“River refugee” numbers continue to swell

Bholar Basti, a slum of 30,000 people in the Bangladeshi capital Dhaka, is not where Alimullah Mia and his wife and three children dreamt of living but that is where they have been for more than a decade.

They once lived in a village called Helai Kandi on the western shores of Bhola, an island district in the estuary of Bangladesh’s three main rivers – the Meghna, Padma and Brahmaputra.

“We had our home in the village, more than an acre of land, two cows and a plough,” the 45-year-old recalled. “Fifteen years ago, the Meghna devoured everything in a matter of six months, rendering us homeless and poverty-stricken. There was no job, no food, and no security of life.”

After two months on the levee, they headed to Dhaka where they found others just like them.

“There were other people too. We followed them and ended up at Bholar Basti [slum of Bhola people],” he said.

From being a self-sufficient and established farmer, he soon found himself penniless and became a push cart operator instead. “My wife became a domestic servant and my children are nothing but urchins,” Mia lamented.

For most residents of Bholar Basti, the story is more or less the same.

A silent tsunami

Nazrul Islam, an environmental specialist, said that between 300 and 500 families were rendered homeless annually due to river erosion, resulting in massive displacement in the country.

“This is like a silent tsunami in Bangladesh,” he said.

The authorities are aware of the problem. The Centre for Environmental and Geographic Information Service (CEGIS), with the help of the Bangladesh Water Development Board (BWDB), has developed methods for predicting bank erosion and morphological changes of the rivers.

According to CEGIS, 88,780 hectares of land had been eroded along the Brahmaputra, 27,990 ha along the Ganges (Padma in Bangladesh) rivers and 38,510 ha along their distributaries between 1973 and 2007.

Moreover, CEGIS forecasts that another 29,000 people living along the banks of Brahmaputra, Meghna and Padma rivers will lose their homes over the next year alone.

Various studies estimate that by the year 2025 around 3,575 sqkm in the valleys of Brahmaputra, Padma, Meghna and their estuaries will be lost to erosion.

Photo: Shamsuddin Ahmed/IRIN

The number of people forced into slums in Dhaka due to river erosion across the country is increasing

“River erosion is not new in this delta. What worries us most is not erosion, but its frequency and intensity in recent years,” Ibrahim Wares, a water engineer, who runs an independent consultancy on mitigating water-related disasters, warned.

Local and regional environmental factors are exacerbating the erosion: climate change, deforestation in the Indian and Nepalese Himalayas, the silting of river beds, coupled with the absence of adequate and appropriate river management, and a growing population are all having an impact.

“With the increasing population, more people shift toward the river banks and make their homes near them, making them vulnerable to erosion and flood damage,” said Wares.

Right technology needed

But according to Ainun Nishat, country representative for the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), further river erosion can be mitigated provided the right measures are taken. He criticised the BWDB’s “river training” activities, a hydrological term used by engineers to explain the fortifying of river banks and their inner slopes with reinforced concrete to channel the water’s flow more effectively.

“Many people became rich overnight who were engaged in river training but erosion was not stopped,” Nishat said.

“It is going to be an uphill task to pave the banks of some 230 rivers that crisscross Bangladesh. But it is possible,” he maintained, citing similar success stories along the Thames, Mississippi, Rhine and Danube rivers.

Political commitment

According to a meeting on 21 July organised by the Committee for Preventing Jamuna (Brahmaputra) River Erosion (CPJRE), political commitment is paramount. To date, much of the money allocated for the fortification of river banks had been misused, they claimed.

“We need political commitment to address the river erosion problem in the country. River erosion could not be addressed properly and technically due to undue political intervention in the past,” Ayub Ali Bhuiyan, secretary to the Bangladesh Water Resources Ministry, said.

Regional cooperation in addressing all water-related problems was also a must, he said, and so far it seems the government is listening.

At a meeting with citizens on 30 July, Chief Adviser of the government, Fakhruddin Ahmed, agreed that river erosion was now a major environmental hazard for the country.

“We are working on some short- and medium-term measures to address the problem. But you all know that it is a regional problem as all the rivers of Bangladesh originate in the neighbouring countries. Long-term solutions can be sought regionally on a long-term basis,” the country’s highest ranking official said.

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