Khulna, Bangladesh
Bangladesh, home to 150 million, is the seventh most populous country in the world, although it’s only about the size of Louisiana. Most of Bangladesh is less than 40 feet above sea level. For many months each year more than ten percent of the country’s surface area is water. In 1988, and again in 1998, more than half of the country was flooded. With sea level expected to rise up to three feet in this century, an additional ten to twenty percent of Bangladesh could be permanently lost, displacing millions of people and destroying farmlands and fresh water supplies.
Ainun Nishat, Bangladesh’s representative to the International Union for Conservation of Nature, calls his country, where droughts, heat waves and floods are common, “nature’s laboratory on natural disaster.” Nonetheless, he complains that foreign non-governmental organizations over-emphasize the hazards of the slow and steady climb of sea level as a possible catalyst to future refugees and chaos. “I believe that’s Western agenda,” he says, “not Bangladesh’s agenda.” Nishat says the world has underestimated how resilient his country will be in the face of adversity, such as the natural disasters its people have faced for millennia. He says his country will develop the necessary infrastructure to protect its people from the slow but inexorable rise of the sea.
Experts say it will take a concerted effort and billions upon billions of dollars for Bangladesh to adapt to the new conditions being brought by global warming. Among the ideas being discussed include creating and introducing new crops like rice bred to withstand saltier water. One researcher thinks floating gardens made of packed water hyacinths might help. An architect in Dhaka is building a fleet school boats. Some people are suggesting ways to capture sediment flowing through the Bengal Delta before it goes out to sea and using it to counter the effects of rising water.
Related Links
Visit related Heat of the Moment pages, including The Sunderbans, India; Limpopo Province, South Africa; Vilankulos, Mozambique and Paris, France
PHOTO GALLERY OF BANGLADESH
- View Dan's Photographs of Khulna, Bangladesh
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Khulna, like other Bangladeshi cities, is densely packed and traffic-clogged. Sometimes the fastest form of transport is by bicycle rickshaw. -
Boats of all sizes and shapes are used for transport and commerce throughout the waterlogged Bengal Delta. -
A rice paddy separated from a river by an embankment. The river is above the level of the paddy, making it impossible for farmers to drain the paddy. -
A rice paddy, also used for farming fish, on the outskirts of Khulna, the third largest city of Bangladesh. The little house in the back is for farmers to guard their crop. -
Shafiqul Islam, an activist, teacher and former local politician. Islam is an advocate of Tidal River Management, whereby dikes are selectively cut to rejuvenate rice paddies with river sediment. The technique was developed to improve the productivity of paddies, but Islam says it could help the country to counter the impacts of sea level rise. -
Shobinah Bishhonos (on left) and fellow farmer Afsar Golder. Bishhonos joined with about 20,000 other peasants in 1997 to watch a group of men defy the government and cut an embankment, restoring the productivity of rice paddies in the region. “There were too many people for the authorities to do anything,” he says. -
Sheikh Nural Ala, an official with Bangladesh’s Water Development Board, agrees that selective cutting of dikes in Bangladesh could help to save people from rising seas, though other techniques will be needed as well. -
Atiq Rahman, director of the Bangladesh Center for Advanced Studies, an environmental think-tank, says food security is his country’s largest concern. Bangladesh already has difficulty feeding its people. At its current rate of growth, the population will double by mid century. But global warming could reduce agricultural production. -
A floating garden made from compacted water hyacinth. This garden, near the city of Barisal, in southwestern Bangladesh, is an indigenous technique for growing vegetable seedlings. Some people want to introduce the method more broadly as a way to combat higher seas. -
Floating gardens are planted with small seed balls packed with soil and wrapped in stringy plants. -
Professor M. Al Amin, at Chittigong University, in the city of Chittigong, is studying how well different mangrove species withstand conditions expected in the future. He wants to be able to recommend which trees should be planted to do best under the conditions that will exist in 2050 and 2100, when saplings planted today are mature.
