A Living in the Ruins
At the site of a Bangladeshi town lost to devastating storms, locals make do by scavenging what remains.
Standing sometimes waist-deep in seawater on the shores of the Bay of Bengal in Bangladesh, they work to find bricks, dig them out of the sludge and cart them to the side of the road to sell. The job is new, a result of devastating storm surges a little more than a decade ago. In 2007, and then again in 2009, cyclones battered the coastline just south of Kuakata, destroying homes and structures and drowning entire villages. The storms submerged forests of mangroves and left 99 local residents dead.
The sisters Kulsum and Komola Begum survived. Now they scavenge, looking for debris. They wait until low tide, when the receding waves reveal the rubble. Once they’ve wheeled bricks to the embankment, they break them into small, chestnut-size pieces. These shards are used in the foundations for homes in the new village, a mile up the shore.
Despite being responsible for only 0.3 percent of the emissions that cause global warming, Bangladesh is near the top of the Global Climate Risk Index, a ranking of 183 countries and territories most vulnerable to climate change. When scientists and researchers predict how global warming will affect populations, they usually use 20- and 50-year trajectories. For Bangladesh, the effects of climate change are happening now. Cyclones are growing stronger as temperatures rise and are occurring with more frequency.
Researchers warn that within a few decades, Bangladesh may lose more than 10 percent of its land to sea-level rise, displacing as many as 18 million people. Decisions to leave coastal communities aren’t really decisions at all. Families leave because there are no other options. There is no work. There are no homes. Over the past decade, an average of 700,000 Bangladeshis a year migrated because of natural disasters, moving to Dhaka to live in sprawling slums as climate refugees. Kulsum and Komola have managed to forge opportunity from disaster; they will stay, for now.
They will continue to collect bricks to build the new village, even if the new village will most likely meet the same fate as the old one.
(Text by Jaime Lowe for The New York Times)
Online publication at nytimes.com
Hunting for bricks on the flooded coastline of Bangladesh. At the site of a Bangladeshi town lost to devastating storms, locals make do by scavenging what remains. Standing sometimes waist-deep in seawater on the shores of the Bay of Bengal in Bangladesh, they work to find bricks, dig them out of the sludge and cart them to the side of the road to sell. The job is new, a result of devastating storm surges a little more than a decade ago.
In 2007, and then again in 2009, cyclones battered the coastline just south of Kuakata, destroying homes and structures and drowning entire villages. The storms submerged forests of mangroves and left 99 local residents dead.
The sisters Kulsum and Komola Begum survived. Now they scavenge, looking for debris.
In this picture, Kulsum Begum, helped by her neighbor also named Kulsum, and in the company of Komola Begum’s youngest son Nur-un-Nabi,8 years old, dip to their shoulders in search of bricks. Chunks of tree roots still emerge from the gluey gray mud. They are the witness of a land once populated by humans and plants. The canals are formed during the receding tides and keep changing patterns, thus regularly unveiling handfuls of bricks. The business belongs to Komola Begum and her sister, plus two families, their neighbors.
A gathering at Komola Begum’s home, from left: Her father, Abdul Latif; Komola; her son Nur-un-Nabi; her sister Kulsum Begum; and a neighbor. The women fill sacks with broken pieces of brick and sell the sacks to construction workers for roughly 1 dollar a sack.
During monsoon season, when currents are stronger and tides wash away the sand, the family can bag 60 to 70 sacks. Overall, they earn enough to send the children to school and buy uniforms and books.
The two sisters live nearby and help each other. In addition to the work of collecting bricks on the beach, they help themselves with goats, the vegetable garden, the chicken and the geese.
Their homes are a hundred yards from the embankment and where the winds beat down furiously when a cyclone crashes on the coasts of Bangladesh. Climatic data indicate an increase in wind force and number of cyclones, how long will their homes resist?
In Bangladesh, the effects of climate change are happening now: It may lose more than 10 percent of its land to sea-level rise within a few decades, displacing as many as 18 million people.
