Millions Have Lost Everything.

 INEQUITY AT THE BOILING POINT

A Quarter of Bangladesh Is Flooded. Millions Have Lost Everything.

The country’s latest calamity illustrates a striking inequity of our time: The people least responsible for climate change are among those most hurt by its consequences.

Floodwaters in Bogura, Bangladesh, near the Brahmaputra River, in mid-July.  Credit...Mohammad Ponir Hossain/Reuters

By Somini Sengupta and Julfikar Ali Manik

• July 30, 2020

Torrential rains have submerged at least a quarter of Bangladesh, washing away the few things that count as assets for some of the world’s poorest people — their goats and chickens, houses of mud and tin, sacks of rice stored for the lean season.

It is the latest calamity to strike the delta nation of 165 million people. Only two months ago, a cyclone pummeled the country’s southwest. Along the coast, a rising sea has swallowed entire villages. And while it’s too soon to ascertain what role climate change has played in these latest floods, Bangladesh is already witnessing a pattern of more severe and more frequent river flooding than in the past along the mighty Brahmaputra River, scientists say, and that is projected to worsen in the years ahead as climate change intensifies the rains.

BHUTAN

NEPAL

INDIA

Kurigram

Rangpur

Flooded areas July 19-24

Usual bodies of water

Brahmaputra River

Jamalpur

Sylhet

Rajshahi

INDIA

Tangail

Pabna

Dhaka

Comilla

Jessore

BANGLADESH

Khulna

Kolkata

MYANMAR

Chittagong

100 KM

Bay of Bengal

60 MILES

By Blacki Migliozzi·Source: Institute of Water and Flood Management, Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology

“The suffering will go up,” said Sajedul Hasan, the humanitarian director of BRAC, an international development organization based in Bangladesh that is distributing food, cash and liquid soap to displaced people.

Further Reading: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/30/climate/bangladesh-floods.html