Munem Wasif - Prix Pictet Commission
Artist statement
Farmers beside Brahmaputra in Kurigram
have had to move five times at least, in the
last ten years. Every year rivers are becoming
more violent while people living beside them
are becoming more vulnerable. Like Bashumati
Debi of Munshiganj, a wiry 37-year-old who
has never driven a car, ran an air conditioner
or done much of anything that produces
greenhouse gases. There are many more
all over the world that are on the verge
of becoming climate refugees, the tragic
victims of too much or too little water. Water
resource issues interact with a wide range of
socioeconomic and environmental sectors
including health, agriculture, biodiversity,
public safety, industry, and navigation. Even
if the emission of greenhouse gases were
stabilized today, increases in temperature
and the associated impacts including water
availability and flooding will continue for
many, many years. Things are more critical in a
country like Bangladesh which has 140 million
people packed into an area a little smaller
than Illinois. In recent decades more intense
rainfall events have occurred and people here
experienced extreme water events in the form
of severe flood, drought and heat waves.
Last year the electric tidal force of the harsh
Cyclone Sidr blow or the crushing rivers all
have altered lives of this inhabitance. People
lost children, crops from a field, house or the
piece of yard that was their only asset. Only
flood took away 1.5 million acres of crop, Sidr
snatched away 10–15 thousand lives and river
erosion gulped thousand acres of land.
As the sea level slowly rises, this nation that
is little more than a series of low-lying deltas
islands amid some of Asia’s mightiest rivers –
the Ganges, Jamuna-Brahmaputra and
Meghna – is seeing saltwater creep into its
coastal soils and drinking water. Water is a
critical core sector so what impacts here
have cascading effects.
From the sustainable development perspective,
the top priority for adaptation in the water sector
should be to reduce the vulnerabilities of people
and societies caused by increased climate
variability and extreme events. Otherwise
Bashumati’s mighty Padma will keep snatching.
Many Monwara’s Quran will be blown. Countless
Hatem Ali’s milking cows will get lost. These
simple people who are always fighting with
immense poverty and misfortunes still live
a happy village life with no contribution in
changing their very known weather will
constantly face the water tragedy. It is time to
take proper cautions, policies and regulations
to lessen the gap between worse and better.
Water is life; let there be life. Let’s not make
it a tragedy.
