Cyclone Aila’s death toll is misleading

According to the United Nations, some 262 million people were affected by natural disasters annually between 2000 and 2004, over 98 per cent of them in the developing world, writes Mahtab Haider*

NewAge, May 29, 2009

EVEN as the death toll from this week’s cyclone Aila inches upwards as communications are restored in affected areas, it is obvious that the total number of deaths will not be nearly a tenth of the numbers killed in cyclone Sidr in 2007. And yet, the devastation that Aila has caused, a month after cyclone Bijli tore through coastal villages and a year and a half since the devastation of cyclone Sidr, brings home an important lesson: perceiving the ferocity of cyclones by their death toll can be tremendously misleading when a community’s coping capacity is worn thin, as they are repeatedly buffeted by extreme natural events.
   

The reality is, cyclone Aila has not had a fraction of the international media coverage that cyclone Sidr had received even though for hundreds of thousands of families in the coastal zone, this week may well be the tipping point that will see them driven to penury or astronomical debt in trying to recover from what was deemed to be a moderate cyclone. The reasons are simple. Coastal communities are no strangers to cyclones. They have lived with them for centuries and they have an organic ability to bounce back after an extreme weather event, with the help of savings, enterprise, and resilience. The problem is: the frequency and intensity of tropical cyclones is gradually on the rise, largely as a result of man-made global warming and rising sea surface temperatures, wearing down the organic coping capacities of these communities, and seeing them slip deeper and deeper into poverty.
   

Over the past three years, rising food costs have taken their toll on marginal and small farming families across Bangladesh, their economic misery compounded by two back-to-back floods in 2007 and cyclone Sidr to end the year with another massive destruction of standing crops. These manifold crises have often compelled farming families either to sell of their small landholdings or their farming implements to survive – along with the attendant realities of pulling children out of schools and sending them to work as agricultural labour or in the cities. What all this means is that these hundreds of thousands of families have suffered an economic setback that may take more than two generations to recover from – as it is only their children’s children who might have an opportunity to go back to school. The economic and social consequence of this series of back-to-back events is that many of the development goals that governments, not just in Bangladesh, but across the world have set for themselves, including the Millennium Development Goals, will be confronted with dead ends as changing weather patterns undo much of the good that development policies and practices are achieving.
   

Bangladesh, though it shares this plight with many other countries, faces a tremendous development challenge in the decades to come. A study of global climate change risk hotspots by the aid agency CARE reveals that we face some of the highest levels of risk in terms of a rising incidence of floods, droughts as well as cyclones. While scientists refuse to attribute any particular weather event to climate change – it is scientifically sound that the trends in changing weather patterns are not only confirming the reality of man-made climate change but also indicating that patterns are changing at a speed and with greater severity than predicted. According to last year’s annual UN Human Development Report, ‘sea levels could rise rapidly with accelerated ice sheet disintegration. Global temperature increases of 3–4°C could result in 330 million people being permanently or temporarily displaced through flooding.’ Over 70 million these displaced are predicted to be in Bangladesh alone.
   

For Bangladesh, one of the biggest casualties of climate change is going to be agriculture and food security. As armies of small farmers find it increasingly difficult to cope with unpredictable weather patterns and failing crops, they will often be compelled to sell their landholdings, destroying the foundations of traditional food security in the rural economy. In aggregate too, countries like Bangladesh will produce less and less of its own food – with the small farmer who constitutes the backbone of food production on the retreat, plunging those millions of families that will not have the means of buying imported staples into deeper malnutrition. According to the UNHDR, the additional ranks of the malnourished could rise by 600 million by the year 2080. Side by side, drought affected areas in Sub-Saharan Africa, for example, could rise between 60-90 million hectares at a cost of over $26 billion, which is more than the total current aid that goes to the region. As if that were not enough, seven of Asia’s great rivers will initially experience rising water levels resulting in floods as a result of glacial in the Himalayan range, before they start drying up – causing unimaginable devastation in the deltas they flow through.
   

