This year Bangladesh saw record flooding that killed more than 100 people and cut off seven million others
\nNews Agency
\nDhaka
\nFor generations Paban Baroi\u2019s family guarded a temple to Shiva, the Hindu god of destruction, until Bangladesh\u2019s mighty Padma river wreaked havoc of its own, wiping out the shrine, their home, and 200 other houses in their village.
\nThe 70-year-old and his neighbours are among thousands in the country who will be rendered destitute this year as surging waters and eroding lands reshape the landscape — a phenomenon made worse by climate change.
\nOne day in September, the waterway abruptly changed course and a swathe of the tight-knit community in Baroi\u2019s village vanished as the very land on which it stood was washed away.
\n\u201cThe river current was so powerful,\u201d he told AFP. \u201cMany of us have been living under the open sky for the last few days.\u201d
\nBaroi\u2019s family were hereditary custodians of the temple in Bangla Bazar, on the outskirts of the capital Dhaka, the site of an annual festival that long drew Hindu faithful and friends from its majority-Muslim population.
\nThe ceremonies were staged even through some of the country\u2019s worst catastrophes, including sectarian violence that accompanied the end of the British colonial era and a brutal 1971 independence war that saw an exodus of persecuted Hindus to neighbouring India.
\nBut next year\u2019s festivities could be cancelled for the first time in more than a century — as by then many of the usual participants will have been forced to move away.
\n\u201cBut now everything is going into the river.\u201d
\nBangladesh is a delta country crisscrossed by more than 200 waterways, each connected to the Ganges and Brahmaputra rivers that course from the Himalayas and through the South Asian subcontinent.
\nPeriodic flooding that inundates homes, markets and schools has always been a fact of life for the tens of millions of farmers and fishermen who crowd the rivers\u2019 banks — some of the most densely populated areas of the Bangladeshi countryside.
\nBut scientists say climate change has increased the severity and frequency of the phenomenon, with more erratic rainfall causing more cyclones and flash floods.
\n\u2018Clearly climate change\u2019
\nThis year Bangladesh saw record flooding that killed more than 100 people and cut off seven million others, with relief efforts continuing for months.
\nThe impact is expected to worsen significantly in the coming decades, just as rising sea levels threaten to displace tens of millions of people along the low-lying Bangladeshi coastline and inundate its most fertile farmlands with salt water.
\nBangladesh is already rated by the UN and civil society groups as one of the countries most affected by extreme weather events since the turn of the century, with entire inland villages wiped from the map.
\nBangladesh is one of the countries most affected by extreme weather events since the turn of the century
\nBangladesh is one of the countries most affected by extreme weather events since the turn of the century Munir uz zaman AFP
\nAround 1,800 hectares (4,500 acres) of land will be eroded by rivers in Bangladesh this year and the homes of at least 10,000 people will disappear, according to the state-funded Centre for Environmental and Geographic Information Services (CEGIS).
\n\u201cThese erosion events are clearly as a result of climate change,\u201d Ian Fry, the UN special rapporteur on climate change, told reporters when he visited in September.
\nResidents of disappeared villages often seek a new life in the slums of Dhaka, a sprawling city of 22 million that has doubled in size since the turn of the century on the back of urban migration.
\n\u201cMany of these people have been displaced by climate change-related reasons,\u201d Fry said in a statement that highlighted endemic child malnutrition, a lack of safe drinking water and high rates of human trafficking.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This year Bangladesh saw record flooding that killed more than 100 people and cut off seven million others News Agency Dhaka For generations Paban Baroi\u2019s family guarded a temple to Shiva, the Hindu god of destruction, until Bangladesh\u2019s mighty Padma river wreaked havoc of its own, wiping out the shrine, their home, and 200 other […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":288539,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-288515","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"yoast_head":"\n