Rivers erase land five times the size of Dhaka in five decades

Bangladesh’s rivers have swallowed an area of land nearly five times the size of Dhaka’s two city corporations over the past five decades. The Jamuna, Ganges and Padma together eroded 158,353 hectares, or about 1,585 square kilometres, between 1973 and 2025.

The loss is not simply a change on a map. It repeatedly uproots families. CEGIS estimates that another 915 hectares will erode this year along 11 identified stretches of the rivers.

The rivers also create new chars, or sandbars, as their channels shift. Those formations have added back roughly 433 square kilometres. Even after that accretion, the net loss remains about 1,153 square kilometres, close to four times the area of Dhaka. Millions of people have been displaced.

The Jamuna alone accounted for 94,220 hectares of erosion between 1973 and 2025, compared with 30,290 hectares for the Ganges and 33,843 for the Padma. After areas regained were counted, the Jamuna’s net loss stood at 79,195 hectares, far more than the other two rivers combined.

Researchers describe a recurring path. Families lose farmland, move repeatedly as chars shift, and eventually abandon attempts to resettle in rural areas. With little formal education or marketable skills, many go to Dhaka to work as day labourers, domestic workers or rickshaw-pullers. They often settle in low-lying, flood-prone slums already populated by earlier erosion migrants.

In Bholar Basti, in Dhaka’s Pallabi area, more than 30,000 people, mostly displaced by erosion and flooding in Bhola district, now live in the settlement. Similar clusters have formed in Mirpur-12, Molla Bosti and Duaripara. In Barisal’s Babuganj upazila, the Arial Kha, part of the Ganges-Padma system, is eroding valuable land. The route from riverbank to slum keeps repeating, concentrating poverty in a few parts of the capital.