Farmers plow a rice paddy during the rainy season in the Koyra area of southwest Bangaldesh. Rice fields in the area are in danger of being flooded by brackish water pushed along the rivers by cyclones from the Bay of Bengali. Saline water poisons the soil and renders it infertile.
Local farms are protected from flooding by embarkments made mostly from clay-like soil that is prevalent in the area. Yet, locals live in a constant fear of cyclones that periodically form in this coastal area and destroy the embarkments. Climate change-related warming of oceans and increasingly unpredictable and violent weather continues to push saline water further inland sometimes also polluting local supplies of drinking water. Some locals walk 2 miles to the nearest well with drinkable water, a task that takes at least an hour a day.
Koyra Upazila (administrative area of Koyra) in Southwest Bangladesh is located on the edge of Sundarbans National Park, a mangrove forest and wetlands, one of the largest such forests in the world (140,000 ha). The Sundarbans lies on the delta of the Ganges, Brahmaputra and Meghan rivers. Koyra was historically part of the mangrove forest but the original trees were cut down by settlers when they arrived in the area. July 14th, 2017.
Photo by Marcin Szczepanski/Sinking Cities Project
- Filename
- Bangladesh_0009.jpg
- Copyright
- Marcin Szczepanski
- Image Size
- 2000x1305 / 1.3MB
- www.marcinvisuals.com
