Page 29 - Science

THE GREATEST CHALLENGE to opening the Farmers pressed for compensation for lost NATURE’S STRATEGIES
polders isn’t the engineering, it’s the harvests. Fish-farming interests resisted
people. Can some be persuaded to accept the injection of fresh silt because it would
flooding on their land for years so that oth- fill their ponds. In 2012, a crowd rioted
ers can live flood-free? as government officials prepared to flood
Winners and losers are scattered around a beel there. The government suspended
Beel Pakhimara. While farmers in nearby work and has yet to return.
towns gather the rice harvest in golden Six years later, the Hari River prob-
fields now free from waterlogging, the beel lems remain, and so do the charred shells
is a desolate land of gray and pale green. of three cars that rioters set on fire. “If,
Those who once farmed it have seen their within the next 2 or 3 years, they do not do
rice paddies, fish farms, and ponds turn TRM upstream, the river will be silted up
into a dumping ground for river sediment. completely,” Mutahara says.
It will remain that way until the canal is The government has tried to learn from
closed in approximately 2020, when the its mistakes, says Probir Kumar Goshwami,
beel has filled with sediment and can be lead engineer at the Bangladesh Water De-
returned to cultivation. velopment Board’s office in nearby Jessore.
Outside a small compound of brick and Last year, the government set up a tem-
A plant that stands
mud huts tucked against the embankment, porary office near Beel Pakhimara where
35-year-old Hanif Sardar (no relation to people could file for compensation. Water
Jaharul) has little good to say about the management officials are meeting more and fights
project that’s supposed to help rescue his with locals. This year, the water agency nlike those of us on legs, plants
country’s land. He tried to get paid for the plans to resume work on the beel at the can’t run away from what they
fifth of a hectare of land in the beel where center of the 2012 riot. don’t like—yet they show remark- Downloaded from
he once grew rice that fed his family, he Despite some government resistance able resilience when under
explains. “The government official says, to TRM, Goshwami says there’s no bet- U attack. Consider how the wild
‘Leave the application, something will hap- ter alternative for those walled-off vil- tobacco plant (Nicotiana attenuata,
pen. Don’t worry.’ But nothing happened,” lages. “The tidal river management is the pictured above), a meter-high native
he says bitterly. “All the big landowners got only solution.” of North America, protects itself from
the money. But the small landowners are Could controlled flooding be exported hungry insects. The plant senses the
not getting compensation.” downstream to places like Polder 32? The amino acid compounds in a caterpil-
The waterlogging that left a third of a chronic, low-level flooding on the Koba- lar’s saliva and responds with an alarm http://science.sciencemag.org/
meter of water in his yard for months each dak River differs from the threat of cata- signal—a hydraulic or electrical pulse
year ended in 2016. But that’s outweighed strophic, storm-induced flooding closer to through its stems and leaves. Within
by the family’s loss of farmland. “The dis- the sea. And yet both places have some- minutes, the plant’s cells rev up their
advantage is more,” says Hanif’s uncle, thing in common: a need to build up land. production of nicotine, a poison that
Amzad Sardar, “and the advantage is few.” As of now, no specific plan exists to bend interferes with an animal’s muscle
To understand why some citizens to the water’s will. Even a sort of “TRM function. When attacked, a single wild
turn against TRM projects, Mahmuda lite”—a compartmentalized flooding in tobacco leaf can pack in a half a ciga-
Mutahara, a Bangladeshi who recently which small sections of polders are opened rette carton’s worth of nicotine. But on March 1, 2018
earned her Ph.D., has spent much of the to raise elevation bit by bit—hasn’t gained some caterpillars, such as hawkmoths,
past 5 years traversing the region’s pothole- traction, says Haque, who has used com- have evolved a way to pass that poison
riddled roads, often on the back of a motor- puter models to study solutions to coastal through their gut instead of absorbing
cycle. Questioning residents, government vulnerability. Residents would have to be it, forcing wild tobacco to unearth new
officials, and others, she found govern- persuaded to live for years with flooded countermeasures. The plant produces
ment agencies disconnected from locals, land. Reluctant government officials would compounds that inhibit digestion
spawning distrust and anger that have de- need to embrace the approach. “This is a and make the caterpillar sluggish, as
railed controlled flooding attempts, some- social problem,” he says. places to get today. well as abrasives that wear down the
PHOTO: STAN SHEBS/CREATIVE COMMONS ATTRIBUTION-SHARE ALIKE 3.0 how, University in decade, a in Dhaka and in 2011. have The land inside the polder cy- bugs and other caterpillar eaters, and
are
fields
dry
On
the
32,
times spectacularly.
Polder
attacker’s mouthparts. At the same
Government water
new,
of
not so
first
the
It
officials “are
was one
time, the plant calls in help by emitting
much interested to talk to the local people,”
higher walls under the World Bank initia-
a scent that attracts ground-dwelling
wishes
their
and
learn
explain
tive. The breaches in the dike were closed
to
about
they
benefit,
might
long run,
the
in
then puts up chemical signposts to
Mutahara, who
view
Jaharul
lives
Sardar’s
water,
says
across the
guide those predators to their already
studied environmental science at Wagenin-
however,
is
walls
cannot
that
a reminder
sluggish prey. Finally, a plant under
the Netherlands.
is
gen
erase
risk.
“That
siege redirects its resources, putting
To illustrate
problem.”
is the
her
visibly lower than the shoreline outside it.
point,
off flowering and growth until the
Mutahara shares a story that for her is em-
But as he strolls barefoot atop the freshly
caterpillars are gone. Amazingly, all of
social
forces that
rebuilt embankment, he feels safe for now.
tangled
blematic
of
the
this is orchestrated not by a central-
embankments
good
we
and
make such work fraught with tensions.
“If
ized brain, but by decision-making
Over
the
rotating
series
past
clone shelters,” he says, “we can survive.” j
of TRM projects on the nearby Hari River
—Elizabeth Pennisi
have repeatedly gone awry. Flooding in one
beel dragged on years longer than planned.
from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.
2 MARCH 2018 • VOL 359 ISSUE 6379 985
SCIENCE sciencemag.org This project was supported with a grant cells scattered throughout the plant.
Published by AAAS
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