Facing floods: What the world can learn from Bangladesh's climate solutions
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Fatima Tuj Johora for NPR
Majida Begum, 60, whose home was washed away in June 2022 floods in the Sunamganj, northern Bangladesh. Here Begum stands under an elevated canopy of bitter gourd vines a vegetable garden designed to survive if and when her village floods again.
SUNAMGANJ, Bangladesh Majida Begum squats in the mud where her kitchen used to be, scaling fish with a dull blade.
Seasonal floods are a part of life on the riverbank where Begum lives in northern Bangladesh. Each spring, when monsoon rains arrive, a web of narrow rivers like capillaries crisscrossing the flesh of the country swell into a shallow sea.
But these annual floods the lifeblood of the region's agricultural cycle have become erratic in recent years. And last year's were the worst Begum had seen in her 60 years.
In June, the water edged up slowly and then all at once sweeping away her thatch and bamboo home.
"Pretty soon we'll be living in the tops of trees!" Begum says, rubbing bony fish against a blade in the new makeshift kitchen she's assembled on a muddy tract where her house used to be. "Either that or this land will be strewn with our bodies."
Begum lives a two-hour boat ride from the nearest road and farther still from any flood shelter. She doesn't read or write and doesn't have a cellphone.
But before the floodwaters overwhelmed her home, Begum knew precisely when to evacuate and how to save her own life. That's because of a human chain of communication that relies both on high-tech forecasting and low-tech relationships.
It's what scientists say Bangladesh, a relatively poor country, nevertheless does best: A mix of technology and community solutions that are saving lives on the frontlines of climate change.
/ Fatima Tuj Johora for NPR
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Fatima Tuj Johora for NPR
Golabari village in the region of Sunamganj, northern Bangladesh. This area experienced some of the country's worst flooding in June 2022.
Bangladesh isn't just ground zero for climate disaster. It's also a hot spot for solutions.
Bangladesh is often called a climate victim. It contributes only a tiny fraction of global carbon emissions
0.56%, by one count
. But it suffers disproportionately from their effects.
Its low-lying geography, south of the Himalayan mountains, means it's particularly vulnerable to flooding as glaciers melt and sea levels rise. Its agriculture relies on monsoon rains that increasingly come in spasms. And it gets battered with some of the world's worst cyclones.
But fatalities from those rains and cyclones have fallen dramatically.
For example
: In 1970, Cyclone Bhola killed up to half a million people in what is now Bangladesh, while last year's Cyclone Sitrang killed 16.
Part of the reason is what Saleemul Huq, director of the Bangladesh-based International Centre for Climate Change and Development, calls social capital awareness.
"I tell my American friends, 'You should send your skeptics to Bangladesh! The awareness of climate change here is the highest in the world,' " Huq says. "But we have gone through the doom and gloom phase. That's yesterday's news in Bangladesh. "
Now it's all about solutions, he says.
Bangladesh uses satellites to track cyclones and shares that information with neighboring countries. It's anchored buoys offshore that are equipped with solar-powered sensors to measure sea level and transmit that data to scientists on dry land.
In Begum's region, residents adapt to life around more water by splitting their time between agriculture in the dry season and fishing in the rainy season. Some continue to farm year-round by weaving together bamboo and water hyacinth roots to create a floating farm a hammock on which to plant seeds to grow bitter gourds, spinach and okra, partially submerged in flooded rivers.
In coastal areas farther south, farmers are using saline-resistant varieties of rice so that as sea levels rise in the Bay of Bengal, the influx of salt water doesn't poison freshwater crops. They're harvesting rainwater and also building pond sand filtration systems to purify brackish water and ensure a safe supply for drinking.
/ Fatima Tuj Johora for NPR
/
Fatima Tuj Johora for NPR
Riverboats are the primary mode of transportation in the region of Sunamganj in northern Bangladesh. This village of Golabari is a two hour boat ride from the nearest paved road.
"Bangladesh is one of the worst sufferers of climate change, but instead of giving up, we're leading the way in adaptation and resilience creating best practices that can be used globally," says Niaz Ahmed Khan, a development and environment expert at Dhaka University. "Using indigenous knowledge, we're coping and surviving. We are trying to reclaim our life."
Most critically, the government has partnered with cellphone providers to extend 4G coverage to areas that might not even have electricity or plumbing.
"So that when something happens, almost everybody on land gets the message, gets to shelter and survives. It's not the technology, it's social capital people knowing what to do," Huq says. "That is Bangladesh's biggest asset."
To save lives, scientists rely on a housewife with an old Nokia brick phone
Last June, a few days before Begum's house washed away, scientists in Bangladesh's capital noticed something unusual: An unprecedented amount of rain forecast for the Himalayan foothills across the border in India. It's an area that's been deforested in recent years.
"There's no grass or trees on those hills, so the water just rushes downstream," explains Partho Protim Barua, an engineer at the country's Flood Forecasting and Warning Centre in the capital Dhaka.
It rushes downstream, across the Indian border, into low-lying Bangladesh.
That day, Barua called up his colleague Nazma Akter in the far north of the country, near the Indian border. She's a housewife with a side job reading a gauge in her local river, the Wah Umngi or Umngot River, which flows from India's Meghalaya state southward into the Surma River in Bangladesh.
The gauge looks like a yardstick stuck in the riverbank. Akter, 26, checks it five times a day, records water levels and sends her readings to Dhaka's Flood Forecasting and Warning Centre by text message on her indestructible old Nokia brick phone.
/ Fatima Tuj Johora for NPR
/
Fatima Tuj Johora for NPR
Nazma Akter, 26, works as a gauge reader for Bangladesh's Flood Forecasting & Warning Centre. She reads water levels in a river near her home in the Sylhet district of northern Bangladesh and sends data to engineers in Dhaka by SMS.
Bangladesh relies on hundreds of people like Akter regular folks, not scientists who monitor water levels at rivers, streams and reservoirs across the country. They act as scouts for the scientists, looking for signs of trouble on the front lines of climate change.
Akter recalls how last June, the river showed a 2.5-meter rise around 8 feet over three days. It was a sign of massive rainfall to the north just as Barua had seen in the forecast even before local skies
Sunday, March 26, 2023 at 11:46 am