Slow Food communities hit by violent floods in Bangladesh

In the past days, Bangladesh has been hit by one of the country’s worst floods in living memory, which impacted more than 5 millions people in the Eastern part of the country.

“We are used to heavy rains and monsoons, but this violence was unexpected”, explains Md Bellal Hossain, Slow Food leader and Executive Director of the Prattasha Samazik Unnayan Sangstha (PSUS). “14 Slow Food communities out of the 21 we have in the country are under water, people had to fly their homes leaving their lives behind them”.

Slow Food communities lie in a rural area mostly devoted to the cultivation of rice, sugar cane, potatoes and jute, which have now been damaged and mostly destroyed. “Slow Food is working to protect and promote the use of local seeds, endangered from a massive tentative to convince farmers to use conventional seeds.  Besides, biodiversity restoration is key to prevent similar disasters in the future”.

Bangladesh lives on its rivers and waterways and with these floods almost 300.000 hectares of land have been damaged, including its people relying on the vital life source for fishing and farming rice paddies. More than 200k hectares of crop land has been damaged. The number of affected farmers is more than 1 More than 180.000 fishermen from fish farms in 86 sub districts have been damaged due to flash floods. The country is also well-acquainted with flooding and cyclones but especially in recent years scientists say human-caused climate change exacerbates extreme weather events. Nonetheless this flood took them by surprise and damaged the agriculture and livestock but also buildings and infrastructure.

“People affected by the floods lost all their belongings and homes. We need to provide them with food, clothes, medicines as they look forward to go back to their villages to check on their homes and fields and start again. We closely work with international aid organizations who are bringing support to our communities. We look at the international community to help us face this environmental disaster. We know there are already some international organizations who put in place fundraising campaigns to help us concretely in these hard times ”.

The international Slow Food network expresses its solidarity and calls on local communities to continue supporting people on the ground in the immediacy of the crisis and its aftermath. Doing so we will all manage to strengthen the resilience of local ecosystems and the wellbeing of all.