Climate displacement has arrived without mercy in Bangladesh. In Khulna district alone, some 60,000 Bangladeshi citizens have fled what has become permanent coastal flooding in the remote southwest of the country. With no option of returning home, and little access to new land thus far, these climate displaced persons (CDPs) are forced to survive on a 25 kilometre long, 2m high and 3-4 m wide embankment.

This desperate community in Dacope sub-district in Khulna has built rudimentary, makeshift shelters along the length of the levee that was originally designed to protect their now destroyed villages, land and homes. The levee failed, and all they now have are insecure and instable shelters perched precariously atop the embankment, surrounded by unruly water on both sides at high tide and at low tide by thousands of hectares of desolate muddy land that was once fertile paddy and farmland.

Living in this isolated and impoverished corner of Bangladesh, which borders on the famous Sundarban National Park, and completely segregated from political life in Dhaka (and the officials that could assist them in finding new land), the people of the delta see all too little hope or viable options for the future. Ninety-per cent of the CDPs are now without livelihoods, forced to live day by day from aid handouts and are unable to return to lives, land and homes that were completely obliterated by coastal erosion and storm surges. Nor do the displaced in Dacope see any solutions coming from the Government of Bangladesh any time soon, with officials seeming thus far resistant to suggestions that they may need to assist this and other climate-affected communities to relocate to safer areas and provide them with new land.

And as bad as things may be for the delta dwellers, this CDP community is only the tip of the displacement iceberg eating away at Bangladesh’s land and populace. Comprehensive surveys carried out in 2010 by over 200 community-based organisations and coordinated by the remarkable efforts of the Association of Climate Refugees, found that a staggering 6.5 million citizens (1.3 million households) of Bangladesh have already been displaced by the effects of climate change.

Uniquely vulnerable to frequent and severe river, rainwater and tidal flooding, Bangladesh today has the sad distinction of being the world’s most vulnerable country to climate displacement. While climate scientists, the international community and academics vigorously debate about the potential for climate change to affect future population displacement, the millions of Bangladeshi citizens already displaced by the effects of climate change are no longer simply waiting for solutions to their plight, and have begun to organise for climate justice and their basic human rights.

For them the worst-case future climate scenarios have already arrived; for them the future is now.

Earth’s most climate vulnerable communities

Bangladesh is a low lying, largely flat country with two-thirds of the country located less than 5m above sea level. Situated in the delta region of three of the world’s largest rivers – with a combined annual discharge second only to that of the Amazon – it is no surprise that Bangladesh suffers from catastrophic floods every year. According to government statistics, 25 per cent of Bangladesh is inundated every year and 60 per cent of the country suffers from severe flooding every 4-5 years. What makes the situation so dire now is that the flooded land in the delta is seemingly gone for good. In Khulna, the flood will simply not recede.

And yet, this is far from the extent of climate vulnerability in Bangladesh. The country is also hit by a severe tropical cyclone on average once every three years. These storms form in the months before and after the monsoon season and intensify as they move over the warm waters of the Bay of Bengal. They are accompanied by winds of up to 150kph and can result in storm surges of up to several metres. As experienced by the 60,000 people crammed in miserable conditions on the embankments of Khulna, the results for housing, land, property and livelihoods are devastating.

Of the 160 million citizens of Bangladesh, it is the more than 50 million people who live in the most extreme poverty that are and will continue to be most affected by climate change. These are the people who are forced to live in remote, exposed and vulnerable locations – often on river islands and cyclone prone coastal regions – where the land is cheap but the risks are high. Of Bangladesh’s 64 districts, 24 are already severely affected by growing numbers of climate displaced persons.

As sure as the effects of climate change are in devastating lives and communities in Bangladesh today, it is also clear that the devastation is only going to increase in the future. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) predicts that floods, tropical cyclones and storm surges will all become more frequent and more severe in the future due to the effects of climate change. The IPCC also forecasts even higher flows in the rivers that flow into Bangladesh from India, Nepal, Bhutan and China – as a direct result of increasing monsoon rainfalls and the melting of the Himalayan glaciers. Sea level rise as a result of global warming will also result in even more severe coastal flooding in Bangladesh as well as saline intrusion into rivers across the entire southern regions of the country.

The need for solutions to climate displacement

While the full impact of future climate change is notoriously difficult to accurately predict, it is clear that the 6.5 million climate displaced people in Bangladesh in January 2011 will be joined by many millions more in the future. The effects on communities and the devastation of lands and homes will only become more intense. It is clear that the future is not bright for the people of Bangladesh and equally that land-based solutions are required now.

