'Refugees' in their own country: Storms, floods drive them from coastal areas to cities

His home is nothing but four poles made of milky mangrove trees with leaves of mangrove palm used as a shed on a shoal of the Shakbaria River in Khulna's Koyra.

Kartik Munda finds the front porch inundated every time the high tide hits. The land belongs to the government. 

“Life has long been like this here,” said Kartik, a member of a small ethnic group. The situation worsened in the area after Cyclone Aila led to rampant poverty.

With little or no hope of seeing any prosperity, many people have left the coastal areas of the Sundarbans in Bangladesh in search of a better life in cities, fleeing natural disasters, such as storms and floods, in the process.

Residents, who chose to stay back and brave all the odds, spend their days in misery fighting with the calamities, said local journalist Nishith Ranjan Mistry. Deadly cyclones have devastated the region one after another, shrinking employment opportunities.

Rahela Akter, 40, lost her home and everything else in Naksha village of Koyra after Aila hit the coast over a decade ago. With her family of seven, she moved to Khulna city where she works as a domestic aide. Aside from the storms and floods, little has changed for the family. They live in a shanty at Block D of Greenland slum in the city now.

As many as 50 families from Naksha have moved to the slum after losing all of their belongings in Aila. They now face threats of eviction from Bangladesh Railway, which owns the slum land. “We live in fear of losing our last shelter," said Rahela.

About 40 other people like Rahela, who are often defined as 'climate refugees', live in Khorabosti or Hafiz Nagar, another slum near Sonadanga Bus Terminal.

More than 600 million people are at risk of being displaced by the rising sea level in coastal regions worldwide in this century, researchers say.

Bangladeshi migrants leaving the coast due to rising sea levels could trigger waves of migration across the country that will affect at least 1.3 million people by 2050, according to a study.

A mathematical model predicts the country's southern regions along the Bay of Bengal will be the first to face the impact of sea-level rise, causing displacement that would eventually affect all of the nation's 64 districts.

Some migrants could displace existing residents, triggering the further movement of people, said the study published by the American Geophysical Union, an international scientific group, in April.

The climate refugees affected by cyclones Aila, Sidr or Amphan, took shelter at 40 slums in Khulna city, one of the nearest to the Sundarbans, according to the city corporation. The slum-dwellers all lost their homes. Some of them lost their farming land. Some others, still having the land, cannot cultivate any crop as salinity ruined fertility.

The initial damages caused by Cyclone Aila in 2009 were not very extensive, but it had a severe long term impact. The coastal areas are vulnerable to frequent natural disasters caused by climate change. The affected people then crowd the cities.

Built around 60 years ago, a 1,650-km embankment stretching across three coastal districts of Khulna, Bagerhat and Satkhira is in a dilapidated state and cannot prevent any disaster, locals said. People are losing their jobs due to increased salinity in the coastal areas.

Climate change has caused the rise in numbers of natural disasters like cyclones, tidal surges and river erosion in the coastal areas, said Gloria Jharna Sarker, a reserved seat MP from the region. "People living in those areas are vulnerable and we must ensure their protection," she said. 

As many as two million people live on riverbanks and near embankments of Khulna's Koyra, Dakop, Pikegachha, Satkhira's Shyamnagar, Ashashuni and Bagerhat's  Shoronkhola and Mongla, according to the government data.

They suffer from damage inflicted by cyclones and other natural disasters quite frequently, and there have not many initiatives to shift them or to construct sustainable settlements for them.

Nature is showing its wrath through disasters like cyclones, river erosion and the developed countries are responsible for it, said Nikhil Chandra Bhadra, coordinator of Sundarbans and Coast Protection Movement.

Developed countries should compensate for global environmental pollution they cause and the government should press them for the damages, he said.

He also demanded sustainable embankments in the coastal areas.

Human migration due to climatic change is a normal phenomenon, said Advocate Kudrat E Khuda, convener of Paribesh Surokkha Forum Khulna.

“People will migrate from one place to another for their survival, which is quite natural. But the government is responsible for the protection of their rights. The government, however, has not taken enough measures to assist the climate refugees.”

When hit by a natural disaster, people always take refuge in the nearby cities, said Prof Tanjil Sowgat, who teaches urban and rural planning at Khulna University. Khulna city is also experiencing the same, he said.

“It’s the government’s duty to provide shelter to these people and ensure their livelihoods. Also, developing the Upazilas (sub-districts) surrounding a city with similar amenities will ease the pressure on the main city. It will be easier to maintain discipline in the city.”

Rehabilitation efforts are centred on the “root level” and not in the urban areas, said Khulna Relief and Rehabilitation Officer Azizul Haque Joarder, when asked if they had any plan to rehabilitate the climate refugees. “We work as a medium with the administration that implements the programmes.”

“We have both government and private initiatives to rehabilitate those affected in natural disasters. We’re constructing roads and embankments and houses for those who lost their own houses,” said Animesh Biswas, the government’s executive officer for Koyra.

Some NGOs are working in cooperation with the city corporation to provide assistance to the people coming to Khulna city from the disaster-prone areas, said Khulna Mayor Talukdar Abdul Khalek.

Also, the city corporation has its own poverty reduction programme.

Different assistance programmes are ongoing for the shifting, housing of the people living in a vulnerable situation in the three coastal districts, said Deputy Commissioner Ismail Hossain, the administrative chief of Khulna district.

[Written in English by Sabrina Karim Murshed; edited by Osham-ul-Sufian Talukder and Turaj Ahmad]