Climate Refugees in Bangladesh
Climate refugees are happening all around the world. However, Bangladesh is the one country that is badly impacted. From Basar’s study, the total land area of Bangladesh is 147,570 sq.kh and the population is 15 million people. Basar also mentioned that Bangladesh, also known as the Land of Rivers due to having more than 700 rivers causing an increased risk for climate change difficulties.
Bangladesh being the most impacted country due to the strong sea level rises, cyclones, and floods, and 80% of Bangladesh is consist of floodplains. The melting of the Himalayas Mountain from the North, caused by the increased temperature, is another higher risk for sea level rises and floods. From the runoffs inland and the massive cyclones around the Southern and coastal of Bangladesh is bringing salt into the drinking water and contaminating rivers and ground waters.
Salty water is known as salinity water. High level of salinity comes from the intense storm with the wind, which blows seawater into the nearby land. During the monsoon season, there is less salt in the drinking water due to heavy rainfall. Cyclones occur between October to November and March to April annually. Sea level rises and salinity water caused drinking water and food security.¹ The continually sea level rises and the high degree of salinity level are pushing Bangladeshis lives more vulnerable than before.“Small ponds, canals, wells and tube wells are now filled by salty sea water, which makes all the water sources unusable.”
Drink salty water is not healthy, and it comes with several health problems, such as cholera, diarrhea, kidney failure and skin diseases.² About 4 million people and many species living around the world’s greatest mangrove forest and Suburban areas are the most affected. 60% of the Suburban areas are mostly a flat coastal land. Salty water damages crops, which affect their quality and quantity of productivity. Due to this lack of food and water sources for Bangladesh people to get for their basic needs. The rivers in Bangladesh lost its qualities due to man-made changes in industrial pollution and from household waste that are being dumped into the rivers.
The Bangladesh’s government put a little effort to help restore Bangladesh back to normal. It is due to the limitations on how to prevent their people from relocating because of the needs for fresh drinking and usable water. The government, however, did manage to establish clean potable water storage tanks. What is positive about the storage tanks is that there is clean drinking water available. The downside is that it is not enough for tanks available for the entire population, and the locations of the tanks are a distance from most citizens. Bangladesh's’ climate refugees are relocated up north to Dhaka, India, urban areas, and some are living in slums.
Bangladesh’s government is currently trying to get other countries to accept their climate refugees. The government is also coming up with a solution for salinity water. Desalination is a method that will be used to remove salt and other minerals to produce potable water from the salt water."Desalination process could be one of the alternatives for Bangladesh to fight against present and future water crisis."
Desalination works best along the coastline; it will reduce the dependency on water from the ground.³ However, desalination is not an Eco-friendly solution. It requires an enormous amount of energy, and the energy depends on oil, coal, gas or non-renewable sources. Bangladesh does not have the proper investment for desalination, but Bangladesh was able to invest in a new model by Public Private Partnership or Build, Operate and Transfer.
These two models, water storage, and water desalination are made from renewable sources of energy, such as solar, air or tidal power, which would minimize the cost and still perform a sustainable work.
Bangladesh should continue to find alternative solutions to the water crisis and to produce fresh water so that people will not have to relocate. It will help bring relief to the vulnerable communities. For Bangladesh to be able to adapt to climate changes, they would have to come up with prevention ahead of time to be able to prevent future complications. Another reason to be prepared because wealthy countries are reluctant to accept climate refugees."They said that water has become the most precious commodity of their daily life."
1. Farjana Jahan and Kazi S.M. Khasrul Alam Quddusi, “Climate Change and Bangladesh: Geographical and Socio-economic Impacts,” Dhaulagiri Journal of Sociology and Anthropology 7, (2013): 113-132. Print article.
2. Saleemul Huq, Syed Iqbal Ali and A. Atiq Rahman, "Sea-Level Rise and Bangladesh: A Preliminary Analysis" Journal of Coastal Research 14, (1995): 44-53.
3. Asiful Basar,“Water Security in Coastal Region of Bangladesh: Would Desalination be a Solution to the Vulnerable Communities of the Sundarbans?” Bangladesh e-Journal of Sociology 9, (2012): 31-39.
