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Natural Disasters
Agriculture is the largest employment sector in Bangladesh. As of 2016, it employs 47% of the total labor force and comprises 16% of the country's GDP. The performance of this sector has an overwhelming impact on major macroeconomic objectives like employment generation, poverty alleviation, human resources development and food security.
Due to a number of factors, Bangladesh's labor-intensive agriculture has achieved steady increases in food grain production despite the often unfavorable weather conditions.
Bangladesh is one of the most vulnerable countries to climate change. The 80% of its territory consists of floodplains, no more than one metre avobe sea level. It is geographically located between the Himalayan massif and the Bay of Bengal, in a extense floodplain formed by the three biggest rivers of the region that flow in the Indian Ocean: Ganges, Meghna and Brahmaputra. This means that the three mayor process created by the climate change converge there: the retreat of the Himalayan glaciers, the sea level rise in the Indian Ocean and increased storms and cyclones in the Bay of Bengal.
The fact that the 80% of the surface consists of floodplains exposes a considerable part of the country to the risk of floods. Bangladesh is one of the most densely populated countries of the planet. It is also one of the poorest countries, according to the World Bank the half of the population lives in poverty.
The impacts of the climate change in Bangladesh
The climate change is already a sad reality in Bangladesh: the farmers have losses of ¼ of their crops every year because of floods and heavy rains. Times are changing, having a negative impact on patters of planting and harvesting and millions of people are losing their houses and crops because cyclones, floods and the fluvial erosion. Despite that Bangladesh has the reputation of being one of the largest exporters of textile products in the world; two-thirds of its population are small farmers. The population of Bangladesh is used to floods and storms in the past, but now it saws itself in a increase in the frequency of natural disasters because the climate change.
Bangladesh has been the fifth most affected country by extreme climate events during the last 20 years.
The natural disasters are due to:
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Floods and fluvial erosion (around the edge of the largest rivers that cross the country from north to south)
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Cyclones and tropical storms (endangering the coast in the south and southeast)
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Extreme temperatures and drought (affecting mainly the northern and northwest )
Another important aspect of the climate change is the sea level rise. If the sea level in the Bay of Bengal rises one meter – which is expected for the next 90 years of this century- Bangladesh will triple the total number of climate refugees that exist nowadays.