The reality is that the worst excesses of this fallout from global warming and climate change will be felt in some of the poorest regions of the world, to the very people who are far removed from the industrial and consumption excesses that are responsible for greenhouse gases and unsustainable energy use. According to the UN, some 262 million people were affected by natural disasters annually between 2000 and 2004, over 98 per cent of them in the developing world. In the countries of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development on in 1,500 people were affected by natural disasters. In the developing world the comparable statistic was 1 in 19. It is for these reasons that the heads of state meeting in Copenhagen later this year to negotiate a successor treaty to the Kyoto Protocol must act decisively and with the political will necessary to avert an mitigate and adapt to a disaster of global proportions.


*Mahtab Haider writes for NewAge, a leading english daily in Dhaka. 

E-mail: mahtabhaider@gmail.com

Effective cyclone evacuation measures save countless lives

Source: IRIN

DHAKA, 27 May 2009 (IRIN) – Relief efforts for victims of Cyclone Aila in Bangladesh are continuing, the country’s Disaster Management Bureau (DMB) says, but effective early warning systems and evacuation measures seem to have saved countless lives.

Map: IFRC

“The initial requirement is food, clothing, shelter and safe drinking water. We are doing our best to ensure that the affected people receive those as soon as possible,” DMB head Mohammad Farhad Uddin told IRIN on 27 May.

The government is delivering clothing, water purification tablets, as well as food assistance to those affected, while the Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS) has dispatched some 700 medical teams to the field.

With technical support from the World Health Organization (WHO), the DGHS will also undertake a rapid needs assessment to assess the healthcare situation on the ground.

A large number of international agencies and NGOs on the ground are also working with the government.

British-based charity Muslim Aid has dispatched water purification units and half a million water purification tablets to Bagerhat District, as well as teams to Pirojpur, Patuakhali and Satkhira with food and clothing.

With winds of up to 90km per hour, Aila swept across eastern India and southern Bangladesh on 25 May, affecting millions and leaving more than 150 dead, mostly in low-lying Bangladesh.

In Bangladesh alone, the category one storm affected more than three million people and left 81 confirmed dead, with more than 800 people injured, according to the latest DMB information.

Fourteen of the country’s 64 districts – all of them coastal – were affected, Satkhira being hardest hit with at least 25 deaths.

But with information still coming in and communications only now being restored, many believe the death toll could rise. According to local media reports, over 500 people are missing, many believed to be fishermen at sea when the cyclone struck.

Mass evacuation

Some 600,000 people were evacuated to cyclone shelters prior to the cyclone – a significant factor in minimising the loss of life.

Many of those in the shelters whose homes were not destroyed are reportedly now returning home. At the same time, thousands more remain stranded in their villages due to flooding.

According to the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC), low-lying areas, offshore islands and ‘chars’ [river islands] were inundated by storm surges 2-3 metres above normal tides, destroying homes, livelihoods, livestock and displacing thousands of families.

Many areas of coastal Patuakhali and Barguna districts disappeared under roughly 2.5 metres of tidal water. Some 80 percent of Barasal District was flooded.

Crops lost, damaged

More than 240,000 mostly thatched homes were damaged or destroyed, while about 121,400 hectares of crops were lost or damaged, the DMB reported on 26 May.

Other losses include about 60,000 livestock; the complete or partial destruction of nearly 850 educational institutions; 2,414km of roads; and 509km of flood embankments.

At a press conference on 26 May, Minister of Food and Disaster Management Muhammad Abdur Razzaque announced that the army, coast guards and the navy had been mobilised for relief operations. Thousands of volunteers of the Cyclone Preparedness Programme (CPP) of the Bangladesh Red Crescent Society have also been deployed.

Second cyclone this year

Aila is the second tropical cyclone to strike Bangladesh this year. On 17 April, Cyclone Bijli lashed the country’s southeastern coastal region, killing five people.

According to the US Agency for International Development (USAID), tropical cyclones occur at the rate of 1.3 a year in Bangladesh, resulting in numerous casualties and significant economic losses.

The last major cyclone to hit Bangladesh was Cyclone Sidr in November 2007, which left around 3,500 dead.

Tropical cyclones in 1970 and 1991 killed around 500,000 and 138,000 people, respectively. In recent years, efficient early warning systems and preparedness measures have significantly reduced the number of lives lost, say experts.

© IRIN. All rights reserved.

 

Saline-tolerant variety can help boost rice production

Says minister

The Daily Star, April 23, 2009. Dhaka

Cultivation of BR-47, a saline-tolerant rice variety, in the southern coastal region could bring about significant changes in rice production, Food and Disaster Management Minister Dr Abdur Razzaque said yesterday.

“There are around 2.8 million hectares of agricultural land in the coastal districts. If high yielding varieties like BR-47 are developed, there could be a dramatic change in rice production,” he said.

The minister was speaking as the chief guest at the closing ceremony of a two-day seminar titled ‘Stress Tolerance Rice for Poor Farmers in Africa and South Asia (STRASA)’, at the Bangladesh Rice Research Institute (BRRI) in Gazipur.

Farmers have already started cultivating the BR-47 variety in limited scale, which has shown huge success, he said at the seminar organised by BRRI.

“You cannot increase the yield of the existing varieties to a great extent. Therefore, development of stress-tolerant varieties, which can tolerate drought or submergence, is important,” said the minister.

The developed countries need to invest more in advance agriculture research, he noted.

BRRI is on the way to develop submergence-tolerant and drought-tolerant varieties and will be able to release those in near future, said BRRI Director General Dr Firoze Shah Sikder.

Chairing the closing session, Bangladesh Agriculture University Vice Chancellor Dr Abdus Sattar Mondal said it is necessary to seriously look into the nutritional standards and livelihoods.

Referring to the recent fall of rice prices, Mondal said the government must provide incentives to farmers to maintain better rice production.

International Rice Research Institute Program Leader Dr David Mackill, Liaison Scientist for Bangladesh Dr MA Hamid Miah and STRASA South Asian Regional Project Coordinator Dr Uma Shankar Singh also spoke.

Sidr, one year on

NewAge, November

Could an elected government of the Awami League or the Bangladesh Nationalist Party – as venal as their power politics may be – have ignored the millions of voters of the constituencies along the coast, allowing the opposition to ratchet up discontent, being routinely embarrassed by the media, to leave their Sidr rehabilitation promises unfulfilled a year after the disaster? Perhaps, but they would be punished for it at the ballots, writes Mahtab Haider*

THIS Sunday, it will be one year since cyclone Sidr. On the night of November 15 last year a 12-feet high tidal wave and winds of up to 240km/hour had ripped through the coast of Bangladesh killing more than 3,000 people and leaving millions homeless. One year on, the plight of many of those who survived is as heartrending as the images from the early days of that disaster, when millions were living in temporary shelters, with nothing to eat, and no savings or belongings left to start building their lives again.

According to the UK-based aid agency Oxfam, more than a million survivors who lost their homes and family members to Sidr still remain homeless a year on, their desperate plight an indictment of the often hollow pledges made by the government and the aid agencies. Although a flurry of foreign governments and aid agencies had pledged funds to rebuild homes for the Sidr survivors in the wake of the disaster, only about a quarter of the 78,000 homes that were pledged have been rebuilt to be more resilient for future cyclones.

According to Oxfam, ‘Another 276,000 families have received no reconstruction help and are living in unsafe shelters, built from polythene sheets and salvaged materials. Additionally, landless families living on government-owned land, or Khas areas, are excluded from receiving any government shelter support because they have no official land titles.’ In a documentary on the desperate plight of the Sidr survivors that the aid agency released on Thursday, Mussamat Halima from Barguna describes the plight she shares with many others now living in temporary shelters: ‘People who have land deeds were given houses and those who don’t were not. They had to make do with plastic sheeting they received after the disaster. The sheets are now torn; people are living with ripped pieces of sheeting and broken tin.’

