Delay could mean death for climate migrants

Rokeya Sultana, a 48-year-old mother of three, left Jadavpur village in Satkhira a couple of years ago due to a lack of fresh drinking water there.

Her husband died of heart disease due to drinking salt water and salinity in agricultural fields, and the family had to sell their lands to bear the medical cost.

For the sake of the future of her children, Rokeya moved to capital Dhaka, nearly 330km away from her homeland. “We moved to Dhaka as we thought delay meant death,” she told Dhaka Tribune.

Now she earns her living by hawking fish with her elder daughter on a tertiary street in the Moghbazar area and lives in a narrow shed at Begunbari slum, 1km away.

Rokeya Sultana Dhaka Tribune

There are millions others like Rokeya in Bangladesh and the number could increase if the predictions of the sea level rising and other adverse impacts of climate change come true.

Salinity has been invading freshwater aquifers in many Southwestern coastal villages as climate change leads to rising sea levels.

Drinking salt water is one of the major causes of some severe health complications, including diarrhoea, hypertension, high blood pressure and heart disease, while excessive salinity in soil makes it nigh impossible to grow anything.

People affected by salinity are forced to leave their ancestral homes, making urban slums more and more crowded and unlivable.

Despite Bangladesh’s contribution to global CO2 emission being only 0.47%, it is the seventh most climate-vulnerable country.

How salinity triggers migration

Jadavpur, a coastal village in Satkhira’s Shyamnagar upazila, the birthplace of Rokeya, has been heavily affected by salinity encroachment. 

Salinity intrusion triggered the migration of more than 7,000 people of this village from 2011 to 2021 due to the rising sea level badly affecting vast stretches of arable land.

According to the agriculture ministry, Debhata and Kalaroa upazilas of Satkhira, Mongla, Morrelganj and Rampal upazilas of Bagerhat, Daulatpur upazila of Kushtia, and Dakop and Digholia upazilas of Khulna are the ones most affected by the rising sea level as it has made lands barren.

In the coastal districts of Khulna and Bagerhat, 148,000 and 131,000 hectares of land have been affected by salinity. Of which, 79,000 hectares in Khulna and 62,000 hectares in Bagerhat have turned completely barren.

Storms and cyclones also accelerate salinity encroachment into agricultural land as well as ponds, the only source of drinking water in many villages.

Ayesha Akhter and her husband Matin Miya came to Dhaka from Daulatpur last year. They arrived in Dhaka with nothing but the clothes on their backs. They initially took shelter on a footpath but have gradually managed to put food on the table.

Ayesha Akhter Dhaka Tribune

At 50, Ayesha is now a daily wage earner. She carries over 20-30kg of sand or bricks on her head to construction sites.

“I do not get hired every day, but I earn Tk300 per day if I am. But it is not enough to survive as we have three children, all of whom are unemployed,” Ayesha said.

Matin Miya, who sells vegetables in Rampura, said: “We have an acre of agricultural land, but crop production has gone down drastically due to salinity.”

Matin and Ayesha said their daughters have started getting rashes and blotches on their skin and they fear it may be due to the salt water.

How it affects health

Increasing salinity has become a vital issue for people’s health in the coastal regions.

“It is scientifically proven that different kinds of skin diseases may be caused by drinking salt water,” said Dr Saad Ahmed of Dhaka Medical College Hospital (DMCH).

“Human kidneys can only make urine that is less salty than salt water. To get rid of all the excess salt taken in by drinking salt water, one has to urinate more than one has drunk. Eventually they die of dehydration even as they become thirstier,” he explained.

According to a study, titled “Impacts of Salinity Intrusion in Community Health in Bangladesh”, saline water is an important factor for hypertension or high blood pressure in the coastal areas. Drinking water sodium (DWS) can also lead women— especially pregnant women—to an increased risk of preeclampsia, hypertension, as well as infant mortality.

Dr Mashura Shammi of the Department of Environmental Sciences of Jahangirnagar University, who led the research, said: “Maternal and child mortality rates in coastal villages is comparatively high because of a lack of drinking water.”

According to the Unicef’s Global Climate Risk Index 2021, Bangladesh is the 15th most at-risk nation for children.

Negative population growth in coastal villages

According to Bangladesh's latest population census in 2011, the average population growth rate was 1.47, which 10 years before was 1.58.

But in Khulna it was -0.25 and in Bagerhat -0.47, the two districts most affected by salinity as shown by the negative population growth rates.

Like these two, population growth rates in Bangladesh’s coastal belt districts have also fallen drastically. 

Salinity negatively affects crop production Dhaka Tribune

Subsequently, slums have become more populated as people dependent on agriculture get displaced from the coastal areas.

Controlling population growth was one of the key achievements between 2001 and 2011, but there is no reason to think the negative growth rates in these districts indicate greater success in birth control.

Hydrology expert Prof Mohammed Abed Hossain said: “The declining population growth rate in the coastal belt does not mean that the birth rate has been low. Internal migration to towns may be the leading cause as people have been severely affected by the gradual increase in salinity.”

Burden on urban slums

According to the Census of Slum Areas and Floating Population 2014, there was a 77% rise in the number of slum households in the country in the 17 years from 1997 to 2014. During the same period, the number of slums increased by a staggering 366%.

Eminent urban planner and slum researcher Prof Akhter Mahmud said: “Urban population growth is triggered by some of the coastal districts, such as Khulna, Satkhira and Bagerhat, gradually becoming unlivable because of a lack of fresh water. Therefore, urban slums become overburdened and the standard of living becomes low despite the implementation of many projects aimed at improving shelter and sanitation.”

If we cannot control such migration, Dhaka will become a dead city as the coastal zone of Bangladesh covers 32% of the country and is home to nearly 35 million people, he said.

“We are struggling to make Dhaka comfortable for all as population growth is very high in the city. We cannot manage the city properly due to the overflow,” said Dhaka North City Corporation Mayor Atiqul Islam.

“These people are mostly climate migrants moving to Dhaka in search of livelihood,” he added.

According to the latest report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), half of the world’s population is already vulnerable to increasingly dangerous impacts of climate change. Besides, Bangladesh is identified as being at specific risk from climate change due to its exposure to sea level rise and extreme events like salinity intrusion and tidal surge.

“Internal displacement due to climate change is one of the biggest problems of the country now. A vast vulnerable group of people are affected and are expecting an immediate solution,” said Foreign Minister Dr AK Abdul Momen.

“All the actions including the Paris Agreement and Sendai Framework must be fully implemented to address the root causes of climate-induced migration and displacement,” he added.

He also urged the major polluters and emitters across the world to meet the mitigation target swiftly.