Bangladesh - geography
Bangladesh is one of the poorest and most densely populated countries in the
world. The summer monsoon allows for very intensive farming, but regularly
causes severe flooding.
Population
Leaving aside certain small town and island states, Bangladesh is the world's
most densely populated country; over 1000 residents per km2,
which is more than three times as much as in the densely populated neighboring
country of India. The population is growing by 2% per year (2006), and 33% of
the population are children under 14 years of age. Apart from the
capital Dhaka, there are only a few major cities and 80% of the population live
in the countryside. Population growth and rural poverty have led to large-scale
immigration to the cities; Dhaka's population is growing enormously and in 2001
is estimated to be over 10 million. The rapid urban growth also applies
to Chittagong (3.3 million), Khulna (1.3 million) and Rajshahi (679,000).
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Bangladesh is an Islamic country and Muslims make up 87% of the
population. Bengali is the main language, but English is prevalent in the middle
and upper classes of the cities.
Industries
Agriculture is the completely dominant profession. No less than 71%
of the country is under plow, which is a higher proportion than in any other
country in the world. Nevertheless, the total operating area is DKK 9.2
million. have only three times as large as Denmark's. The soil is immeasurably
fertile; the majority are clayey river deposits, large parts of which are
flooded annually, thus supplying nutrients from the river water
sediments. approximately 80% of the population derives directly or indirectly from the
agricultural sector. Agriculture is the most important raw material supplier to
industry, just as agricultural products make up a large part of exports. Rice is
by far the most important crop, followed by legumes and vegetables. The
government has encouraged the introduction of new high-yielding cereals, which
with the help of fertilizers and irrigation can increase the harvest yield per
hectare. acres. This has led to a significant increase in both rice and wheat
cultivation. The main sales crop is jute, which is mainly grown in the northern
and central parts of the country. Jute fibers are strong and coarse and are used
for eg sacks. The plant is grown during the rainy monsoon period and sown in the
most fertile river deposits. approximately half of the jute harvest is exported as raw
jute, while the rest is processed in the country, a large part for later
export. Sugarcane is the second most important sales crop.
There are only limited opportunities to take new agricultural land under
plow. On the other hand, production can be expanded by harvesting several times
a year; approximately 60% of the arable land is harvested two or three times a year.
Throughout the 1990's, the country was, as so often before, hit by floods
during the summer monsoon, several times with catastrophic
consequences. Agricultural production is still growing steadily, and most years
the country is self-sufficient in rice. Although total agricultural production
has grown by 29% since the 1980's, the population has not had a significantly
better food supply for this reason, as the population has grown almost as
much. However, the insufficient food supply is mainly due to the widespread
poverty, which is not least related to a very unequal distribution of land and
thus income. This problem is getting bigger and bigger. In 1960, 24% of farmers
had less than 0.4 hectares of land; this group had grown to 40% in 1984. On the
other hand, the 5% of the farmers who have the most own 26% of the total
agricultural land, and the group of large farmers is growing. The landless
families are referred to low-paid loose work or to rent land in exchange for
handing over part of the harvest, usually half, to the owner. This Share cropping system
is an independent issue for the economic development of Bangladesh. The landless
farmer who rents the land feels no incentive to improve the land or his
cultivation methods, as an increase in the harvest yield will usually simply
lead to the owner demanding more in payment for the right of use. The skewed
land distribution is thus both a major cause of widespread poverty and a brake
on the introduction of new cultivation methods.
Fishing
Rivers, lakes and ponds cover almost a third of the land area during the
rainy season; Among other things, most villages have one or more tanks,
ie. small local water reservoirs. The vast majority of these natural or
artificial fresh waters are used intensively for fishing; for many poor
families, it is a necessary supplement to agriculture. Here and in the Bay of
Bengal, over 1 million their daily livelihood and provide 70% of the country's
protein supply. In addition, fish products account for 9% of exports. Although
fishing flourished in the early 1990's, it is still a sector with great untapped
growth potential.
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Industry
Bangladesh has few raw materials that can be exploited commercially. Lime is
extracted by a state mining company and exploited in the cement industry. The
extraction of kaolin is stagnant.
The energy supply is heavily dependent on imports. The country has approximately 1/2 %
of the world's natural gas reserves and they are increasingly exploited; oil and
coal must be imported. The total energy consumption per. per capita is among the
lowest in the world; over half of the consumption comes from the rural
population's use of firewood and extruded sugar cane, and access to electricity
is very limited.
