Bangladeshi Delta Village Has Literally Nothing Left - No Water, Forests Cut Down, Arable Land Gone

[hatrack]

NOAKHALI, Bangladesh, Nov 10 , 2011 (IPS) - Char Nongolia village is a basket case when it comes to climate change impacts such as increasing salinity, frequent cyclones, tidal surges, erratic rainfall and extended droughts. Yet, the 40,000 people of this village, sitting on a delta that drains the sub-continent’s major river systems, have endured the creeping devastation of their homeland in southeastern Bangaldesh with no help from anywhere.

There is no drinking water supply, no land to grow food crops on, no healthcare facility, no roads, no jobs and absolutely no sign of any security or authority. Any natural protection afforded by forests has long ago been stripped away. "Today we have nothing left. Even the last piece of land we had was lost to river erosion," said Salma Khatun, 72, narrating at a climate hearing for women in this village, late October, how her family steadily lost its farming lands to erosion.

"We moved to this place from nearby Hatiya island about nine years ago after we lost our ancestral home to river erosion. After settling here the same disaster hit us five more times," said Arzu Begum, 35. Arzu and her husband Anwar Hossain and their extended family of ten lost all their belongings to river erosion and floods and now live in a flimsy bamboo hut perched on the river bank.

Khadiza Akhtar, 24, moved with her husband to Char Nongolia five years ago, hoping to build their lives here. But, last year’s flood and the incessant river erosion washed away all her dreams. "We had a decent living with steady earnings from selling milk," said Akhtar. "We had three dairy cattle and about four dozen ducks. All of them disappeared when the floods inundated our village."

EDIT

http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=105786

[msongs]

1. did the forests just disappear by magic? Time to move...again nt

[txlibdem]

2. Climate scientists predict that Bangladesh will lose 50% of its farmland by 2100

At what point do the people of that region lose the ability to "just move again?"

[hatrack]

6. It's around the point at which they encounter the barbed wire & guard towers at the Indian frontier

. . .

[kristopher]

3. River delta islands are extremely unstable land formations at best...

It isn't strange for them to appear one day and be gone the next. They shouldn't have been allowed to inhabit the place. It's one thing to commute in and use it for cropland or grazing, but it is a fools errand to build on it and expect it to be permanent.

[jwirr]

4. Is there any high ground in Bangladesh? This seems to be even

more hopeless than the Horn of Africa. Has anyone started working on where they are going to go after they lose more land?

[Nihil]

5. Hint: 40,000 down - 5,999,960,000 to go. (n/t)

:shrug:

[Systematic Chaos]

7. What about the other billion?

We do have seven now, you know.

[Nihil]

8. That's the theoretically sustainable one.

i.e., six out of the seven aren't.

:shrug: