Paper: Covid has combined with climate change to wrought another dimension of grimness – older women, some even grandmothers, being pushed into prostitution. …
“It was difficult to find minor girls during the lockdown as they were locked in their homes so traffickers moved their attention to older women who were in need of money to keep the sex trade going.” … “We are still in the process of realising the complete impact that COVID-19 brought in this region already battling climate change effects,” Social activist Pampa Ghosh said.
Several areas in the Sundarbans have been washed away due to the rise in water levels, displacing a large number of people who were then forced to migrate due to financial insecurity and vulnerabilities.
By: Marc Morano – Climate Depot
Covid and climate change push many older women into prostitution in Sundarbans
New Delhi, Apr 10 (PTI) In the swamplands of the Sundarbans, where steady erosion has robbed thousands of people of their homes and livelihoods, Covid has combined with climate change to wrought another dimension of grimness – older women, some even grandmothers, being pushed into prostitution.
Their abject poverty, made worse by a pandemic that has stretched on for more than two years, made them vulnerable to traffickers who found it difficult to procure young women and minor girls and shifted focus to middle aged women from West Bengal’s coastal regions, said activists working in the area.
“There is less scrutiny on older women and their vulnerability has made them accessible to traffickers,” Nihar Ranjan Raptan, director of the Goranbose Gram Bikash Kendra (GGBK), told PTI while explaining why traffickers are interested in middle aged and older women. “It was difficult to find minor girls during the lockdown as they were locked in their homes so traffickers moved their attention to older women who were in need of money to keep the sex trade going. Earlier, women below 24 years were usually seen to be trafficked,” Raptan, whose NGO works on issues of human trafficking, child rights and climate change impact, added.
He said 12-13 women in their late 30s and 40s from the Sundarbans area who were pushed into sex slavery have been rescued over the last four months. And this could just be the tip of the proverbial iceberg.…
“We are still in the process of realising the complete impact that COVID-19 brought in this region already battling climate change effects,” she said.
Subhasree Raptan of GGBK said several areas in the Sundarbans have been washed away due to the rise in water levels, displacing a large number of people who were then forced to migrate due to financial insecurity and vulnerabilities.
In most cases, she said, agriculture has become unviable due to the increase in salinity of the water because of sea level rise. As a result, there is abject poverty and people, particularly women, are desperate to look for livelihood as they are often the breadwinners.
Cyclone Amphan, which made landfall in May last year near the India-Bangladesh border, was the costliest tropical cyclone on record for the north Indian Ocean with reported economic losses in India of approximately USD 14 billion.
Editor’s Note
I was thinking about this story and how it is part of a large genre of a specific type of logic.
Assert Climate Change causes poverty.
Poverty pretty much causes every human misery.
QED, Climate Change causes every human misery.
Charles
India has real problems, but climate change isn’t one of them
Half of the population goes to the toilet in the fields…
“The danger faced by women going to the toilet outdoors in rural India was made clear last month when two girls were ambushed, gang-raped and hanged from a tree. But defecation outside is normal for most Indian villagers – so how do they manage?”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-28039513
It’s a mistake to view what happens in Indian society through a Western moral lens. Their values are different
Rape and gang-rape deserve moral condemnation regardless of the society.
They sell their children to get money
They have different values whether you approve or mot
I see NO climate science credentials that would give you any credibility claiming climate change doesn’t affect India. It affects practically every place on the globe. And so does human pollution and activity. Just because you don’t know about it doesn’t mean it isn’t happening. That’s supremely ignorant arrogance.
Look harder
The picture at the top of the story doen’t quite ring true with regard to the text. Substantial buildings with modern electricity supply, modern vehicles, well maintained paddi fields and habitations built well aqbove the flood plain level.
above, even.
We went to India for 3 weeks in 2007, and I was struck by the strange and almost ubiquitous juxtaposition of modern buildings and amenities with extreme poverty.