The industrial sector is small (27% of GDP in 2003) and heavily dependent on
the raw materials produced in agriculture. The jute and textile industry is the
most important and accounts for about a quarter of total industrial
production. The jute industry is very dependent on price developments in the
world market; the generally falling prices of artificial fibers with which jute
competes have meant that the jute trade has been hit hard.
The textile and clothing industry (cotton and silk) today (2006) accounts for
75% of total exports.
Immediately after independence, the government introduced extensive
regulations and nationalizations in the industrial and service sectors. Like
other countries in the region, liberalization and privatization began in the
1990's in the hope of increasing growth and attracting foreign investment.
Development aid
Bangladesh is one of the countries in the world that is most dependent on
foreign aid. In most years, development aid is one of the largest items on the
balance of payments' revenue side, and the aid finances a large part of the
country's imports. In the 1980's, virtually the entire country's development
budget was foreign-funded. Following a tightening of public budgets and the
beginning of liberalization, the foreign share is declining; measured per per
capita, development aid amounts to approximately DKK 40 per year (2005). An important
part of the country's economy stems from transfers from the many guest workers
from Bangladesh who work in the Middle East and Malaysia to generally poorly
paid jobs. The transfers are estimated at DKK 10 billion. DKK annually.
Denmark has a close development cooperation with Bangladesh. The assistance
has been part of the so-called poverty orientation of Danish developing country
aid, and it has primarily aimed at reaching the poorest population groups in the
agricultural districts. Denmark's largest and most ambitious development project
in any developing country was carried out in the Noakhali district in the
southern part of the country in the period 1978-92. It was an integrated
regional development project that included the construction of roads and
canals as well as the establishment of credit schemes and cooperatives. The
total expenses were approximately 500 million The project achieved its goals to a
certain extent, but also showed how difficult it is to meet the political goal
itself: to help the poorest in an area that has an established and skewed
economic power structure. The Danish development assistance program for the
country amounted to DKK 200 million.
Nature
Bangladesh is first and foremost a cultural landscape. Farthest south in
the Chittagong Hill Tracts are sparsely populated mountain areas with large
uncultivated areas, and the western part of the delta coast is a vast mangrove
area, The Sundarbans. But beyond these two areas, the land consists of fields,
rivers, canals, dikes, lakes and ponds, and the height differences of the
landscape are only a few meters.
The climate is tropical. Three quarters of the precipitation falls during
the summer monsoon from June to September, with the northwestern regions
receiving up to 5000 mm of precipitation, while the southeastern regions receive
up to half. In the winter, on the other hand, there is actually a drought in
many places, and irrigation is necessary for agriculture. During the monsoon,
the coast and the great delta are hit by powerful tropical cyclones from the Bay
of Bengal. The low-lying islands off the coast are flooded and the bodies of
water are forced up into the rivers. Both the Brahmaputras and the Ganges'large
catchment areas are also located in the monsoon belt, which means that the
rivers must transport large amounts of water from here at the same time. The
result is annually recurring floods of large parts of the country. For example,
the Sylhet Basin NE of Dhaka is mostly under 5-7 m of water during the summer
months. As mentioned, this annual flood is an important precondition for the
extremely intensive agriculture, but the violent storms are also causing
devastating natural disasters.
Bangladesh itself is not capable of regulating the rivers. On the one hand,
the task will require capital and technology that the country does not have at
its disposal, and on the other hand, the rivers have their catchment areas
outside the country's control, namely in India and Nepal. Ever since
independence in 1971, attempts have been made to reach agreement with India on
water level control in the Ganges and Brahmaputra, but without success. The
political disagreement is not least due to the Indian Faraka Dam in the state
of West Bengal, which regulates the water supply to Kolkata (Calcutta) and thus
prevents sanding of the port. The dam has diverted part of the Ganges' water,
which Bangladesh in the dry season wants to use for irrigation.
Despite the immense population density, Bangladesh has a rich
wildlife. Sundarban National Park is home to the Bengal tiger, deer, crocodiles,
wild boar, strangler snakes and a rich bird life. Sundarbans covers 3600 km2 river
delta. At low tide the forest floor is 2 m above the water level, but by river,
when the water enters from the Bay of Bengal at 50 km/h, the forest floor is
under water. The area is part of the international project for the conservation
of tigers.
Bangladesh - language
95% of the population is native bengali. It is an Eastern Indo-Aryan
language also spoken in the Indian state of West Bengal. In total, Bengali is
spoken by approximately 215 million people (2005), of which 140 million in Bangladesh
and it is thus one of the largest languages in the world. In the middle and
upper class in the cities, English is prevalent. In The Chittagong Hill
Tracts also have several smaller tribal languages.
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