They have braved the monsoon over the past months, but the prospect of a winter without enough warm clothes or a roofed house could be more than many infants and children will be able to survive. The millions of families on the coast make their living from homestead farming and as agriculture workers for other landowners. While the former typically meets food needs, families rely on the money that their men earn in the planting and harvest season by working on larger farms for other basic goods. Sidr’s widespread agricultural damage has made it hard to find work locally, and insecure houses make adults reluctant to seek work far away, lest their children be harmed or their land illegally occupied.

Six months ago, when I reported out of the Sidr-affected area, the situation had been much the same, with local bureaucrats saying that ‘quite enough’ aid had been given to the survivors and they were now milking their misfortune for more money from the aid agencies – a view that is not uncommon among the ruling elite in Bangladesh. Within the first six months, the local administrations and the military-controlled interim government in Dhaka were yet to complete the official formalities for massive amounts of aid pledged by the Indian government as well as the $130 million pledged by an anonymous donor for the Sidr rehabilitation and recovery. Another six months on, the story remains the same.

While it is often true of aid agencies that they will flock into disaster zones along with the international TV networks and in many cases trickle out as the disaster loses its potency to shock the world, rarely do governments neglect a disaster of this scale if only because of the price they pay for such neglect at the next ballots. A great deal has been written in the past on how democracy plays an indispensable role in not only acting as an early warning system against humanitarian disasters, but also how opposition groups and media become the eyes and ears that can take governments to task for failing or faltering in disaster response.

In fact, some of the clearest and most potent examples of how the lack of democracy can make communities more vulnerable to natural disasters are the Bhola cyclone of erstwhile East Pakistan in 1970, and cyclone Nargis – which caused widespread death and devastation in Myanmar earlier this year. In both cases, the military junta ruling the country, military strongman Yahya Khan in Pakistan’s case in 1970 and General Than Shwe and his cabal in Myanmar, first neglected to inform or evacuate communities in the path of a powerful cyclone, and afterwards – whether driven by the characteristic bravado and machismo of military governments across the world – or because of a simple lack of accountability, failed to launch an aid effort commensurate with the disaster at hand.

It was on November 12, 1970 that the Bhola cyclone made landfall in the erstwhile East Pakistan, killing an estimated half a million people, making it the most deadly tropical cyclone in recorded history. In the thana Tazmuddin alone, over 45 per cent of an estimated 350,000 people were killed. A report published on December 1, 1970, in the New York Times reveals that millions of people in the Bangladeshi coast had been completely unaware of the cyclone, even as it had developed for four days in the Bay of Bengal, gradually heading north, with the government mysteriously failing to use its early warning system to predict the storm or to issue public warnings.

In the wake of the Bhola cyclone, General Yahya Khan, the president and chief martial law administrator of Pakistan at the time, ordered a period of national mourning. But that was the bulk of what he and his cabinet did for the survivors. For the first ten days from November 12 only one military aircraft and three crop-dusting aircrafts were assigned to handle relief operations along the devastated coast of Bangladesh. New York Times reports from that period suggest that fleets of aircraft lay idle in West Pakistan, with Karachi claiming that the Indians had refused them passage through their territory; a charge that the Indian government denied. Over a week later, Yahya Khan is reported to have commented that the use of choppers in aid distribution would be pointless as they could not carry supplies.

By the time it dawned on General Yahya Khan that aid efforts were faltering, ten days after the cyclone had made landfall, hundreds of thousands who had survived the 20-foot-high waves had perished. ‘There have been mistakes, there have been delays, but by and large I’m very satisfied that everything is being done and will be done,’ Yahya Khan told the New York Times newspaper on November 22 of 1970. Four months on, about $7.5 million earmarked by the US Congress for cyclone rehabilitation had still not been handed over because of the Pakistani government’s failure to come up with a plan on how it would be distributed.

Thirty-eight years on, Bangladesh as an independent country has come a long way in its cyclone preparedness efforts. But a comparison between the 1970s Bangladesh and present-day Myanmar, and funnily enough, present-day Bangladesh, is loaded with a political significance that is difficult to ignore.