In the cities, there were high-rise buildings that looked just like any urban buildings you would see in Canada or the US. We toured a hospital that had marble floors and walls made of stone slabs. Right next to those buildings were tent cities, where thousands of people lived.
Everybody in India has a cell phone – but there are parts of the country where people still make dung cakes by hand out of cow manure for fuel to cook their food. Power in the more rural locations is intermittent, as is getting water from your tap (if you have one, that is).
Are you sure you weren’t in San Francisco?
One can see the same thing in Baja (Mexico). Coastal mansions overlooking the sea, and hovels made of scrap wood and corrugated metal barely providing protection from the sun and rain for families, nestled in among the mansions.
Nothing to do with gross overpopulation and a 7th Century religious mindset ruling the country?
If you’re referring to Islam (horrid religion), in India roughly 80% of the population is Hindu.
Mind you, as an atheist I know that all religions are plain daft.
Hinduism can hardly be called progressive with it’s rigidly enforced caste system. Maybe lower caste women are forced into prostitution as other forms of employment are unavailable to them.
So you think the moral values the predominant religions of the world (Christianity, Islam, Buddhism) teach are daft, too? Be kind and gracious to your neighbors and strangers, take care of the poor, be humble, seek to redress wrongs you may have committed inadvertently or on purpose, etc. These are common tenets of these religions. I find nothing daft about them. Is there an equivalent non-religious organization that instills these values? I haven’t seen any. These also happen to be the foundation of Western governments and law. Have a look at the kind of government atheists practice and compare. Socialism destroyed people (by the millions) and their freedom. Secular governments founded from religious ideals have created unparalleled freedom and prosperity, though theocracies (Iran, etc.) are just as bad as atheistic government.
“Be kind and gracious to your neighbors and strangers, take care of the poor, be humble, seek to redress wrongs you may have committed inadvertently or on purpose, etc. These are common tenets of these ”
I’d like to think I do my best to be all these things, but I don’t need to believe in sky fairies to do it.
Iran is a govt built wholly around religion. Look at how awful it is.
You sure, you actually not believing in sky fairies?
Nope. Sky fairies have never been my thing. Science is my thing.
Your beliefs *appear* to be informed but are not; they’re based 100% on bias toward your own religion. Religions (of which essentially all are cults) were all created in times when there was no technology, no morality, no science, no burden of proof of outrageous claims, and insane beliefs that kings and conquerors and rulers were gods and that urine cured illnesses. The Romans believed in all sorts of gods and collected urine because they thought it was good stuff, NOT because there was any science at all behind those strange beliefs including religious beliefs. All religions are 100% hearsay and mythology and hopes and wishes in life.
The fact there are good ideas how to treat others in some religions does not excuse the fact that millions have been killed and abused in the name of every major religion. How do you know those people would have been killed or abused with NO religion? Religions ATTRACT fanatics and ignorant,
mentally lazy people who can’t reason. If they could reason, they would NOT belong to a region because NO religion is based on reason and science and facts! If there’s an automatic requirement to believe stuff that’s crazy and ridiculous and outrageous, where is the logic? The foundation of every religion is based on believing utter bvllsh1t.
Your beliefs *appear* to be informed but are not; they’re based 100% on bias toward your own religion. Religions (of which essentially all are cults) were all created in times when there was no technology, no morality, no science, no burden of proof of outrageous claims. Insane beliefs that kings and conquerors and rulers were gods, that urine cured illnesses, all sorts of craziness was rampant then.
The Romans believed in all sorts of gods and collected urine because they thought it was good stuff, NOT because there was any science at all behind those strange beliefs including religious beliefs. All religions are a pathetically illogical mishmash of 100% hearsay, crackpots’ impossible visions, hopes, wishes and lies.
The fact there are good ideas how to treat others in some religions does NOT excuse those who inspired zealots to kill, rape and abuse those disinterested in their religion, which they then forced on populations upon pain of death. Murder, rape and torture has always been perpetrated in the name of every major religion.
