Climate Change and Bangladesh
On 22 April 2017, Dr Shafi Noor Islam gave a FASS seminar entitled 'Challenges of Climate Change Impacts on Urban Water Quality Management and Planning in Coastal Towns of Bangladesh'. The Bangladesh coastal zone is the lowest lying zone in the world. 36 million people live within 1 metre elevation from high tide level. The coastal ecosystem supports more than 15% of the total population of the country and is under varying degrees of environmental threat due to anthropogenic and climate change impacts. |
The clean coastal urban drinking water supply is now a crucial problem in coastal Bangladesh, where almost 11 million inhabitants live in the coastal urban areas. In the coastal region, 34 coastal towns out of 136 towns are severely affected by saline water intrusion.
The objectives of this study are as follows:
- to understand the theoretical aspect of climate change and its impact in coastal small towns
- to introduce awareness education and training towards protection measures
- to introduce the necessity of applied research, mitigation and migration for better management
- to introduce the management planning in small towns in the coastal region of Bangladesh
A number of southern coastal towns are contaminated by arsenic in the ground water, and 82% of drinking water is collected from groundwater. |