Cyclone Nargis was a category 4 tropical cyclone, implying it was of the similar intensity to cyclone Sidr which hit Bangladesh last year. But while Sidr killed just under 3,500 people, Nargis claimed over 100,000 lives, with fears that this figure could be still higher. It has emerged in the wake of cyclone Nargis that the junta in Yangon did little, if anything, to warn people of the cyclone developing off its coast, and its initial denial of a death toll more than 300, and then its efforts to block aid from Western agencies are all symptomatic of its disregard, even despise, of its own people. In comparison, and I believe this is largely the result of Bangladesh’s 15 years of democracy, widespread media coverage of coming floods or cyclones, and coverage of the ensuing humanitarian disaster has often resulted in massive evacuation efforts and aid efforts afterwards, along with economic programmes such as food-for-work to provide employment in the disaster zone.

It certainly is possible that Bangladesh’s vulnerability to cyclones over the decades has meant that the coast has far more cyclone shelters than Myanmar does, but it would be a fantastic claim to suggest that Bangladesh has enough cyclone shelters to even accommodate 10 per cent of its total coastal population. In fact, the resource-rich Myanmar with a per capita GDP of $1,691 (over triple of that in Bangladesh) would be much more likely to have better-equipped cyclone shelters, if the government had to face up to its actions in the wake of a disaster such as the one that followed Nargis.

It is in line with this thinking to say, perhaps, it would be difficult for any elected government to consider itself so immune to unpopularity that it could ignore the reconstruction and rehabilitation effort needed in the wake of cyclone Sidr as the current regime has. Especially since it is not shortage of funds that is acting as a restraint, when international funds intended for exactly this lay idle for months while the government dragged its feet on the bureaucratic necessities all through this year.

Could an elected government of the Awami League or the BNP – as venal as their power politics may be – have ignored the millions of voters of the constituencies along the coast, allowing the opposition to ratchet up discontent, being routinely embarrassed by the media, to leave their rehabilitation promises unfulfilled a year after the disaster? Perhaps, but they would be punished for it at the ballots. It is not out of benevolence but a longing to be re-elected that would have forced an elected government, any elected government, to act faster.

Contact: mahtabhaider@gmail.com

‘Everyone wants to do something with climate change’

NewAge Extra, August 15-21, 2008. Dhaka, Bangladesh

Dr Ainun Nishat, country representative, IUCN, the World Conservation Union talks to Faizul Khan Tanim on the results of the SAARC Summit and whether Bangladesh will go under water. 

Climate change featured strongly during the recently held SAARC summit. Have there been any fruitful results from that? 

As a member of the government delegation in the SAARC Environment Ministers Meeting focusing on climate change, I would say it was a very successful and positive meeting. All the eight countries are very serious on issues related to climate change and how to manage the future impacts.   

After the Bali Conference of Parties of December 15 2007 and meetings of the heads of governments of UN on September 24, 2007, the activities, adaptation, and mitigation to climate change are moving very fast. Mitigation to climate change has now become obligation to all nations, which was previously a compulsion for only the developing countries.  

In SAARC a number of bold decisions were taken. One – all the countries agreed upon sharing meteorological data on real-time basis so that effective forecast could be given.

Secondly, it was decided that for adaptation, we would need funds immediately and the SAARC ministers requested to the SAARC secretariats to raise money from developing countries. 

The third point, which was agreed is that the immediate focus should be on adaptation and since Bangladesh has a huge experience on disaster management; they could take lead on this issue and could support other countries.

There is a popular perception that Bangladesh will drown because of climate change. What is your take on the theory?

When Woodson Research Institute first pointed out about sea level rise in 1983 or 1984, they projected that Bangladesh would have a water level rise of five meters. Slowly, when IPCC 3 report came out, it was one meter and in the IPCC 4 report, it was decimal eight meters (79 cm). Recently there have been problems regarding calculations by the NASA scientist professor James Hansen. I have visited his webpage and downloaded his original paper and he did not mention anywhere that Bangladesh would go down by 25 meters. He said IPCC’s estimate of point eight meters is wrong and it will be at least two meters. So let us develop our preparation for two meters in the next 100 years.

