365 Days of Climate Awareness 308 – Bangladesh and Climate Change

“Ground zero for climate change,” as Bangladesh is known, is imminently vulnerable to the rising ocean. 80% of the country is less than 5 m/16 ft above sea level, putting a large amount of it at risk now for catastrophic flooding, but worse, for permanent submergence beneath the risen ocean. Bangladesh might be the world’s clearest case of climate injustice, where one nation is suffering severe effects of the actions of others. As nature knows no borders, this is frequently the case for a number of issues. In the 1980’s, acid rain resulting in large part from American factories emitting sulfur dioxide, SO₂, into the atmosphere devastated Germany’s Black Forest among other things, both natural and manmade.

Progressive flooding scenarios.

Other clear cases include the coral islands of the Pacific like the Maldives and Solomons, combined population 1.1 million, facing extinction from sea level rise. Bangladesh’s population is 163 million, the majority of whom live in the low-lying Ganges delta. Four separate elements are combining there into a probable humanitarian disaster: the rising ocean; increasing river flooding; the low-lying delta region; and a growing, densely clustered population without the economic means to protect themselves. In addition to inundating existing land, a rising ocean will bring saline water farther inland, making much existing farmland useless, even if it isn’t underwater. Under the IPCC’s median (RCP 2.6) model, sea level rise is predicted to increase along the coast of Bangladesh 25 cm/10 in by 2050, and by 50 cm/20 in by 2100.

North Indian Ocean sea level rise, 2004-2014.

Global warming is amplifying the water cycle, increasing evaporation, moisture content of the atmosphere, and precipitation all over the world. Generally this has translated into wet areas becoming wetter, and dry areas drier. The rising temperatures mean that the character of precipitation—increasingly rain instead of snow, except for persistently cold regions like the poles. And the growing energy level of the warmed atmosphere in general is leading toward more violent weather systems, with an increasing tendency toward violent downpours, not steady rainfall. This will happen in India, as the monsoon becomes more intense and at times violent. The majority of the water falling in the Himalaya region will be carried to Bangladesh, as 75% of the Himalaya’s southern face drains into the eastward Ganges and Brahmaputra rivers.

Mustard crop, Sirajganj.

Recent studies have predicted that by 2050 anywhere from 1.3 to 20 million Bangladeshis will be likely to emigrate from their southern delta homes. This is within the larger scene of more than 600 million people in coastal zones and island worldwide currently at risk from higher sea level. Climate migration, which we have seen in smaller, easier-to-deny pulses like the waves in recent years from northern Central America into the United States. Like water wars in the Mideast and Africa, large-scale migrations away from the devastation of climate change is likely to become real.

Bangladeshi delta village.

Tomorrow: introduction to China.

Be brave, and be well.