Heavy and erratic rainfall has caused devastating floods, hitting parts of
Bangladesh hard. Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina said there will be no quick
respite for the country.Several regions in Bangladesh have been battered
by catastrophic flooding over the past few days, killing at least 36
people and displacing hundreds of thousands.
At least 17 of the country's 64 districts, mostly in the north and north
eastern Sylhet region, were affected by the natural disaster with several
areas also losing electricity.
With more rainfall predicted over the coming days, Bangladesh's Flood
Forecast and Warning Centre warned on Tuesday that water levels would remain
dangerously high in the country's northern regions.
Many people in the affected areas are struggling to access food, drinking
water and other essential supplies.
Local authorities said their medical teams were trying to reach
flood-affected areas to provide them with tablets to purify drinking
water.
Food and water in short supply
Officials from Bangladesh's Department of Disaster Management said that
they were making "frantic efforts" to ensure there is food and drinking
water for all the affected people.
But some people have complained that the government's response is slow and
inadequate.
"For the seven days I have been working in those areas, I haven't seen
local officials put any effort to deliver aid to those areas," Khan
added.
She said that most of the groups working there were supplying dry food,
which is not enough. "People are craving for cooked food. And baby food is
widely missing."
The UN children's agency UNICEF said it was urgently seeking $2.5 million
(E2.38 million) to respond to the emergency in Bangladesh and it was working
with the government to supply water purification tablets, emergency medical
supplies and water containers.
"Four million people, including 1.6 million children, stranded by flash
floods in northeastern Bangladesh are in urgent need of help," UNICEF said
in a statement.
Bangladesh very vulnerable to climate crisis
Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina visited the affected area this week and
stressed the need for better preparedness to face such natural
disasters.
"We haven't faced a crisis like this for a long time. Infrastructure must
be constructed to cope with such disasters," she later said in a press
conference in Dhaka.
Hasina also pointed out that there will be no quick respite for the
country. She said that floodwaters would recede soon from the northeast, but
they would likely then hit the country's southern region, on the way to the
Bay of Bengal.
"We should prepare to face it," she said. "We live in a region where
flooding happens quite often, which we have to bear in mind. We must prepare
for that."
Bangladesh is considered one of the world's most climate-vulnerable
countries, and the poor are disproportionately impacted by the effects of
such disasters.
The current crisis has been worsened by rainwater flowing down from the
surrounding hills of India's Meghalaya state, including some of the world's
wettest areas like Mawsynram and Cherrapunji, which each received more than
970 millimeters (38 inches) of rain on Sunday, according to government
data.
G M Tarekul Islam, a professor at the Bangladesh University of Engineering
and Technology's Institute of Water and Flood Management, says climate
change is a factor behind the erratic and early rains that triggered the
floods.
"The erratic rainfall in India's Cherapunji and other areas is the main
reason for this flood. Because of global warming, the climate has changed
and so has the pattern of rainfall. Now we are observing more and more heavy
rainfall," he told DW.
In its sixth assessment report published last August, the Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) also noted the increasing frequency of heavy
precipitation events since the 1950s and connected them to human-induced
climate change.
What other factors are behind the increased severity?
Although floods are not new to the region, Islam said that the changing
climate has made the monsoon -- a seasonable change in weather usually
associated with strong rains -- more variable over the past decades,
resulting in longer dry spells interspersed with heavy rain.
"Because of global warming, more and more aqueous vapor accumulates in the
sky as clouds. When precipitation begins, it also takes down the accumulated
vapor with it. Thus, the rain becomes more erratic and heavier," he
explained adding: "That means, instead of getting an average amount of rain
throughout the monsoon time, we get short spells of torrential rains."
The expert also blamed other factors like increased mining activity and
cutting down of trees on the Indian side for contributing to the increased
severity of the floods.
"When stones are mined and trees are cut off, the downward run of water
becomes much faster. So we see the water flowing down faster and the rivers
getting inundated," Islam said. "This also changes the river morphology. The
extra sediments that are brought by the running water pile up on the
riverbeds and further expedite the inundation."
>
