Dhaka – Climate change is affecting tremendously the people of Bangladesh, forcing internal migration and raising salinity, which not only poisons the water and coastal land, but also wipes out people’s livelihoods.

Saline water enters houses and farmland due to the poor condition of about 5,500 kilometers (3,418 miles) long coastal embankment damaged due to frequent coastal cyclones, impacting millions of coastal people.

Bangladesh is a low-lying country having 19 coastal districts with a 42 million population, which are under threat due to climate change and the subsequent rise in sea level, cyclones, tidal surge, and permanent inundation, according to officials.

Nearly 700,000 Bangladeshis were displaced on average each year over the last decade by natural disasters, said the Internal Displacement Monitoring Center.

Worryingly, some 13.3 million Bangladeshis could be displaced by 2050 following varied impacts of climate change, making it the country’s number-one driver of internal migration, according to a World Bank report in 2018.

Foreign Minister AK Abdul Momen, in a statement to the Climate Camp 2021 last week, said Bangladesh is experiencing extreme climate change impacts that are affecting the national economy and development as well as the lives and livelihoods of the people.

Many people are being uprooted from their homes and traditional jobs due to river erosion and erratic climate change, he added.