The water crises that could be coming to your region – 7/3/2023 – Environment

Bangladesh is a land of water. Its sediment-laden rivers descend swiftly from the Himalayas and spill into a filigree labyrinth of lagoons, swamps and tributaries until they flow into the black and stormy Bay of Bengal.

Today its deepest threat is water, in its many terrible incarnations: drought, flood, cyclones, salt water. All are exacerbated to varying degrees by climate change, and all are forcing millions of people to do what they can to stay afloat.

This matters to the rest of the world, because what the 170 million people of this densely populated delta country face today is what many of us will face tomorrow.

Bangladeshis rush to harvest rice as soon as they are warned of heavy rains upriver. They build floating beds of water hyacinths to grow vegetables out of reach of floodwaters. Where shrimp farms have made the soil too salty to grow crops, they plant okra and tomatoes not in soil but in compost placed in the plastic bins that once held shrimp. In areas where the land itself is being washed away, people have to move to other villages and towns. And where fresh water is lacking, Bangladeshis are learning to drink every drop of rain.

Saber Hossain Chowdhury, a ruling party MP and the prime minister’s climate envoy, said his country’s efforts were like trying to plug a leaky barrel. “It’s like when you have a barrel that’s leaking from seven places, but you only have two hands,” he said. “What do you do? It’s not easy.”

Bangladesh has managed to save lives during cyclones and floods. But there are a multitude of other challenges to be faced, and all at the same time: finding new sources of drinking water for millions of people on the coast, expanding plantation insurance, preparing cities to receive the inevitable flow of migrants from the countryside, and even cultivate good relations with neighboring countries to share weather data with them.

All this with little help from the rich countries of the world. In places like Bangladesh, there is growing frustration that rich countries have not replenished the resources developing countries need to adapt to the dangers they already face. This is a theme of the climate finance summit held this week in Paris.

Among Bangladesh’s 64 districts, half are considered vulnerable to climate change.

Floating gardens and a salty future

What to do when river levels rise and water covers your crops?

If you are Shakti Kirtanya, you grow your crops on water. If the water level rises, so do they. They float on the water. “If you see the harvest, it will fill your heart with joy,” he said.

Kirtanya learned this agricultural technique from his father, who learned it from his father. It has been practiced for 200 years in its low-lying district, Gopalganj, where the land is often flooded half the year.

Now, because climate change is bringing flood risk to many more areas, the floating gardens of Gopanganj are spreading. Over the past five years, the government has supported floating plantations in 24 of the country’s 64 districts.

Kirtanya uses what he has. He cuts the stems off the water hyacinths in the pond near his home, lets the pile of plants cook in the sun, and shapes them into long, wide seed pods over the water. He sows watermelon and amaranth in summer, cabbage and cauliflower in winter. The garden is a source of income and, for her family, a source of fresh vegetables grown without pesticides.

“If the rains come early or are late, it doesn’t affect my garden,” said Kirtanya. “The heat doesn’t hurt either.”

There is an imminent threat, however. Sea water is coming inland. This is in part due to rising sea levels, which raises the tides. It’s partly because the rivers have been dammed upstream, so not enough fresh water is flowing downstream. It is partly due to the excessive extraction of groundwater.

Last year, Kirtanya caught a glimpse of a salty future. The leaves turned red. The plants were weakened.

capturing the rain

Sheela Biswas faces the salinity crisis on a daily basis. Salt has seeped into the canals and lakes from which her village gets its drinking and washing water. An estimated 30 million people living on the coast face the problem of salt water penetration, to varying degrees. The area where Biswas lives is one of the hardest hit.

This was not the case when she arrived in this region 30 years ago as a newlywed. Back then, people ate rice that they grew on their own land. They drank water that they collected from their ponds.

Then came the so-called “white gold”: shrimp. Shrimp creations spread. People let salt water in through a river channel, so the salt water also spread out. Biswas Pond has become too salty to be drinkable.

First she hired a wagon to buy water. Then she turned to a neighbor who had built an underground tank to collect rainwater. Biswas invented her own rainwater harvesting system, using materials she had at home. She used plastic pipes to channel rainwater from her tin roof; then it was sifted through a fishing net and finally stored in clay containers. She still had to bathe in the brackish lagoon, which caused skin irritation, a common complaint in the region. Doctors say that hypertension rates are also high. They suspect that their patients unintentionally ingest too much salt.

The latest solution to Biswas’ problem came in the form of a 2,000-litre hot pink plastic water tank with a filter on top. The water tank is in the backyard of his house to collect monsoon rainwater. It is one of 4,000 similar containers distributed over the past three years by a development organization, Brac, which assists the needy.

For Chowdhury, the MP, if global emissions don’t come down a lot and in a short time, there is little Bangladesh can do to stay above the surface. “Nothing we do will be enough,” he said.

^{Translated by Clara Allain}