The coastal belt would come near Narayanganj and if its one meter, it would come near Chandpur. The coastal belt would become salinated. But we already have five meter high embankments, so we are protected. What we will suffer from are the storm surges, for example, with heights of four meters. So four meters plus a two meters sea level rise is six meters. Now, the result would be uncertain coastal areas with storm surges, salinated coastal areas, and rice production would come down, but I do not see people drowning because they are protected.   

Last year, when we experienced a three-fold flood and flash flood followed by Sidr, you were one of the experts who cited the weather disturbances as a cause of climate change. This year, however, so far, we have not experienced the extremities in weather- would you stick to your opinion? How do you see this now?

Yes, I stick to my opinion. Let’s understand what climate change is doing. It is not raining when expected to rain, sea temperature is warmer, ocean currents changed with more frequent cyclonic weather, and we have noticed that in 2007 and 2008 that the Bay of Bengal is continuously rough with warning number three at regular intervals.

When this happens, fishermen are asked to come back to shore and they lose their livelihood. This certainly did not happen 50 years back. This year, we did not have enough rainfall.

We should take note that something uncertain is happening.

Although the IPCC and other research bodies have declared that global warming is happening at an accelerated rate, it remains true that from 1998 onwards there has not been a sharp rise as shown by satellite and balloon radiosondes. What is your take on that?

These facts are not correct. The hottest ten years of last century came during last ten to 15 years. NASA is publishing the global average temperature every year and if anyone follows the IPCC4 report, it is evident how temperature is rising every year. 

There is even the question of whether carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases are truly responsible for climate change. Some scientists say that it is likely that increased carbon dioxide levels might ‘green’ the planet and make food supplies increase simultaneously. Is that true?

This is not exactly true. Let’s presume that carbon dioxide is increasing, but the trees have a certain capacity to absorb, which is called carbon sequestration. If there is more carbon dioxide and more heat, it would help in photosynthesis and certain plants like rice and wheat would possibly benefit, but not all plants. Now, rice might benefit until a certain temperature, but if that temperature increases further, rice production will fall.

Cyclones, hurricanes and other such natural phenomena were not accurately recorded before the use of satellites. Knowledge of a hurricane could only occur if it hit the seashore or a vessel at sea. So is it not presumptuous to state that the number of hurricanes and cyclones are on the increase and have become more intense?

What the IPCC4 has said that there is no conclusive evidence that the frequency of extreme cyclonic events would increase but general frequency of climatic and cyclonic events would increase, which is evident from the frequent warning number three in the Bay of Bengal during the last three to four years especially when we take data of last 25 years in to consideration.  

Secondly, if the temperature of the sea surface is 80 degree Fahrenheit or more and if there is a depression, that depression gains energy. The frequency of oceanic disturbances has increased, for example, the fishes moved from their natural habitat to some other place and this is alarming indeed.

It is not necessarily true that a rise in sea levels will mean the end of the world. Although climate change refugees will suffer heavy losses, ultimately global warming will make frozen lands such as Siberia fertile and liveable; the melting glaciers might even someday be habitable?

There is something called a food chain and then there is a term called evolution. If this change takes place over a period of 10,000 years, then we would have enough time to adapt but since it will be so fast, oxygen will not increase in the pace living creatures need it.
   
The increased salinity in river water is nowadays being attributed to climate change by a number of climate change advocates. Wasn’t the Farakka Barrage once accused of the same thing? Who is really to blame?

Definitely, the salinity in Khulna area increased due to Farakka and not climate change. All of a sudden, there are too many climate change experts in Bangladesh. The rise in salinity in the southwestern region is principally due to anthropogenic effect, that is Farakka and climate change may have contributed but anyone trying to link up rise in salinity with climate change as the major cause is very wrong.

Do you feel the climate change issue, like many other campaigns may end up in the wrong hands and become a business? 

