MAN MADE PROBLEMS - man does not learn from past mistakes

Man-made problems - (www.bbc.co.uk)
Dr Sugarto Hazra, an oceanographer at the University of Calcutta says there is more than one cause of the problem.

Ajoy Kumar Patra says his island is being washed away
"Cutting down the mangrove that used to cover the island, to make way for farming, destroyed the ecology," he says. The mangrove used to bind the topsoil in position. Now it is being washed away.
The farmers also used to dig wells to get fresh water for irrigating their paddies. But in time, Dr Hazra says, underground reservoirs emptied and then collapsed.
Added to all that, "The sea level is rising around here, as it is everywhere in response to global warming", the oceanographer said. "So the land is subsiding and at the same time the sea is advancing."
The farmers of Ghoramara have tried to save their island by building dykes around the edges.
But Dr Hazra says this is just a short term solution that may make the situation worse.
"The problem with the dykes is that they stop the sediment the river would normally deposit here from nourishing the island's soil.
"The sediment is being washed out to sea rather than compensating for the rising water level."
So the agriculture designed to feed the community on the island is in fact contributing to its death.
'Tip-toeing into crisis'
Experts in food production say Ghoramara is a symbol of the dramatic combination of factors which mean the world is heading for extreme food shortages in the coming decades.
Similar phenomena are taking place on other islands and in low-lying coastal plains around the world.

The dykes around the island are only a short-term solution
The factors which are impacting on food production include soil erosion caused by intensive farming, and global warming which could reduce the yield of staple grains or make weather patterns less predictable for farmers.
The relatively new phenomenon of bio-fuels - for example, the production of ethanol from corn which can be used to supplement petrol - may take a huge proportion of the output of the big grain farms in the American Midwest.
"The global figures already show a drop in food stocks. We have got less buffer stocks than we have had for many, many decades," said Dr Tim Lang, a food and nutrition expert at The City University in London.
"We are tip-toeing into the most enormous crisis."
The over-consumption of food in many parts of the world is another issue. There are now more overweight people than chronically hungry, and the number of people with "diseases of the rich" like diabetes is increasing, including in developing countries.