How do you know those people would have been killed or abused with NO religion? Religions ATTRACT fanatics and ignorant,
mentally lazy people who can’t reason. Obviously it is much easier to believe what some self-appointed “authority” says then to buck trends, observe reality and act like an individual, fighting for logic and reason against seas of idiots who believe *automatically* because it’s part of their dogma, and a vital social community. If they could reason well, they would NOT belong to regions because NO religion is based on reason and science and facts! If there’s an automatic REQUIREMENT to believe crazy and ridiculous and outrageous claims, with NO (or scant) evidence, where is the logic? The foundation of every religion is based on believing utter bvllsh1t.
Well said Tee. All religions are based on zero evidence.
We don’t need religion now – we’ve replaced unproductive superstition with productive science.
Your definitely right – the caste system is archaic and disgusting.
You don’t know the difference between “your” and “you’re??” One doesn’t own correctness (“your right”), but you do have (or “own,” in a sense) rights.
That’s the problem with the predictive text on my phone – I’m invariably tpiyng too fsat and the ltertes get all mexid up and gmrmtaiacal eorrrs cerep in.
Dear sir you “know” nothing. That kind of atheism is as big a problem as the people on the other side who “know” everything. Signed, an agnostic.
Get over yourself agnostic.
All atheists are agnostic anyway, as they would all believe in God if he walked up to them and proved his existence. However that will never happen anyway, so all agnostics are just weak atheists with no conviction.
It makes ZERO sense (strawman argument) to claim something would happen if something else happened that has not actually happened.
It makes ZERO sense (strawman argument) to claim something would happen IF something else happened, that has not actually happened — especially that, since it has never happened in history and is unlikely to happen because it sounds so outrageous, it is *most likely* impossible. However, the possibility CAN’T be ruled out for certain, since of course, you can’t prove a negative — something that hasn’t happened.
If you are a true atheist you know there is no god. If you “believe” there is no god that makes you an agnostic.
I’m an atheist. I know there is no god.
Atheism is a belief system as much as any religion. It is impossible to know whether there’s one god, 10, 29 or 11,201 gods or not. And certainly if the question is about whether God exists, there’s NO proof of “one true God!” Every statement in support of every religion is 100% hearsay and mythology unless it is some physical aspect like a city that has been also named in ancient literature or excavated, revealing evidence of that City in that location for example. Therefore if you believe there is/are no god(s), makes you an atheist and atheism is a belief system.
The most one can truthfully say about gods or “God” is that you believe they may exist and your experience or your logic tells you that the likelihood is great. No one can prove a private experience unless there is some trace of that experience left in the body, such as cortisol after a stressful event. But there is NO scientific proof or evidence that ensures your belief(s) about god(s) matches reality.
Agnosticism is the only logical way to approach the issue of the potential existence of god(s). First, it is utterly ridiculous to claim there is only one true God just because someone wrote it down and said so. That’s like saying, “I’m a chimpanzee” — but offering no proof like genetic evidence or physical characteristics or any other way to define a person as a chimpanzee instead of a human. It’s a ridiculous claim, as is EVERY religious or superstitious claim.
Since it is impossible to prove one knows god(s) or knows of god(s), except possibly through personal experience, and no person has ever proven the existence or non-existence of God, agnosticism is therefore the only logical approach to grappling with phenomena (and suppositions) beyond human and scientifically extended perceptions, and knowledge and understanding based on all of that.
Merely believing in 2000 year old claims makes you gullible, not faithful.
Atheism is a belief system as much as any religion. It is impossible to know whether there’s one god, 10, 29 or 11,201 gods or not. And certainly if the question is about whether God exists, there’s NO proof of “one true God!” Every statement in support of every religion is 100% hearsay and mythology unless it is some physical aspect like a city that has been also named in ancient literature or excavated, revealing evidence of that City in that location for example. Therefore belief there is/are no god(s), makes you an atheist; atheism is merely another unverifiable belief system.
