Off the coast of Bangladesh and India islands are being eroded and consumed by increasing sea levels causing locals and indigenous peoples to be evacuated from the islands. Kutubdia is an island of the coast of Bangladesh and it happens to one of many islands that are being swallowed by some of the world’s fastest recorded erosion breaking rising sea levels. Kutubdia has been halved in size over the past twenty years because of the steady erosion and an estimated 40,000 people have left to other surrounding peninsulas. The remaining 80,000 inhabitants plan to have to leave soon as they have lost a school, mosques, shops and farms. It estimated that Kutubdia will not be on the map in the next 30 years. The surrounding islands face the same hardships as the locals of Kutubdia. Sagar, a neighboring island is predicted to lose 15% of its land in the next eight years. Scientist have begun to attribute this problem to a combination of natural and manmade occurrences. The temperature within the Bay of Bengal has increased which in theory could be correlated to the increase of sea levels. There has also been an increase in the number of cyclones and higher tides that could have promoted a confluence in southern Indian and Bangladeshi rivers that would feed into the Bay. According to Saleemul Huq, a senior fellow at the International Institute for Environment and Development "The land has always been lost to erosion in the Bay of Bengal, but this is now becoming exacerbated,” He notes that there has been a very noticeable shift in populations because of this. The rate of erosion is much faster and higher than it has been in the past. Scientists agree that whether it is climate change or not the pattern will continue and by the looks of it, it is expected to grow exponentially. The people of Kutubdia are in the midst of overbearing change. Their socioeconomic status really prevents them moving or migrating to another country. In a very real sense it is not like our own nation’s problems where it is subjectively proposed that institutions keep people in poverty from engaging in class mobility, rather in this part of the world the obstacles are stark on a mundane level. “You can’t go to school not because you can’t afford it but it’s because the school has been washed away.” The effects of global warming and climate change are not as easily reversible as a new law or economic policy.
Christopher Roberts
Thursday 31 January 19:24
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