Nur-un-Nabi plays around his home, which is surrounded by rice and grass fields and grass. Komola Begum is very proud of owning this land and this home, she said that the business on the beach is vital to secure education for her children, as well as to feed them. When he is not at school, and not helping her mother on the shore, Nur-un-Nabi is running on thin slippery dams among the wet fields, along with his friends, occasionally chasing a water snake sticking out of the flooded rice fields.
The house is just a hundred yards from the embankment and where the winds beat down furiously when a cyclone crashes on the coasts.
Nearly 80 percent of Bangladesh sits in a flood plain, near the rising seas. Ice melting in the Himalayas is coming down through its rivers, increasing the volume of water and leading to increased riverbank erosion. Saltwater intrusion from the sea level rise is poisoning crops and fishing areas. And even while annual tropical storms and cyclones continue to hit Bangladesh, the northern part of the country is experiencing drought.
A dozen miles of beach crown the tourist town of Kuakata, roughly two hundred miles south of Dhaka. The beach is surrounded by forests of mangroves and palm plantations, which are falling victim to increasingly aggressive cyclones, tidal surges, and rising seas. ‘‘When we were young, the old people used to say that the sea was very far from here,’’ Komola Begum said. ‘‘They packed-up their meals and walked their way to the sea. But now you can reach it in no time.’’
In 2007, and then again in 2009, cyclones battered the coastline just south of Kuakata, destroying homes and structures and drowning entire villages.
Kulsum, a neighbor of Komola Begum, is involved in the new business that the family has developed on the retreating beach. The bricks belonging to old buildings destroyed by waves and currents of the rising sea level and subsiding land are bringing some prosperity to these few families. More, the business is helping women to be independent of their husbands. This is a women’s work, with some little help by men, and sporadic support from children. The collection of bricks scrapes concentrates on the few low tides hours, thus leaving time for other activities.
When scientists and researchers predict how global warming will affect populations, they usually use 20- and 50-year trajectories. For Bangladesh, the effects of climate change are happening now. Cyclones are growing stronger as temperatures rise and are occurring with more frequency.
Kulsum and Komola have managed to forge opportunity from disaster; they will stay, for now. They will continue to collect bricks to build the new village, even if the new village will most likely meet the same fate as the old one.
Komola Begum’s sons sometimes help their mother collect the bricks.
In this picture, Nur-Un-Nabi and Bellal Nabi, two of Komola Begum’s three sons, help their mother in collecting bricks. Perfectly at home on the slippery beach, the kids look for scraps in the tidal canals. Sometimes sharp edges of old rotting roots hurt the kids’ knees or feet, but it is a family business and the kids support their mother. “When I can earn, my children can eat. If I don’t, they will starve”, Komola Begum said. Komola Begum is the third wife of a man, she has to feed her kids and care of a couple of goats and some geese. “I do this for my kids”, she said.
The sisters Kulsum and Komola Begum make a living scavenging bricks, which they sell to construction workers for roughly $1 a sack.
During monsoon season, when currents are stronger and tides wash away the sand, the family can bag 60 to 70 sacks. Overall, they earn enough to send the children to school and buy uniforms and books.
Hunting for bricks on the flooded coastline of Bangladesh. At the site of a Bangladeshi town lost to devastating storms, locals make do by scavenging what remains. The business belongs to Komola Begum and her sister, plus two families, their neighbors. Standing sometimes waist-deep in seawater on the shores of the Bay of Bengal in Bangladesh, they work to find bricks, dig them out of the sludge and cart them to the side of the road to sell. The job is new, a result of devastating storm surges a little more than a decade ago.
At each low tide, new scraps of bricks are revealed in the mud. A few decades ago, Komola Begum recalled, there were fishing villages here, and roads, rice fields, and plantations.