The most one can truthfully say about gods or “God” is that you believe they may exist; and/or your experience or your logic tells you that the likelihood is great. No one can prove a private experience unless there is some trace of that experience left in the body, such as cortisol after a stressful event. But there is NO scientific proof or evidence that ensures your belief(s) about god(s) matches reality.
Agnosticism is the only logical way to approach the issue of the potential existence of god(s). First, it is utterly ridiculous to claim there is only one true God just because someone wrote it down and said so. That’s like saying, “I’m a chimpanzee” — but offering no proof like genetic evidence or physical characteristics or any other way to define a person as a chimpanzee instead of a human. It’s a ridiculous claim, as is EVERY religious or superstitious claim.
Since it is impossible to prove one knows god(s) or knows of god(s), except possibly through personal experience, and no person has ever proven the existence or non-existence of God, agnosticism is therefore the only logical approach to grappling with phenomena (and suppositions) beyond human and scientifically extended perceptions, and knowledge and understanding based on all of that.
Merely believing in 2000 year old claims makes you gullible, not faithful.
You’re thinking of Pakistan. Come to think of it Afghanistan recently returned to the neolithic age. Take your pick.
“Nothing to do with gross overpopulation and a 7th Century religious mindset ruling the country?”
Population density of India in 2021: 423.88 persons per sq km.
Population density of the Netherlands in 2021: 413.41 persons per sq km.
Population density of Monaco in 2021: 26,338.26 persons per sq km
If all you are considering is population density, then Monaco is grossly overpopulated while India is comparable to the Netherlands. So the difference between India and Monaco must be due to something different, right?
Gross overpopulation has caused most of the problems of the world including climate change. Except for sociopathic dictators and sociopathic corporations of course.
Gross overpopulation has caused most of the problems of the world including climate change.
IF you believe that is the case, you must surely believe in depopulation. So… Who’re YOU gonna kill?
And off course the logic, unwelcome question: Why don’t you start with yourself?
Oddgeir
A desperate attempt to push two top down narratives on South Asians, Climate Change & Covid. Both founded on shaky science and funded by shady clubs. Stupid lock downs did damage the general economy, the rest is scare porn.
Neither the medical science of COVID-19 nor climate change is “shaky” science. If you believe that, you’re a crazy religious whack-job who has zero understanding of science, or so little understanding that the understanding you do possess is totally useless for all practical purposes.
WHY do ignorant people keep thinking they are so smart?? SOOO FRUSTRATING to keep having to teach dumb, lazy people things they ought to know because they are easy to look up. Oh, maybe not easy for dumb people. Yes, the Dunning-Kruger effect. Which dumb, ignorant people don’t understand because they’re not smart enough to understand it.
“Why do ignorant people keep thinking they are so smart??”
Isn’t it about time you ask yourself that question? It is clear from your ramblings that you have replaced the vacuum left by removing religion from your life with what you think is science. You are a true believer in climate change based on what? I’m old enough to remember when they told us global warming was going to doom us by the year 2000. Then it was 2010. Then it was 2020. Now it is 2030 or 2050 depending on which “scientist” you listen to. If that is not “shaky” science, then what is? It’s not that you don’t know anything. It’s just that what you know just isn’t so.
I agree, there is no “shaky” science in COVID-19 nor climate change
“Shaky” implies there is actually (misunderstood, misrepresented, take your pick) science here.
There is NOT. There is NO science here.
Oddgeir
What you appear completely unaware of is that this entire website is based on popular, unscientific opinion and lies and wishful thinking based on snowflake CONNEDservative’s fears of facing their fears, based the realities of climate change. WUWT is NOT fully based on science; it’s more of a commiserating site for those not smart enough or cute enough for handsome enough to get picked for homecoming queen and king, for one somewhat oblique metaphor. There’s a lot of sour grapes (bitch1ng) here by people who truly are not smart enough to grasp the science behind climate change. And in order to grasp the science fully you MUST become a climate scientist. ZERO readers here seem to have taken up that difficult challenge. Far easier to cheerlead, some cozy armchairs, losers and crazies little credentials or ability to do the science.