As poor as they may be, under human rights law, these impoverished and marginalised communities are also the people most in need of having their housing, land and property rights respected, protected and fulfilled. Combined efforts to tackle the challenges of climate displacement with a renewed commitment to HLP rights just might hold out the best hope that CDP’s will a secured a future worth living. And this is precisely what the joint Bangladesh HLP Initiative of Displacement Solutions and the Association of Climate Refugees intends to do.

Despite the considerable efforts of the Bangladeshi Government to combat and address the effects of climate change – including the adoption of the 2005 Bangladesh National Adaptation Programme of Action and the 2009 Bangladesh Climate Change Strategy and Action Plan – the Government has yet to propose clear or practical land-based solutions for addressing the plight of Bangladesh’s current and future climate displaced people.
Though one of the pillars of the Bangladesh Climate Change Action plan is to ‘ensure that the poorest and most vulnerable in society are protected from climate change’, it is clear that the climate displaced communities living on the embankment in Khulna province and indeed the many millions more across Bangladesh, have thus far received all too little protection, safe housing, or access to basic services from the Government.

Enter the Association for Climate Refugees

Some 200 community-based NGOs throughout the country have recently banded together to form the Association of Climate Refugees (ACR) and to actively find solutions for the citizens of Bangladesh who have already been displaced by climate change. ACR’s founder and director, Muhammad Abu Musa, has chosen for himself one of the world’s more difficult tasks. For this jolly and remarkably optimistic 52 year-old Bangladeshi activist has dedicated his life in recent years towards the gargantuan goal of finding permanent and sustainable residential solutions to the millions of climate displaced people across Bangladesh. If predictions by the IPCC and others are correct, the sprightly Abu Musa will need to find new homes for a further 30 million displaced people in the coming years.

The ACR is focusing on capacity building and empowerment at the local level – directly among the climate affected communities themselves. ACR relies on partner organisations – grassroots activists in 24 of the countries 64 districts, often working out of a single room in the middle of affected communities, to promptly relay first hand information about any developments in climate affected communities.

Abu Musa believes that it is the affected communities themselves who have the best knowledge and resources for self-protection and adaptation. He also strongly believes that having local communities own the problem is the only way for the Government of Bangladesh to listen to their plight – ‘If we showed up as an NGO describing this problem, the Government door would be immediately closed, it is essential that the local communities take action themselves’, he says with conviction.

The ACR plans to continue its work of monitoring climate displacement across Bangladesh and in the near future to implement a system of both emergency and permanent relocation out of climate vulnerable locations together with their international partners, in particular Displacement Solutions. ACR is aware that some CDPs have relocated to the distant Chittagong Hill Tracts (some 600 kms from Khulna), and in January 2011, ACR acquired a small land plot of 1.65 acres in Kamarkhola Union in Khulna district, donated by a local landowner sympathetic to ACR’s aims.

The land represents the first such acquisition of land for climate affected communities, and will be transformed into a community land trust aptly named ‘Community Land Trust for Climate Displacement Solutions in Bangladesh’. This symbolic gesture, which will provide land solutions for some twenty families, will surely not resolve climate displacement in the country, but will hopefully inspire other landowners to donate larger pieces of unused land to assist in finding solutions to the dismal displaced population of Bangladesh.

Abu Musa and many others believe that the climate displacement solution for Bangladesh will frequently lie in relocation to safer areas, and not solely on building higher and higher embankment walls. Many of the 60,000 people on the embankment in Khulna province expect that in the next monsoon season the entire embankment will be under water and that they will have to move again. Accessing new and viable land will be the secret to ACR’s success.

What will the future hold?

The work of ACR is admirable and essential, but alone it is unlikely to be able to find land-based solutions for the climate-displaced people of Bangladesh. Similar to popular movements in other climate affected countries such as Tulele Peisa in Papua New Guinea, path breaking groups like ACR need to be able to work with much more than their currently meagre, shoestring budget. Funds from the newly established Green Fund under the Cancun Adaptation Framework (meant to reach 100 billion USD in coming years) need to be earmarked for groups such as ACR and Tulele Peisa to enable them to resolve the displacement caused by climate change.

It is essential for these groups and governments to band together to develop and clarify land-based solutions as rapidly as possible, before the already drastic situation becomes exponentially worse as the effects of climate change become more severe and more frequent.

Importantly, it is increasingly clear that the imperative to resolve climate displacement in Bangladesh is not only a matter of human dignity and human rights, but also one of security. The marginalised communities most affected by climate change may also be the most susceptible to influence by extremists. As a country with a large Muslim population, thus far largely spared the fundamentalist-driven ravages now so commonplace in Pakistan and elsewhere, some analysts have noted that the most disenfranchised and affected communities could turn to Islamic militantism – and transform Bangladesh into another breeding ground for violent fundamentalism.

Unless climate displaced persons are treated as the rights-holders that they actually already are, and enabled to access new housing, land and property, this looming security threat may become ever more real.

The international community now has an opportunity to address the immediate and future climate displacement crisis in Bangladesh. The world needs to capture the momentum of recent positive developments at the 2010 United Nations Climate Change Conference held in Cancun, where national, regional and international coordination and cooperation was encouraged in implementing planned relocation of climate displaced communities and where it was stated that human rights should be fully respected in all climate change related actions.

States across the globe should take heed of the climate displacement nightmare that is unfolding in Bangladesh, and at the same time focus on the emerging dream of durable land solutions for all. Land-based solutions to climate displacement can and should be identified now, and excellent community led groups – such as the Association for Climate Refugees – need to be sufficiently well resourced to be able to implement emergency and permanent relocation strategies. The Government of Bangladesh should also be encouraged – through bilateral, regional and international advocacy – to do more to respect the human rights of all people in Bangladesh, including the 6.5 million people already displaced by climate change.

The development of a National Plan to Resolve Climate Displacement, prepared jointly with civil society groups such as ACR, could go a long way to ensure a brighter future for the displaced millions in this country. The situation in Bangladesh is as clear a demonstration to the world as any that contrary to what many people still think, climate displacement is not a problem for the future – for 2020, or 2030 or 2050 – it is a problem now, and one that urgently requires solutions.

Source: The Ecologist

The audio visual department of LEDARS has documented the forced migration and human suffering in the southwest coastal area of Bangladesh. This film is locally funded and produced which is different from the others I have posted before on this website. It is about 10 minutes long and is in English subtitles. Unfortunately, the last two minutes are unwatchable.

Source: LEDARS BD channel on YouTube

I have posted before about one of the fastest growing “megacities” in the world, Dhaka, Bangladesh. Nearly 500,000 migrants flow into the capital city each year, many motivated by environmental pressures. Erik German and Solana Pyne of GlobalPost examine the future of Dhaka in a five-part multimedia special report. This series is currently shown on PBS Newshour, with the first part aired on September 8, 2010.

The five parts of the series are:

• Part One: Dhaka the fastest growing megacity in the world
• Part Two: The dreams of Dhaka’s garment girls
• Part Three: Disasters drive mass migration to Dhaka
• Part Four: Looking on the bright side of Earth’s growing slums
• Part Five: Who can solve a problem like Dhaka?

The video posted above is part three, as its focus is on both slow onset and sudden distasters resulting in individuals and families migrating to the urban sprawl of Dhaka in search of a better life. Click here to be taken to the main page of GlobalPost series where you can access the videos and news report for all five parts.

Where and how: Mass scale forced displacement has been caused by tidal floods in the exposed coastal area and loss of land due to erosion in the main land river basins

The population living in South and South-East Asia on the coastline extending from the east coast of India to Myanmar have been buffeting by annual cyclones from the Bay of Bengal and ever increasing tidal floods. Due to its extensive coastal geography, Bangladesh is undoubtedly one of the most affected countries. Cyclones not only result in human casualties and destruction of property, but also leave behind perpetual tidal floods. Notably, over the last few years deadly cyclones have been commonplace: Cyclone Sidr of 2007, Nargis of 2008, Aila of 2009, and Laila of 2010. Bangladesh was hit directly by Sidr while Nargis, Aila, and Laila also wreaked havoc in Myanmar and India, respectively. Research in Dakshin Bedkashi (Koyra Upazila) reveals that the tidal flood water level has risen by 1 meter over 5 years (2004 to 2008) and it rose by an additional meter in 2009 and in 2010 it continues to rise further. Twelve coastal districts in the south of Bangladesh are particularly at risk: Satkhira, Khulna, Bagerhat, Pirojpur, Barguna, Patuakhali, Bhola, Laxmipur, Feni, Noakhali, Chittagong and Cox’s Bazar.

Around one million people have been rendered homeless due to river erosion in the mainland river basins over the last three decades, as the Brahmaputra-Jamuna continues to widen because of obstruction from upstream sediment and poor downstream erosion management. Official statistics show that the Brahmaputra-Jamuna, a major river system in Bangladesh, has widened by 11.8 km and from 8.3 km in the early ’70s, eroding about 87,790 hectares of land. (CEGIS, 2006). NGOs affiliated with ACR working in the mainland river basin report observing people forced to flee their traditional place of residence due to increasing river erosion. Ten districts are hotspots, namely Kurigram, Gaibandha, Jamalpur, Bogra, Sirajganj, Rangpur, Lalmonirhat, Nilphamari, Mymensingh, and Netrakona.

Bangladesh is comprised of 64 districts, out of which 22 are at risk of climate-induced displacement.

Who and how many: The poorer people who used to live in exposed locations are the climate refugees and they are 6 million in number

The poorest people who live in the extremely exposed locations in the coastal belt and the mainland river basins of Bangladesh will be the first to become climate refugees in upcoming years.

Tidal floods have already badly affected 56% of the 422 unions (lowest unit in the local government) of the 48 upazilas (sub-districts) in the exposed coastal zone of Bangladesh. Most of the villages in the badly affected 236 unions are flooded by tidal saline water twice a day over the last 3 years. The Houses, Land, and Properties (HLP) of 2,462,789 people (32%) of 7,693,331 inhabitants (in the affected unions alone) have been destroyed by repeated cyclones and rising tides. Of them, 1,568,980 (64%) are languishing as Local Climate Refugees (LCR) on remaining embankments or higher ground in exposed zones; 675,113 (27%) are squatters, or Internal Climate Refugees (ICR), in cities including Dhaka; and 218,656 (9%) are have crossed international borders, as Global Climate Refugees (GCR), in order to earn an income. The situation on the exposed coast is worsening and it is predicted that the number of climate refugees will increase to 3 million people by the end of 2010.

River bank erosions have already badly affected 44% of the 407 unions (lowest unit in the local government) of the 36 upazilas (sub-districts) in the exposed mainland river basins of Bangladesh. Most of the villages in the badly affected 179 unions are being eroded by flash flood waters every year over the last 3 decades. Houses, Land, and Properties (HLP) of 1,452,588 people (42%) of the 3,490,500 inhabitants (in the affected unions alone) have been destroyed by annual river erosion often coupled with devastating floods. Of them, 951,531 (66%) are languishing as Local Climate Refugees (LCR) on neighboring embankments or higher ground in exposed zones; 375,793 (26%) are urban squatters, or Internal Climate Refugees (ICR), in internal cities, like Dhaka; 125,264 (8%) have crossed international borders and are Global Climate Refugees (GCR). The situation in the river basin is worsening and it is predicted that the number of climate refugees from the river basin will increase to 2 million by the end of 2010.

The remaining 397 upazilas, which are not dangerously exposed on the coastline, still are at sea-level and will perhaps generate another 2.1 million climate refugees. Thus, the total number of climate refugees in Bangladesh as of May 2010 stands at 6 million, out of which at least 1 million are living in Dhaka. The total number of climate refugees in Bangladesh is expected to increase to 7.5 million by the end of 2010.

Hotspots of climate refugees at the point of origin: Island upazilas of Koyra, Shyamnagar and Dacope in the west, and Kutubdia, Hatiya and Swandip in the east of the coastal belt of Bangladesh

In one way or another, all exposed upazilas are generating climate refugees, but some are more immediately and particularly exposed. The middle coast (Barisal Division) enjoys the comparative advantage of being an active delta with land formation in progress as well as a freshwater ecosystem, but the west (Khulna Division) and east (Chittagong Division) coast have been unlawfully deprived of that active delta privilege by India’s unilateral interception in the river course originating from the Himalayas. Hence the west coast has 3 hotspots i.e. Koyra and Dacope in Khulna district, and Shyamnagar in Satkhira district. The east coast also has 3 hotspots i.e. Kutubdia in Cox’s Bazar district, Swandip in Chittagong district and Hatiya in Noakhali district.

Response to the plight of the Climate Refugees

The Finance Minister of Bangladesh Government has said, “We are asking all our development partners to honour the natural right of persons to migrate. We can’t accommodate all these people – this is already the densest [populated] country in the world,” in a video interview with the Guardian. Repeated cyclones and tidal floods have substantially destroyed the life line of coastal dwellers.

More than 200 NGOs in Bangladesh are working for the resettlement of the climate refugees. They have participated, as a finalist, in the World Bank’s Global Competition on Climate Adaptation held on 10-13 November 2009 in Washington, D.C. but could not win a grant. However, the World Bank ’s Innovation Practice Manager wrote “We are indeed working on a range of ideas in which we can communicate with your host governments, other funders in the space, and like-minded partners who can support your projects and perhaps find ways to work with you” in a post of the NGOs’ Team Leader in World Bank’s DM Blog. NGOs are continuing to negotiate projects with potential donors on climate refugee issues.

Conclusion

Climate change is likely to lead to increase the number of climate refugees, and it is vital that evolving frameworks for climate change adaptation address this issue so that national and international communities can peacefully resettle climate refugees. Climate change ignores country borders making it a global problem; however, we cannot ignore country borders and have to begin to work regionally and globally for mutual benefits and interests. We welcome suggestions and assistance for effective and efficient resettlement of climate refugees.

*This article refers to climate-induced migrants as “refugees,” but Towards Recognition is of the stance that such a designation muddies the traditional definition of the term and could lead to weakened legal protection.

Editor’s Note: This article was originally published on Displacement Solutions, but has been edited for Towards Recognition by Kayly Ober.

The meeting, which was attended by government policy makers, representatives of civil society and donors, also saw the launch of a study commissioned by IOM from independent researcher Matthew Walsham: “Assessing the Evidence: Environment, Climate Change and Migration in Bangladesh.”

BDI launched a second study examining the links between climate change and urbanization in Bangladesh.

The two studies show that climate change and natural disasters like cyclones have complex but tangible effects on patterns of migration. Over the long-term they result in migration from environmentally vulnerable regions. But both papers concede that there still is a dearth of studies on the nexus between climate change and displacement.

“Bangladesh needs to learn more and respond proactively if we are to minimize the risks and maximize the benefits of environmentally induced migration. While disaster risk reduction and post-disaster response have improved significantly, Cyclone Aila showed us that there is still a lot of room for improvement,” says IOM Regional Representative for South Asia Rabab Fatima.

Over four million people living in low-lying coastal areas were directly affected by Aila on 25 May last year. The cyclone killed 190 people, left a trail of destruction and displaced tens of thousands. A year on, some 100,000 people are still displaced on mud embankments, with little food, drinking water or sanitation.

In the immediate aftermath of the cyclone, IOM provided shelter kits and basic non-food relief items to more than 24,000 families (120,000 people), with funding from the United Kingdom. It also set up a Displacement Tracking Matrix.

Source: IOM

Three of the episodes center around the issue of human mobility as a result of climate change at some depth, often following the lives of those who chose to abandon their farming livelihoods and move to nearby mega cities in search of a better life.

I have embedded the first episode “Bursting at the Seams”, which examines Lagos – one of the fastest growing cities in the world. The other two are “Water, water, everywhere…” which explores the capital city of Dhaka in Bangladesh, and “Feed the World” which follows migrants from their drought stricken villages to the city of Dakar in Senegal. Each episode is about 45 minutes long. Click here to check out the other episodes in the series.

Source: BBC World News/rockhopper.tv

A growing flood of landless poor, many displaced by climate-related problems, are moving into the canal-side slum, which lies adjacent to Gulshan, one of Dhaka’s poshest areas.

Everywhere, people are busy building new makeshift rooms – in some cases multi-story shanties of bamboo and wood – to accommodate the arrivals.

Bangladeshi researchers estimate that about half a million people each year are pouring to the capital city after losing their homes and livelihoods to problems linked to climate change, including land erosion, worsening storms and sea level rise.

At present around 10,000 people live crammed into each square kilometer in Dhaka, where finding open land has become very difficult. The city, built for a million people in the 1960s, now accommodates more than 12 million and is one of the most densely populated on earth.

Bangladesh is ranked by the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change as one of the countries most at risk from climate change. Models suggest the low-lying nation of 156 million people could lose 17 percent of its land to rising seas, displacing 15 million people by 2050.

FEW RESOURCES TO SPARE

Providing for the needs of ever-increasing numbers of climate migrants is proving difficult in a country with few resources to help them.

Dhaka already suffers widespread poverty and unemployment, and offers limited opportunities for new migrants. The country has no social safety net to assist those who cannot find work for themselves, and competition for jobs is increasing with each new arrival.

Most of the people living in Korail are beggars, day labourers, boatman, rickshaw pullers or roadside hawkers, said Abul Miah, 40, who lives with his family of four in a 10-foot by 10-foot hut.

“I could not afford schooling of my children, so they are working in garment factory and roadside shop to help me,” he said of his adult son and younger daughter.

Osman Mia, 70, formerly of Bangladesh’s southern Borguna district, became landless when the Payra River in southern Bangladesh claimed his property. He now earns a living by pulling a rickshaw in Dhaka’s bustling streets.

The Korail slum, with its bamboo and tin shacks, has no permanent toilet facilities, so residents construct hanging toilets over the adjacent canal, polluting its water.

MUD STOVES, NO WATER

The slum also has no piped water from the Dhaka Water Supply Authority. In exchange for monthly payments, some musclemen supply water through illegal pipelines in exchange of monthly payments.

Inhabitants cook on stoves made of mud, burning huge amounts of wood and bamboo since there is no gas supply in the slum, which lies just across the canal from the homes of some of Dhaka’s richest families.

Hasen Molla, 60, is one of the canal’s boatmen. He lost his village home in Chaulakathi, in Bangladesh’s Barishal district after the Kochar River claimed his family’s land.

“My family moved to my granny’s house as we lost all the properties to river erosion. Since then two of my brothers are living there and I left for Dhaka to find my bread and butter,” he said.

Nearly a third of his $65 a month income goes to rent.

“My son and daughters are also working, as I can’t bear all the expenses. There is no scope for anyone here to live without work, no matter if you are adult or not,” he said.

For those without work, the outlook is particularly bleak.

Rohiton Nesa, 60, who has no children and whose husband left her, now begs in the street and at bus stops to pay for food and a place to live. She lost her family home and land in Noakhali district to erosion from the Hatiya river, she said.

The situation is the same in Dhaka’s Mogbazar slum, home to about 10,000 climate migrants living in 1,200 shanties.

Amiron, 65, who like many Bangladeshis goes by one name, lives with her two sons, daughter-in-laws and grandchildren in an 80-square-foot room made of plastic sheets and bamboo. The room has a wooden platform where her children sleep, while she and the grandchildren sleep nearby on the floor.

Mogbazar has some piped-in water. But Amiron feels shy to shower in an open-air bathroom the Dhaka City Corporation has built.

“It’s very tough for women to bath under the open sky,” she said.

Her daughter-in-law Monwara, 22, who lost her own parents to flooding, said starting over in Dhaka’s slums is a huge challenge for families who have lost everything and can afford nothing better than a basic hut.

“We are very poor. We lost all the things to the river. I lost my parents, too,” she said. “We have no way to find a better place as buying food twice a day became a big challenge for us.”

The slum presents other perils as well. Devastating fires regularly break out among the bamboo and wood structures. Hanif Mia, 75, was narrowly saved by his daughter last December when a blaze raged through his slum area, burning nearly all of the huts.

“My leg was broken in mid-November. I had no capacity to move. God saved me from burning as my daughter took me out,” he remembered.

Now, “we built this hut again taking loan at high rate of interest from private lenders. I don’t know if I will be able to repay the loan,” he said.

Source: Reuters AlertNet

While he was in Bangladesh, Cyclone Aila struck, killing roughly 200 people and leaving thousands homeless. Moller proceeded to document the devastation from that 2009 storm, as well the impact of subsiding land and rising seas on other Bangladeshis, many of whom earn less than $1 a day. In this Yale Environment 360 report, we present two videos by Moller – “Aila’s Victims” and “Wahidul’s Story.”

Moller says he will leave it up to scientists to determine how much of the suffering he portrays is related to a warming climate. “I am not a scientist and I know that global warming is a contentious issue,” he says. “I wanted to focus on the people who are suffering today. The point is that these people are vulnerable today, and will become even more vulnerable in the future.”

A Bangladeshi man who is the subject of one of his videos, Wahidul, lives in the town of Kuziartek, which was once home to 40,000 people. Now, the island on which Kuziartek was located is underwater. All that is left of Kuziartek is a small embankment rising from the sea, 2 ½ miles out in the Bay of Bengal. Seven families remain there, including Wahidul’s, clinging to a disappearing strip of earth.

“But what can we do,” asks Wahidul, fearful that abandoning his village would leave him homeless in a city slum. “We have an unfortunate fate. There are many people in the world, but I doubt that anyone must suffer as much as me. People shouldn’t live where we live, but we have no choice. We have to live here.”

Click here to view the video report »

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Reprinted from Yale Environment 360

Mahe Noor left her village in southern Bangladesh after Cyclone Sidr flattened her family’s home and small market in 2007. Jobless and homeless, she and her husband, Nizam Hawladar, moved to this crowded megalopolis, hoping that they might soon return home.

Two years later, they are still here. Ms. Noor, 25, and Mr. Hawladar, 35, work long hours at low-paying jobs—she at a garment factory and he at a roadside tea stall. They are unable to save money after paying for food and rent on their dark shanty in Korail, one of the largest slums in Dhaka. And in their village, more people are leaving because of river erosion and dwindling job opportunities.

“We’re trapped,” Ms. Noor said.

In the past, many analysts argued that climate-driven migration would lead to tens of millions of “climate refugees” pouring into wealthy countries. Droughts in North Africa, say, would push people into Europe. (This explains why some European anti-immigration groups have adopted green rhetoric.) But more recent research suggests that most of the migration will take place within developing countries—from rural areas to cities. And the main worry here is that these cities are already swelling exponentially, and their infrastructure can barely keep up, which is why many “megacities” sport massive slums.

Now, the tricky part is tying these trends to climate change. After all, severe storms and droughts are nothing new. Nor is internal migration. People in developing countries have been flocking to cities for a long time, whether it’s to seek out work or because the rainfall’s dried up or because the soil’s eroded away. We can say that global warming will exacerbate these pressures and greatly increase the pace of migration, but it’s hard to attribute any single event—or single migrant—to man-made climate change. (Virtually no scientist will say that Cyclone Sidr was caused by global warming, though many will agree that this type of event will become more frequent as the oceans heat up.)

This seems like hairsplitting, but it could become a major issue. One of the few concrete items that came out of Copenhagen was a pledge by rich countries to set up a $100 billion annual climate fund by 2020 (with smaller amounts of climate aid dribbling in earlier). Some of this money is supposed to help poor countries adapt to a warmer world. But how do you distinguish between people displaced specifically by climate change and those migrating for other reasons? The difficulty in sorting out causes is one reason why forecasts of “climate refugees” vary so wildly, from 200 million by 2050 to one billion by 2050.

So climate-driven migration is a real concern, but it’s worth being precise about the concept. Geoff Dabelko, who directs the Environmental Change and Security Program at the Wilson Center, had a smart post back in 2007 urging environmentalists to be careful when using the term “climate refugee” (the word “refugee” is particularly problematic, since it has a precise legal definition and invokes certain responsibilities by governments). Otherwise, the problem just gets harder to solve.

Source: The New Republic

Two years later, they are still here. Ms. Noor, 25, and Mr. Hawladar, 35, work long hours at low-paying jobs – she at a garment factory and he at a roadside tea stall. They are unable to save money after paying for food and rent on their dark shanty in Korail, one of the largest slums in Dhaka. And in their village, more people are leaving because of river erosion and dwindling job opportunities.

“We’re trapped,” Ms. Noor said.

Natural calamities have plagued humanity for generations. But with the prospect of worsening climate conditions over the next few decades, experts on migration say tens of millions more people in the developing world could be on the move because of disasters.

Rather than seeking a new life elsewhere in a mass international “climate migration,” as some analysts had once predicted, many of these migrants are now expected to move to nearby megacities in their own countries.

“Environmental refugees have lost everything,” said Rabab Fatima, the South Asia representative of the International Organization for Migration. “They don’t have the money to make a big move. They move to the next village, the next town and eventually to a city.”

Such rapid and unplanned urbanization is expected to put even further strains on scarce water, energy and food resources, said Koko Warner, who works in environmental migration at the United Nations University Institute for Environment and Human Security in Bonn.

In Bangladesh, a largely flat, riverine nation where more than 140 million people live in one of the most densely populated countries in the world, past generations often moved to cities seasonally. They worked to send money home to their villages and usually returned there during planting season.

But in recent years, the moves are more likely to be permanent. More intense storms and floods, salinization damage to crops caused by the encroaching sea and especially worsening river erosion have left many people rootless, Ms. Fatima said.

Dhaka, the capital, is often the only real option in this region. It is the fastest-growing megacity in the world, according to the World Bank. At least 12 million people live in Dhaka, and there are more than 400,000 newcomers each year. The World Bank predicts that the population could grow dramatically by 2020.

Like the rest of Bangladesh, Dhaka is also extremely vulnerable to climate change: It is just a few meters above sea level and is regularly hit by cyclones and floods. The environmental group WWF recently rated it among the megacities most vulnerable to the effects of global warming, after Jakarta and Manila.

As many as half of the people in Dhaka live in shantytowns and slums, says Atiq Rahman, a climate change researcher and executive director of the Bangladesh Center for Advanced Studies. Of those, Mr. Rahman and Ms. Fatima estimate that three million people have been displaced by environmental degradation or disasters.

The most destitute people live in clusters of improvised tents made of plastic sheets and discarded bamboo and often erected on private land near markets, railroad tracks and the city’s rivers.

Most poor, working-class families end up in minicities like Korail, where Ms. Noor, the migrant from southern Bangladesh, lives with her husband and two daughters. Ms. Noor’s third child, a son, lives with his grandmother in the family’s village.

Korail sits on public land and is shared by at least 40,000 people crowded into cramped, cockroach-infested rental shanties made of mud, bamboo and corrugated tin.

Barefoot children play with broken marbles on narrow mud lanes filled with garbage and streams of raw sewage. A few enterprising residents have opened vegetable stands, tailor shops, carpentry mills and teahouses in tiny shacks.

Aid groups run primary schools in Korail and other slums, but many children work or stay home to mind younger siblings while their parents work.

Child trafficking and arson are serious problems, experts here say. Ms. Noor says she worries she will come home one day and find her young daughters kidnapped, or worse.

“Every day I hear about a fire or about someone’s child missing,” Ms. Noor said.

Ms. Noor’s next-door neighbor, Aklima Akhter, 22, also lost her home and her family’s small market in her southern Bangladesh village to flooding caused by Cyclone Sidr.

Another neighbor, Mukhles Rahman, 38, and his brother Mohammad Farid Uddin, 56, left their village of Chawlakathi in the division of Barisal eight years ago because of river erosion.

Their family once grew rice, jute, sugar cane, mustard seed and radishes on four hectares, or 10 acres. Over a couple of decades, the Sandhya River washed away the farmland and the family home.

“My father could cross the river just by jumping across,” said Mr. Uddin, who finished high school and ran a small school in his village. “Even when I was a youngster in the 1960s, we could swim across. Now it’s so big.”

These days, the two brothers live in a tiny shanty with Mukhles Rahman’s wife and young son.

“We are trying to find another place to go, because all the land back home is dissolving,” said Mukhles Rahman, who works as a security guard at a garment factory. “But there aren’t jobs in other cities or in villages.”

For migrants displaced because of the environment, Bangladesh hopes to begin helping them find opportunities in cities other than Dhaka, said Saleemul Huq, a Bangladeshi scientist who is a senior fellow in the climate change group of the International Institute for Environment and Development in London.

Bangladesh and other countries hit hard by climate change are supposed to receive money from a $100 billion annual green climate fund approved by the negotiators at the Copenhagen summit meeting in December. Smaller amounts of aid have been pledged for the next few years. The larger amounts of environmental aid are not expected to begin flowing until 2020.

Later this year, Mr. Huq will open and lead the International Center for Climate Change and Development, an institute based just outside of Dhaka and aimed at helping vulnerable countries come up with practical ways to adapt to climate change.

“We are going to have low-lying areas in Bangladesh that are not going to be inhabitable anymore, so those people will have to go somewhere,” Mr. Huq said. While Dhaka has managed to absorb millions of migrants, he said that this “can’t go on forever. Dhaka can’t take it, and neither can the people.”

Rashida Akhter, a local manager for BRAC, a nongovernmental organization that operates across Bangladesh as well as in several other poor countries, says that more than 90 percent of the Korail slum’s residents never leave because they cannot save enough money to move.

Ms. Noor and Mr. Hawladar say they cannot imagine growing old in a dank, depressing place like Korail. They still dream about returning to their home village of Nandikathi, a poor, waterlogged hamlet of about 3,000 people.

“It’s our home, not Dhaka” Mr. Hawladar said.

Their 6-year-old son is in Nandikathi with his grandmother. They have not seen him for a year. If they lived there, their daughters, ages 8 and 3, would be able to go to school, instead of being stuck alone all day in a tiny rented shack.

Ms. Noor, who remembers a modest but more comfortable life in Nandikathi, talks about rebuilding the family’s shattered hut and reviving her drowned backyard garden of greens and gourds.

Mr. Hawladar says he wants to open another market there and add a tea house. He was badly injured in a road accident a few years ago and cannot do physical labor, so he spends 15-hour days in a wooden roadside stall in an affluent Dhaka neighborhood, brewing tea for businessmen. He makes 150 taka, or $2, a day. Ms. Noor makes about $1 a day at the garment factory.

They count their earnings at night, in silence, on the wooden plank that serves as the family bed. They never have enough money.

Even if they could save enough money to rebuild their home, the prospects are bleak in Nandikathi. The nearby Dhanshiri River has become more unruly, eroding land and livelihoods.

Ms. Noor says she sometimes stays up until the morning, worrying that the next big flood will just wash the village away.

“Where will people live then?” she asked.

Joanna Kakissis reported with the help of a grant from the International Reporting Project. Sumon Kaiser of bdnews24.com contributed reporting.

Source: New York Times