Kulsum Begum and her grand-daughter Marium walk along the beach with a load of freshly collected bricks. Finding this occupation was a major improvement in Kulsum Begum and Komola Begum’s life. While cyclones and currents sweep away forests and push back the beach, Kulsum Begum can collect more and more bricks that emerge from the mud.
Komola Begum loads bricks onto a cart that her son Bellal Nabi will pedal a few hundred yards along a path of hard-beaten earth up to an embankment where the bricks will be unloaded and broken into smaller chunks. These shards are used in the foundations for homes in the new village, a mile up the shore.
Perspective changes as the environment change. Komola Begum recalls that when she was young another road, on another embankment, was approximately located few meters further towards the sea from where they now collect the bricks. It was leveled by the fury of cyclones, that are nearly doubled since 1970, subsiding land and erosion. “When we were young the old people used to say that the sea was very far from here”, Komola Begums said. “They packed up their meals and walked their way to the sea, but now you can reach it in no time. The young generation does not believe the sea was so far away”.
Nur-un-Nabi breaks bricks, while his aunt Kulsum does the same a short distance away. The piles of bricks rest on an embankment that was recently raised to make it more resistant to cyclones. The Begum families’ homes are about a hundred yards from the embankment — which the more pessimistic local residents expect will withstand just a few more cyclones before being washed away.
In 2007, and then again in 2009, cyclones battered the coastline just south of Kuakata, destroying homes and structures and drowning entire villages. The storms submerged forests of mangroves and left 99 local residents dead.
The sisters Kulsum and Komola Begum survived. Now they scavenge, looking for debris.
Researchers warn that within a few decades, Bangladesh may lose more than 10 percent of its land to sea-level rise, displacing as many as 18 million people. Decisions to leave coastal communities aren’t really decisions at all. Families leave because there are no other options. There is no work. There are no homes.
Kulsum and Komola’s family have managed to forge opportunity from disaster; they will stay, for now. They will continue to collect bricks to build the new village, even if the new village will most likely meet the same fate as the old one.”
Komola and Kulsum Begum load a bag of brick for a client. A bag can be as heavy as 40 kilos, and the two sisters often help each other with the task. “It is a good business so far,” Komola said. “Sometimes we get pre-orders, and this is good money.
The fisherman Mohamed Majnu Howlader shows his current home and the foundation for his new home. Today he could afford the first load of bricks. He will need one or two more and he will then have to buy cement to build a solid basement for the home. His and the other households’ homes in the village, and in the region, are built with corrugated plates nailed to wooden beams. Coastal communities in Bangladesh are used to cope with extreme weather. However, when cyclones hit hard, reaching more than 100 km per hour speed the homes are no more than small precarious shells that the wind opens easily.
[From left to right] Anwar, a neighbor of Komola Begum and Kulsum Begum, with Marium, the young grand-daughter of Kulsum Begum, walk along the beach during the low tide in search for the ideal spot. At each low tide, new scraps of bricks are revealed in the mud. Around here, a few decades ago there were fishermen villages, roads, rice fields, plantations, recalls Komola Begum.
“Some bricks come from the fishing nets,” where they are used as weights, she said. “We don’t know where the others come from.” She assumes that many come from homes that have been swept away. “Now everything is under the sea,” she said from the beach, pointing toward the ocean.
A mangrove tree, a lonely survivor of a once-thick forest that covered miles of coastline near Kuakata, Bangladesh, until it was devoured by ever-fiercer storms and advancing tides
The twenty kilometers of beach, which daily attracts hundreds of tourists from Dhaka, is disappearing at the rate of about 11 meters a year. The beach is consisting of soft clay accumulated in millennia in the Ganges-Brahmaputra delta. Now sitting on an old branch of the delta, the beach is quickly being eroded by increasingly aggressive hurricanes, sea currents, winter storms during the monsoons, tidal surges and the rising sea level. Erosion is hitting hard also on coconut plantations, Jhau tree gardens (Tamarix dioica) and the old mangrove forest. In Bangladesh, the effects of climate change are happening now: It may lose more than 10 percent of its land to sea-level rise within a few decades.
