Waterworld is a long feature from this month’s Atlantic Monthly in which Robert Kaplan gives a narrative of his travels in Bangladesh – a country struggling with Islamic fundamentalism, weak governance, overpopulation and climate change. The themes of this article are reminiscent of his famous mid-1990s work – and namesake of this blog – The Coming Anarchy. Here is a sample from the Waterworld article:
Here is how global warming indirectly feeds Islamic extremism. As rural Bangladeshis flee a countryside ravaged by salinity in the south and drought in the northwest, they are migrating to cities at a rate of 3 to 4 percent a year. Swept into the vast anonymity of sprawling slum encampments, they lose their local and extended-family links, becoming more susceptible to a form of Islam with a sharper ideological edge. “We will not have anarchy at the village level, where society is healthy,” warns Atiq Rahman. “But we can have it in the ever-enlarging urban areas.” Such is the weakness of central authority in Bangladesh following 15 years of elected governments.
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Dan tdaxp added these pithy words on 13 Jan 08 at 12:29 pmThe movement from the countryside to the city is happening in nearly every country and region of the world, because city income has a higher variance and a higher mean than farm income (you can make it big! and if not, at least get a better job than pushing manure), but in Bangladesh we blame this on global warming?
Why?
This is a poor post, from the hip final sentence to the lack of any sort of analysis over Kaplan’s claim.
jim added these pithy words on 13 Jan 08 at 8:49 pmYeah, I’m very skeptical how this can be attributed to global warming. It’s not like monsoons are a new phenomenon there. And it’s not like almost every country in the world hasn’t faced the same issue of mass urbanization.
I do look forward to the time a few decades from now, when the predicted global warming catastrophe has failed to happen, that we can finally get rid of this nonsensical doom-mongering.
Sadly, the crazies past predictions of imminent doom never get held against them. Just look at the nutjob Lester Brown and his apocalyptic Worldwatch Institute. He’s been predicting imminent doom for decades now, but is still taken seriously. Painful.
mihnea added these pithy words on 13 Jan 08 at 8:53 pmi would agree with the fact that global warming presents yet another incentive for rural-urban migration, actually, because it does make sense if you stop to think about it. i also don’t think people should make a bigger issue out of a simple post on the matter. cheers :)
Arcane added these pithy words on 21 Jan 08 at 7:34 pmThis is somewhat related to Kaplan: debunking the myth of the Third World, http://www.gapminder.org/video/talks/ted-2006—-debunking-myth-about-the-third-world.html
Nomad added these pithy words on 22 Jan 08 at 3:59 amThe attack on global warming deflects attention from the real truth of the matter – bad water management practices leads to salinity in soil and drought – but that’s as true in California as it is in Bangladesh. In California, the disenfranchised don’t tend to turn to radical Islam as a solution – but that’s a whole otyher ballgame….
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