At a seminar in Bangladesh last week, the country’s water resources minister said that erosion of riverbanks displaces about 50,000 people each year in that country, and that, in fact, people who have lost their homes in this way make up 30 to 40% of the country’s homeless population. The problem is getting worse, he said, and the ministry is making erosion control a priority.
As this Reuters article from 2013 details, the problem is not new, but more severe storms and increasing runoff are causing ever-worsening erosion. The article quotes a farmer who gradually lost his two acres of land: “I had to move three times with my belongings as the Jamuna River continued eroding. I was a landowner. Now I have become a refugee.”
The government has considered dredging to remove accumulated silt from the rivers—something that was brought up again at last week’s meeting, where the chairman of the Bangladesh Inland Water Transport Authority announced plans for large-scale dredging operations over the next five years. As upstream erosion washes silt into the rivers, they are able to accommodate less flow, leading to widespread flooding and further erosion of the banks. Dredging is already common practice in parts of India, and many cross-border rivers like the Jamuna, the Padma, and the Brahmaputra, are experiencing less erosion and land loss on the Indian side.
Some government officials, however, caution that illegal or unauthorized removal of sand from the rivers is exacerbating the problem. A professor from the Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology, quoted in this article from a Dhaka newspaper, said, “A river will not harm us through erosion or flood if we do not disturb her.”
Bangladesh is also considering hard armoring of some stretches of riverbank to curb erosion.
Janice Kaspersen
Janice Kaspersen is the former editor of Erosion Control and Stormwater magazines.