Bangladesh - Climate change and Salinity
Channel: Tessa Schmelzer
Date: 2017-06-04

Bangladesh is one of the countries most vulnerable to climate change. Deltaic in nature, 80% of the country consists of low-lying flood plains and deltas of the rivers Ganges and Brahmaputra. Flooding often occurs. Land is very scarce in Bangladesh. 
Prone to floods, tornadoes and cyclones with natural hazards coming from increased rainfall, rising sea levels, and tropical cyclones these are expected to increase as the climate changes. Each will seriously affect agriculture, water and food security, human health and shelter. It is believed that in the coming decades the rising sea level alone will create more than 20 million[139] climate refugees. 
Climate change is expected to result in sea level rise, salinity intrusion and more frequent droughts and floods. Sea level rise is also causing a higher level of salinity intrusion with tide through the rivers and estuaries leading to shortages of drinking water, irrigation, and significant changes in the aquatic ecosystems. 
A study of the World Bank[3] shows that in 2050 salinization will have increased by an average of 26% and over 55% in the worst affected areas. In addition each year thousands of acres of land near major rivers are submerged or lost due to river erosion. 
Approximately 14 million people live in these coastal areas, where 30% of all agricultural land of Bangladesh is located. Approximately 53% of that land has already been affected by salt. Food production is therefore considerably lower than in the rest of the country. Salinization makes it more difficult for these farmers to grow crops and their productivity is declining further. Scientists[4] predict food production in Bangladesh will decline 50% in the coming decades. At the same time, the population will increase and with this growing population, maintaining production in these marginal areas is crucial to food security goals. This means that possibilities to make a living and feeding their families are decreasing, with farmers reporting their yearly harvest decreasing further and further.
Many challenges lie ahead for Bangladesh, the most important being pressure on land use, climatic impacts, environmental protection, governance, globalisation and macro-economic development. The Bangladesh government together with civil society organisations, development partners, policy makers, technical experts, media and private sector have looked into the impact of climate change and set an action plan for the coming 100 years.
But the change is slow; Bangladesh is still running behind on the nutrition and stunting targets with on average more than 40% of the population stunted and undernourished.
This is a global problem and the BOP householdes are the hardest hit by this change.
Food insecurity in Bangladesh will increase leading to greater undernourishment, stunting, poverty incidence and out-migration rate [5]for working-age adults. n
Personally working for a Dutch INGO ICCO who together with SFT and Codec are going to for the next three years work on teaching state of the art technologies and salient tolerant crops cultivation to smallholder farmers in BD so that previously non arable land can again be used to cultivate nutritious rich crops – keeping bangladeshi’s healthy, happy and participating economically.

Disclaimer: Thank you to all people who contributed pictures to this assignment - apologies for not all giving specific reference on your picture if I used it - it will be down in 2 weeks time