Bangladesh's Hungry Feel Heat Of Climate Change

BangladeshA History of Bangladesh: Politics, Economic and Civil Society is a very flat, low-lying country, lying largely on a river delta fed by three great rivers, the Ganges, Brahmaputra and Meghna. In all, there are 230 rivers, large and small, criss-crossing the country. With an area of 147,570 km2
 

This population density, as well as Bangladesh’s poverty, and its unique vulnerability to climate related disasters, such as floods, sea-level rise droughts and cyclones, all mean that Bangladesh will be hit hard by the effects of climate change. What’s worse, of course, is that although Bangladesh will suffer earliest and most from climate change, it has had little to do with causing the problem.

Water could be the most crucial of climate change issues facing Bangladesh over the coming decades. Bangladesh looks set to be swamped on all sides, with the Inter-government Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) predicting increased flooding throughout the country due to glacier melt and more intense monsoons, as well as increased swamping of southern and western coastal areas due to sea level rises (IPCC 2007:10). Added to this, many parts of the country are predicted to experience further hardship through increased likelihood of drought (IPCC 2007:11) outside of the monsoon season.

These changes are already being felt by the rural poor

The Sundarbans nature reserve in Bangladesh's south-west is one of the last untouched places on Earth - and home to the largest population of tigers left in the wild. But the trees in the Sundarbans have suddenly started dying. And not just that: they have started dying in a way nobody has seen before, from the top down.

Nobody is sure what the cause is, but the country's leading scientists think the trees are dying because, in recent years, the water has turned from fresh to salty. The Sundarbans is a massive mangrove swamp, and the sea has begun encroaching. What we are seeing may be one of the first casualties of rising sea levels caused by global warming. "Nobody can say for sure whether it is climate change because there haven't been proper in-depth studies," says Professor Ainun Nishat, one of the country's leading environmentalists, and one of those involved in the UN's recent climate change report. "But this is the sort of effect rising sea levels will have on Bangladesh. We are fighting climate change on the front line. But the battle has to be integrated across all countries."