U-Sa-Chi-Master
Rakhai, Bangladesh
U-Sa-Chi-Master, 53, is a fisherman from the Bay of Bengal. He is the head of Kansai Na Pyo Roa, one of the few minority Rakhain villages in the south of Bangladesh. His community is already experiencing the dramatic effects of climate change.
As a child I used to walk along with members of my village to the sea shore and it was a 3-mile track through dense forest of weed and coconut tree, passing a Second World War, British military camp site.
Now, after 40 to 45 years, I can hear the sound of the waves from the verandah of my house; the sea is just 400 meters from here. My family had water buffaloes and they used to graze on the wetland, but now there are fewer of those animals as the grazing land is lost under the waves.
There were three sand dunes on that now submerged land, where we used to take refuge if there was a sea-surge. But now there is only one man-made embankment to protect us and nobody knows when it will disappear into the sea. The tides are higher now by the day.
The weather has changed a lot. I have been fishing in the sea since I was 20 and we used to wait for the rainy season for the best catch. It used to rain heavily in the first phase of the rainy season but that has changed. Now the fishermen have to go farther from the shore to catch fish as the sea has become shallow near the coast-line: it is dangerous, with the chances of sea-surge, so I stopped fishing and rented out my boat and nets.
'My community has lost much of its land over the time and our number has also fallen over the years, and we are struggling to keep our heritage alive in this place.'
My ancestors moved from the Arakan state of Myanmar (Burma) on boats a few hundred years back and settled here. It was a pristine beach then, with dense forest, but now it is populated densely. My community has lost much of its land over the time and our number has also fallen over the years, and we are struggling to keep our heritage alive in this place.
I respect the scientists as they are wise and there must be truth in their words. I know very little about all this climate change or global warming, and few in my community understand it well. But we are already facing the true nature of these changes. I don’t know where my grandson will grow up if this land is lost. Those who are doing this to nature, they need to think of the future of their own children.