Children swim in a pond during a heatwave in Bangladeshi capital Dhaka on April 17. (Photo by Munir Uz Zaman / AFP)
Poultry farm owner Salauddin Bhuiyan Selim closed two of three farms each containing about 1,000 birds last week in Narayanganj district near Bangladeshi capital Dhaka.
The unfortunate closures came as the owner of the Bhuiyan Agro farm found birds dying one after another as a deadly heatwave hit Bangladesh.
Across the South Asian nation known for its humid and warm climate influenced by the monsoon, temperatures have hovered between 36-42 degrees Celsius for the past two weeks. It is the longest period the country has experienced such high temperatures in more than half a century, according to Bangladesh Meteorological Department.
The department said there is no possibility of rain for a week, and the heat might linger even further.
On April 20, the second hottest day in Dhaka in 64 years, Selim saw 87 birds die in a few hours due to heatstroke.
He installed pipes for spraying water on the birds and the roof of his farm but frequent power cuts are hampering their operation.
“I employed two people to spot birds about to die so that they can be slaughtered for meat," said Selim, adding that he has yet to calculate the losses incurred from the closure.
Many small and medium poultry farm owners like Selim across the country are counting heavy losses due to a similar disaster, media reports say.
In a large poultry farm in southwestern Jashore district near India, over 100,000 birds died since the heatwave began on April 11 as Muslims celebrated Eid-ul-Fitr, one of the two major annual Islamic festivals.
The ongoing death of poultry birds has also caused a price hike in Bangladesh where millions of poor and middle-class people rely on poultry meat as a cheap source of protein.
The natural calamity has caused a loss of two billion taka (US$182.32 million) for poultry farmers, according to data from Bangladesh Poultry Association on April 25.
“About 20,000 poultry farms are on the brink of shutting down, many of them permanently,” said Sumon Howlader, the association’s president.
The heatwave is destroying the poultry sector that helped pull millions out of poverty besides improving the nutrition status of many, observers say.
Weather scientists warned that extreme hot weather is likely to recur in phases until August this year.
The searing heatwave is also taking its toll on agriculture for temperatures above 35 degrees Celsius are considered detrimental to any plants, affecting their photosynthesis, flowering, and capacity to carry fruit.
Agriculturists warned that production of all crops in the field might drop by a fourth, potentially pushing thousands into food insecurity and deeper into poverty, particularly farmers.
Rice fields over vast landscapes lay parched, many of them starting to develop cracks, for they could not be properly irrigated amidst persistent power crises and extremely hot conditions.
The higher the temperature, the more the rice plant uses its energy to cool off rather than forming grain, explained Abdul Kader, who teaches agronomy at Bangladesh Agricultural University.
High temperatures and drought also dry up the sticky substance on which pollen is stuck for pollination, he said.
“Rice production gets seriously hampered when the temperature reaches 40C,” said Kader.
Over 80 percent of boro (winter rice) cultivated on 4.856 million hectares is still in the field, mostly at the flowering stage, implying it faced serious challenges in flowering due to the extreme heat conditions.
Boro is Bangladesh’s main rice grain accounting for over half of the annual production of all rice varieties combined – 400 million tons.
Farmers are pushed to the point of watching the heatwave burn their fields before their eyes with the government recently asking them to irrigate fields on their own, using diesel-run water pumps.
Farmers are already hard-pressed in Bangladesh, grappling with the worst inflation in decades for more than two years and the aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic.
There are also 15 other summer vegetables in the field under threat because of the same physiological impacts of the heatwave on them as rice.
Mango and litchi orchards also lost buds because of excessive dryness.
Selim Reza, a farmer in Iswardi of northern Pabna district, said that half of his litchi orchard on five acres of land did not flower this year.
Fisheries are drying up too, potentially affecting another window that has been very effective in fighting malnutrition and poverty in Bangladesh.
Excessive temperature reduces oxygen levels in water and generates poisonous gases, experts say.
Fisheries in many parts of Bangladesh are dependent on groundwater. The government advised fisheries to add fresh cold water daily to give fish a respite from excessive heat.
However, due to power shortages, many fish farmers are unable to draw sufficient groundwater for their fish tanks.
The heatwave has been taking a toll on public health, says the state-run Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS).
At least four people died, and thousands have received treatment for illnesses related to heatstroke across the country in the past weeks, the DGHS said.
In cities and rural villages, millions of poor and low-income people have been suffering as the extremely hot weather barred them from venturing outside for work.
The government suspended classes in all educational institutions for a week due to the heatwave.
About 4.5 million workers employed in Bangladesh’s export-oriented garment industry who work under grueling conditions, suffer more frequent episodes of fainting than ever before, labor unions say.
Heat and high humidity cause a loss in annual output in Dhaka of more than 8 percent, according to research by the Adrienne Arsht-Rockefeller Foundation Resilience Center, a Washington-based non-government organization. The loss could reach 10 percent by 2050, it added.
Temperatures on road surfaces in Dhaka, filled with people and vehicles burning the world’s most low-graded petrol, could reach up to 60 degrees Celsius, said the report, adding that temperatures are typically 12 degrees higher inside tin-roofed homes and workplaces.
The Arsht-Rock report said that Dhaka was losing US$6 billion worth of labor productivity every year due to heat stress from extreme temperatures.
Studies have warned that global warming exposes Bangladesh to frequent extreme weather conditions, including prolonged heatwaves which make workers lethargic, and less productive, and consequently millions of poor poorer.
The workforce and productivity of Bangladesh could be decimated by up to 46 percent over the next six decades because of heat stress caused by global warming, according to a policy brief released last year by the University of Leeds and the London School of Economics and Political Science.
Workers in the informal sector suffer heavily as they don’t have a fixed income for their work.
Street vendors lost about 75 percent income due to heatwaves, according to a recent survey by the Bangladesh Red Cresent Society.
Ashik Hossain, a grocer in Dhaka’s Badda area, is worried about rising temperatures year after year.
“What is happening with us? Why is the weather acting so crazy? Can we survive this summer?’ asked Hossain.
