change.

Barguna is at the very southern end of Bangladesh and looks nothing like the rest of the country.

Bangladesh is very green – driving through you can see the luxuriant green rice fields stretching out endlessly, the spread interrupted only by clusters of dark trees surrounding a small village, and sometimes by the yellow patches of mustard fields. But Barguna is not green and vibrant - it has now become drab brown.

Stepping onto the soil of Barguna, one is reminded of a parched desert. The ground is rock-hard, cracked and mostly barren. I was careful, threading lightly - afraid of stepping too hard in case the ground suddenly gave away.

The district wasn’t always this desolate. But devastated by repeated cyclones, erratic weather patterns and saline intrusion along the coast, farmers in these coastal communities have seen their lands yield less and less with the passing years.

Prospects Weekly: Q3 Euro Area GDP growth remained positive

Despite escalating debt concerns, Q3 Euro Area GDP growth remained positive mostly on account of robust growth in the two largest economies Germany and France. Q3 GDP growth was even stronger in the US, Japan and China (all of which benefitted from the post-Tohoku bounce back), with consumer spending also being an important growth driver. Reflecting weak consumer spending in the Euro Area, retail sales fell in October. Forward looking indicators suggest that growth prospects for the Euro Area remain dim, and with the EU being a major trading partner for many countries this reduces prospects elsewhere. In anticipation of the slowdown, monetary policy tightening has declined significantly in developing countries, although tightening continues where inflation remains above-target.
Euro Area member states grew modestly and unevenly in Q3, but recession looms ahead. Euro Area GDP was up 0.8% (q/q, saar) in Q3. Much of the increase was driven by Germany (2%, q/q saar) and France (1.6%, q/q saar), while periphery countries registered significant declines. Q3 GDP growth was even stronger in the US (2.5%, q/q saar) and Japan (5.5%, q/q saar). Reflecting uncertainty related to the debt crisis and fiscal austerity across the Euro Area, Q4 growth prospects for the Euro Area are dim. European business surveys in October show production and order books pointing towards recession, while stocks of unsold finished goods remain high. The EC forecasts Euro Area Q4 GDP to contract by 0.4% (q/q, saar) and to stagnate in 2012 Q1. Developing country exports to the EU will be impacted.
Strength of consumer spending diverges across regions. Consumer spending in the third quarter provided significant support to GDP growth in Germany, France, and the United States (1.72 percentage point contribution to GDP). October releases of retail sales data show momentum growth on the upside for the United States (supported by a pick-up in consumer sentiment since August and moderate job creation), and moderating in China and Japan (where retail sales growth is stabilising from the post-Tohoku bounce back). However, retail sales in the Euro Area declined in October, with momentum growth dipping towards a deceleration, as consumers faced with job fears related to the ongoing Euro Area debt crisis and fiscal austerity, hold back on spending.
The pace of monetary tightening in developing countries slows. As inflationary pressures abate and the global economy slows down, the number of developing countries tightening monetary policy has fallen sharply. In recent months some of the larger developing countries (Brazil, China, Indonesia, Russia, and Turkey) have moved from tightening to a neutral or looser monetary stance. Elsewhere, interest rate hikes continued in developing countries where inflationary expectations remain elevated (Bangladesh, India, Kazakhstan, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Tanzania, Vietnam) and where price pressures continue to be felt (e.g in East Africa). Indeed, interest rates in Kenya and Uganda have been increased by atleast 800bps over the past two months.	Source: Thomson Datastream and World Bank DEC Prospects Group

Download the Prospects Weekly as PDF here.

From Bangladesh to the World: How Knowledge Sharing has Changed Resettlement Training

I admit when I started the whole idea of setting up a course on resettlement at a local Bangladeshi university I thought it was going to be a long shot in the dark. I had a gigantic portfolio to look after in terms of safeguards support, and that left little time to do anything else. I also it would be difficult to show results quickly and make a convincing argument that this was worth the effort. But stubbornness at times is a key ingredient to achievement, i.e. persistence and resilience.

The course (now known as MLARR – Management of Land Acquisition, Resettlement and Rehabilitation) started out as an effort to train of a cadre of professionals to better manage the social risks associated with land acquisition and resettlement in Bangladesh. Given the population density and land scarcity, resettlement in Bangladesh continues to be a huge challenge for its development, as virtually all infrastructure requires moving people. Supported by AusAID and DFID, The first course was designed and delivered in 2009. That was the beginning, and what I’d like to focus is how far we’ve come from that first shot in the dark:

Welcoming the Globe’s 7 Billionth Person

According to the United Nations, this child will be born in India, and statistically should be a girl. But many of India’s girls are going missing at birth, because of parents’ desire to have boys. In 2008, the number of missing girls in India increased in 2008 to 275,000 as compared to 1,000 for the rest of South Asia.

If a girl child is lucky enough to be born, she faces high female mortality in infancy and early childhood in South Asia. What causes excess mortality among girls during infancy and early childhood? One possible explanation that has received a lot of attention is discrimination by parents against girls. Certainly, in parts of the world like Afghanistan, China, northern India, and Pakistan, such discrimination is a serious problem. Studies have shown delays in seeking medical care and lower expenditures for girls. In India, despite stellar economic growth in recent years, maternal mortality is almost six times what it is in Sri Lanka.

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