The few climate science posers/posters (since none of them have the credentials of Michael Mann or other giants in the field) who post here (like Willie Soon, Christopher Monckton, and Eric Worrall and others far more disreputable) take cherry-picked tidbits, mere morsels of phenomena, present it as grand climate-change-theory-toppling evidence and remake it into fake mountains instead of the molehills that evidence represents.
Readers here are generally undereducated conservatives who aren’t smart enough to know the difference between that BS and science. So go ahead, cheer on the idiots and losers! There is almost zero science, taking all relevant information available into account, that’s gone into every original post on this website, and the science that does exist has been cherry-picked and distorted to viewpoints that do not fit reality, nor the preponderance of evidence.
FACTS DO MATTER.
Also, have you looked at any of the scam ads that appear in this site? Only idiots are buying such products. Fear-mongering survivalists and such. Predatory sellers practically drooling over Heaven’s Gate-like conspiracy theorists ready to latch onto the next meteor to pull their souls into Valhalla or wherever they think they are going when they commit mass suicide with deadly Kool-Aid. Think you’re mentally, emotionally FAR from that group? NOPE. Anyone who believes in ANY religion is only a step or two away from such inchoate, ridiculous, unverifiable madness. Religions attract those afflicted with madness, gullible people, idiots, the emotionally desperate and unstable, and do-gooders — all of whom aren’t smart enough to see the selfish, greedy, money-grubbing evildoers ruling and within their group.
Try skepticalscience.com for a megadose of reality.
Guaranteed: YOU can’t disprove any of it and are too lazy to try.
Why would anyone put any effort into convincing a climate fiction science denier? YOU prove your case.
Calling on IPCC morons authorities is NOT evidence for Climate Fiction, calling on WHO is NOT evidence for Covid nonsense.
It is IMPOSSIBLE to prove any of this crap and that is why there has been established a CONSENSUS. Which off course, does not exist.
Oddgeir
” Covid & Climate Change Push Many Older Women into Prostitution ”
A very strange synergistic effect of Climate Change TM and Covid TM… rather similar to the effect of poverty…
Renewables force up energy prices and therefore add to poverty. So renewables must be guilty too.
A kernel of truth perhaps. Climate change has pushed multitudes of politicians and otherwise nondescript scientists into a form of prostitution.
Lipstick on a pig??
The scientists, perhaps.
The politicians, not at all. They have always been prostitutes.
And enriched them beyond what the value of their service deserves. At least with a prostitute ya get what ya pay for. And the whore doesn’t claim any noble purpose for their service. Except for the moment of delivery of whatever act.
The world’s oldest profession is perhaps the most honest and transparent. Imagine that.
12 or 13 women out of 1.35 billion population. Sounds like an epidemic. So are these people saying these are the first middle-aged prostitutes ever in India? I find that hard to believe.
Whoa! The effluent gushing forth from the Climatista sewer is getting more desperate and nonsensical by the day.
I guess I missed that proverb.
“He said 12-13 women in their late 30s and 40s from the Sundarbans area who were pushed into sex slavery have been rescued over the last four months.”
If they were pushed into sex slavery it was because of poverty. What happened when they were ‘rescued’? Have they now been provided with a living income? If not, they will assuredly go back into sex work. Is submitting to sex worse than starving?
I seem to remember feminists stating that marriage was just ‘sex slavery’, get married or starve. But that was in the past when a woman had no other option.
“I was thinking about this story and how it is part of a large genre of a specific type of logic.
Assert Climate Change causes poverty.
Poverty pretty much causes every human misery.
QED, Climate Change causes every human misery.
