Govt, UNDP Project: Victims of river erosion get land
Ferdousi Akter's family struggled to survive after a crumbling riverbank forced them to abandon their home and move to a new part of the island where they live, off the Bangladesh coast.
Her husband worked as a day laborer on fishing boats but earned too little to cover their expenses.
Just over a year ago, however, the five-member Akter family was one of 45 households offered land on Hatiya Island under a decade-long free lease by the Bangladesh Forest Department.
“I got a pond and a piece of land for 10 years,” said Akter. “Now I am farming fish in the pond and cultivating vegetables on my land - and getting benefits.”
She has already sold fish for 10,000 taka, and hopes to increase her earnings to 100,000 taka in the next few months.
Riverbank erosion made worse by heavy monsoon rains upstream had displaced the family repeatedly from their home on Hatiya, a 371-sq km (143-sq mile) island located in an estuary where the Meghna River flows into the northern Bay of Bengal.
A few years ago, the Akters moved to a coastal embankment in another part of the island, where they built a makeshift house.
As more Bangladeshi families are uprooted by climate change pressures, including rising seas and coastal erosion, the Forest Department is distributing fallow land formed from river silt.
Poor, landless people can use the plots without paying rent for 10 years, although they cannot live on the land, as much of it is outside protective embankments.
The land scheme, launched two years ago by the Bangladesh government and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), covers Hatiya and some islands in Bhola district.
So far, 9 hectares (22 acres) of fallow land in Hatiya sub-district have been divided up between 45 families who have each received a plot with a pond to farm fish. Fruit and timber tree saplings have also been handed out to plant on the land.
The families have been trained to rear ducks and grow vegetables, so that they can earn more money.
Demand to participate in the program is rising by the day, said UNDP community development officer Mizanur Rahman Bhuiyan.
Forest officials said a new effort is underway to distribute another 20 hectares with ponds to 100 families in Hatiya, which has a population of about 500,000 – and the scheme may be expanded further.
Such land is at risk of being appropriated for financial gain by powerful people like politicians and landlords, he said. Leasing the land to vulnerable families can protect it from encroachment, while tackling poverty, he added.
The Forest Department expects the 10-year leases to be extended, he noted.
Internal displacement is now common on Hatiya as a large part of the island is being devoured by riverbank erosion accelerated by sea level rise. The phenomenon is particularly fierce during the monsoon rains when large volumes of water flow downstream.
According to officials at the Bangladesh Water Development Board, several hundred acres of arable land, as well as many houses, markets, mosques, schools, roads, cyclone shelters and 14 km of embankments on Hatiya Island have been gobbled up by seawater in the last two years.
Erosion continues, putting many more islanders at risk of being uprooted.
Villager Majhi said that after losing homes and agricultural land, about 100 families are now living in centres intended as cyclone shelters.
In its 2016 annual report, development group BRAC warned that about 27 million Bangladeshis were predicted to be at risk of sea level rise by 2050, with two-thirds of the country less than 5 metres above sea level.
Government data shows sea level rise of about 5.7 mm per year at Char Changa station in Hatiya, and 3.4 mm per year at Hiron Point in the Sundarbans.