It is imperative that Bangladesh government acts effectively and the NGOs and civil society can act as pressure groups and guide the government in the right direction. We need strong monitoring from the government to stop the already existing business that is going on especially with funds. Everyone wants to do something with climate change not clearly knowing what aspect of climate change he or she is to focus on.

Call for Submissions: MAP Children’s Art Calendar Contest on mangrove forests and communities

 

Mangrove Action Project, 2008

Primary school children from tropical and sub-tropical nations are invited to participate in MAP’s annual international contest, which is increasing in popularity every year since its first publication in 2002.

This contest aims to promote appreciation and awareness of mangrove forests and communities, while encouraging and listening to creative voices of children living in mangrove regions.

Selected winners are published in the calendar, which is distributed worldwide.

Find out how to participate. 

Purchase 2008 calendar. 

 

 

The Gathering Storm

What Happens When Global Warming Turns Millions of Destitute Bangladeshi Into Environmental Refugees?

By George Black, On Earth, Summer 2008

By the end of the first day, it’s already become an ingrained reflex: brace for impact as yet another suicidal rickshaw, luridly painted with pictures of birds, animals, and Bollywood stars, swerves suddenly into our path. Our driver bangs on the horn, shimmies to the right, avoids an onrushing bus by a matter of inches, then calmly resumes his navigation of the demented streets of Dhaka, Bangladesh. I relax my death grip on the dashboard and exhale. Mostafizur Rahman Jewel, our translator, raises an eyebrow in amusement.

“No problem,” I say, feigning nonchalance. “Piece of cake.”

“Piece of cake?”

“It’s slang. Something really easy, no sweat. Like not killing that rickshaw-wallah. How do you say that in Bangla?”

“Panir moto shohoj,” he answers. “Easy like water.”

Easy like water. This is ironic, to say the least, because water, from the rivers, from the ocean, from the ground, is this country’s existential curse. Bangladesh and its 150 million people — the world’s seventh-largest population, compressed into an area the size of Iowa — have somehow contrived to have too much water, too little water, and more and more water of the wrong kind.

The long-range apocalypse facing the country is global warming and the accelerating sea-level rise that will accompany it. Think of the computer-generated image midway through Al Gore’s movie, An Inconvenient Truth, which shows an inexorable blue wave engulfing a great swath of coastal Bangladesh. But while the Four Horsemen gather their forces, the daily short-term menace is the steady northward creep of salt from the Bay of Bengal. Today the land is saturated with people; little by little it is also becoming saturated with salt.

It all begins with topography. In his novel The Hungry Tide, Amitav Ghosh, who grew up in Bangladesh, recounts the Hindu legend of how the Ganges Delta was formed. The goddess Ganga, from whom the river takes its name, descended from the heavens with such force that she would have split the earth apart had Lord Shiva not tamed her torrent by weaving it into the ash-covered strands of his hair. But then his braids unraveled and the river divided into thousands of channels. Now consider the map of Bangladesh, where three formidable rivers — the Brahmaputra, the Meghna, and the Ganges (known, once it crosses the Indian border, as the Padma) — converge to form a vast, tangled delta that I will spend a week exploring with the photographers Diane Cook and Len Jenshel, half on water and half on land. There is no other landscape like it on the planet.

Bangladesh’s problem, like Lord Shiva’s hair, has many strands. All three of its great rivers rise in the Himalayas, from which they carry a huge load of sediment, made worse in recent years by the deforestation of the Himalayan foothills. Because Bangladesh is as flat as a pool table, most of it no more than a few feet above sea level, the flow of its rivers is sluggish. Riverbeds clog with silt and water levels rise; shorelines erode, swallowing up farmland; islands of sand and mud form, disperse, reform elsewhere. From May to November, the monsoons blanket the country with torrential rain, pushing the rivers over their banks, driving people from their homes, drowning them. Some years Bangladesh is lucky and only a third of its territory is flooded. Sometimes it’s half; sometimes it’s two-thirds or more.

Go to On Earth website to read the rest of the story.