Rivers devoured five Dhaka cities over 50 years

Bangladesh’s major rivers have consumed an area of land more than five times the combined size of Dhaka’s two city corporations over the past 50 years. The Jamuna and Ganges, along with the Padma formed by their confluence, eroded about 1,585 square kilometres, according to government data.

Some of the lost land later returned as chars, the unstable sandbars that emerge as rivers change course. Satellite analysis by the Centre for Environmental and Geographic Information Services found that about 433 square kilometres had reappeared. The net loss still stood at roughly 1,153 square kilometres, nearly four times the size of Dhaka city.

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It was a happy life with my three children.

For families living along the riverbanks, the cycle means repeated displacement. Rivers swallow homes and farmland, while newly formed chars provide only temporary shelter. Eventually, some families abandon rural life and move to cities, often without the education or skills needed for secure employment.

Many end up as day labourers, domestic workers or rickshaw-pullers in Dhaka’s informal economy. They frequently settle in low-lying, flood-prone slums that already house earlier waves of erosion migrants. Bholar Basti in Pallabi is home to more than 30,000 people, most of them displaced by river erosion and flooding in Bhola district. Similar concentrations have formed in Mirpur-12, Molla Bosti and Duaripara.

Ibrahim Mia’s experience follows that route. He once grew sugarcane, peanuts and rice on more than three acres beside the Jamuna in Chargilabari village, Jamalpur. After the river took his land and home, he moved with his family to his maternal uncle’s home in Gaibandha. He later came to Karwan Bazar in Dhaka, where he has worked in the wholesale vegetable market since 2009, earning about Tk 1,000 a day.

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It was a matter of dignity for me.

“I am working here and waiting for my land to emerge in the Jamuna,” he said. “Once my land emerges through accretion, I’ll go back to Jamalpur.”

Bangladesh has no comprehensive count of people displaced by river erosion. CEGIS estimates that roughly 1,000 people are displaced for every square kilometre of erosion. A Change Initiative report has projected that by 2050, one in seven people in Bangladesh will have been displaced by climate change, with erosion accounting for about 26.6 percent of that displacement.

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I am working here and waiting for my land to emerge in the Jamuna. Once my land emerges through accretion, I’ll go back to Jamalpur.