Despite being responsible for only 0.3 percent of the emissions that cause global warming, Bangladesh is near the top of the Global Climate Risk Index, a ranking of 183 countries and territories most vulnerable to climate change.
Tourist buses get to Kuakata beach every Friday. They carry hundreds of visiting tourists.
Tourist guides promote the area as “one world’s most unique beaches”, where visitors may enjoy a spectacular orange tropical sunset.
But Kuakata beach is also one of the most climate change affected spot in the Country, exposed to continuous erosion due to wave action and storm surges.
A street market is located on the Kuakata seafront. The ground under the stalls is sinking right under the feet of the visitors, as is happening for all the surrounding territory.
Bangladesh has always survived its share of tropical storms, flooding, and other natural disasters. But today, climate change is accelerating old forces of destruction, creating new patterns of displacement, and fueling an explosion of rapid, chaotic urbanization.
A dozen miles of beach crown the tourist town of Kuakata, roughly two hundred miles south of Dhaka, Bangladesh. Tourist guides promote the area as “one world’s most unique beaches”, where visitors may enjoy a spectacular orange tropical sunset. In this photo, a couple of friends, Mohamed Imran and Mohamed Azimuddin are taking a selfie. They are standing on the remains of the roots of a tree swept away by recent floods. During the holidays and every Friday, Kuakata is a popular destination among tourists but the constant erosion of the Bay of Bengal is destroying this place.
All around forests of mangroves and palm plantations are decaying because of natural disasters.
Changing climate and environment are threatening villages, roads on the flat smooth areas kilometers inside while dead trunks and dying trees on the front-line stay still, waiting for the next cyclone to smash them aground.
Hundreds of people wait to board the ship that connects the southern river villages to the capital Dhaka every night.
Every day, between 1000-2000 people move to Dhaka, the Bangladeshi capital.
Bangladesh has been experiencing different hydro-meteorological disastrous events that have never been experienced before. Along with other natural disasters, floods are expected to be impacted by climate change in the future.
The World Bank estimates that mid-century half of all Bengalis will live in urban centers. Nearly 3.5 million people in Dhaka about 40 percent of those living in slums.
The next step of the migration pattern is across national borders. Military experts predict a downward spiral of violence and conflict as people desperate for food, water, and jobs cross into neighboring countries where resources may be only slightly less scarce. In Bangladesh, the issues are magnified by the density of the population.
People camped to spend the night on the boat that will transport them to Dhaka.
Over the last decade, nearly 700,000 Bangladeshis were displaced on average each year by natural disasters, according to the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre.
As people flee vulnerable coastal areas, most are arriving in urban slums—particularly in Dhaka, one of the world’s fastest-growing and most densely populated megacities. The city is perceived as the country’s bastion of economic opportunity, but it is also fraught with extreme poverty, public health hazards, human trafficking, and other risks, including its own vulnerability to floods.
An aerial view of Korail, one of the biggest slums in Bangladesh. Korail is one of 4,000 slums scattered across the capital city of Dhaka, where every 1 in 3 people lives in slums. Korail is home to as many as 100,000 residents, including rickshaw drivers, domestic helpers, garment workers, and small traders.
As people flee vulnerable coastal areas, most are arriving in urban slums—particularly in Dhaka, one of the world’s fastest-growing and most densely populated megacities. The city is perceived as the country’s bastion of economic opportunity, but it is also fraught with extreme poverty, public health hazards, human trafficking, and other risks, including its own vulnerability to floods. Already, up to 400,000 low-income migrants arrive in Dhaka every year.
Researchers warn that within a few decades, Bangladesh may lose more than 10 percent of its land to sea-level rise, displacing as many as 18 million people. Decisions to leave coastal communities aren’t really decisions at all. Families leave because there are no other options. There is no work. There are no homes.