Charles”
All true. The part that the CAGW crowd misses (deliberately) is that the effective utilization of fossil fuels and free markets is by far the best way to alleviate the misery of poverty.
Therefore, there also needs to be a corollary to your truism.
Marxism and forced green energy policies cause poverty.
Poverty pretty much causes every human misery.
QED, the alarmists cause every human misery.
“In most cases, she said, agriculture has become unviable due to the increase in salinity of the water because of sea level rise”
It’s not sea level rise.
“Existing north-south rivers are remnants of old courses of the Ganga whose main flow has shifted eastwards to flow through Bangladesh.
The sources of all rivers in the western part of the Indian Sundarbans have progressively cut off and then silted, reducing the inflow of freshwater into the mangrove delta to local catchment drainage.
The rivers Matla, Bidyadhari and the Thakuran, the main rivers within the Indian Sundarbans, have no all year-round connection with their original mother streams becoming tidal dominated.
The reduction of freshwater inflow has reduced the conveyance capacity of the rivers, enabling tidal pumping of sedimentation from the Bay of Bengal, increasing river bed elevation, and increasing salinity intrusion.” – Dr. Dipankar Saha
“In most cases, she said, agriculture has become unviable due to the increase in salinity of the water because of sea level rise”
Wouldn’t “sea level rise” decrease the salinity?
There is not journalistic integrity anymore. Any event that might be weather related is now due to climate change, and every anecdote of someone falling into hard times or abuse is considered a valid “statistic” of adverse change in the absence of any really measured change.
True. The headline could have easily have been written to say how Covid has saved loads of young women from prostitution in India.
“It was difficult to find minor girls during the lockdown as they were locked in their homes so traffickers moved their attention to older women who were in need of money to keep the sex trade going.”
Per Wikipedia:
This is not an area that could ever support significant farming. We have places like that all over the world, tropical and subtropical major river deltas cris-crossed with channels, bayous, mangrove forests, and such. In places like that, subsistence living has always, since the dawn of human agriculture, been dominated by sea food, not crop growing.
To the extent there is erosion, that also has been a forever thing unrelated to claimed “global warming”. The littorals have always been places where there is constant erosion and siltation, storms come and go and erode here, displace the silt to somewhere else (a barrier island, a sandspit, a submerged reef, whatever).
Blaming prostitution on global warming is like blaming crime waves on video games, once a popular pastime here a few decades ago. It makes a convenient scapegoat for some, but it is nonsense just the same.
Ridiculous tosh! Look, Bangladesh is GROWING in area, despite sea level rise. CO2 is increasing crop yields, reducing poverty, and COVID is entirely unrelated! It was created in a lab by scientists plying around with stuff they shouldnt mess with.
Throwing ‘Climate Change’ in there just ridicules the whole thing!
Meanwhile…..
A shrinking fraction of the world’s major crops goes to feed the hungry, with more used for nonfood purposes (vnexplorer.net)
Climate change: mass political congruities (“=”) are first-order forcings of catastrophic anthropogenic social progress. A wicked solution for social, redistributive, clinical, and fair weather causes. A Twilight faith to tamp down the cognitive dissonance. Serenity NOW, insanity in progress. That said, keep women appointed, available, and taxable.
Perhaps the sex slavers simply pick whoever is easiest to victimize, regardless of the weather?
Cheap energy and the resulting economic prosperity is what has liberated women from servitude. Destroying economies will only reverse this trend.
These climate change clowns are a constant non-stop source of hilarity and mockery! I guess the sad part is that our western governments are funding the clown show.
Media whores commenting on prostitution. Gotta love it.
Just one simple question: Are “Covid and climate change” gender biased, or do they also push many older men into prostitution?
Since when ius prostitution misery? Hey, bring it on! /humour
in todays world i see science being MURDERED by liars with an agenda of total control……
Which was it, 12 or 13? Or, maybe 12.5!