Holding Ground: Live’s on Bangladesh’s Climate Frontier

Over the past fifty years, few places have felt the force of climate extremes as intensely as southern Bangladesh, where cyclones, floods and saltwater intrusion relentlessly reshape the Ganges delta. The United Nations Development Programme reports that in severely hazard-prone districts across the delta, up to 87% of households have been displaced at least once due to disasters, with 12% permanently displaced.

Despite living alongside rivers and tidal channels, millions of people in coastal areas struggle to access safe freshwater, especially in districts like Satkhira, where residents may walk miles to collect rainwater during the dry season, a task that falls disproportionately on women and girls. In many villages, the act of finding drinkable water has become a daily crisis that further entrenches poverty and hardens the divide between those who can move and those who cannot.

A World Bank study estimates that by 2050 there could be more than 13 million internal climate migrants in Bangladesh, with coastal and delta regions acting as major points of origin. For families leaving the region, this projected wave of movement signals intensifying pressure on work and livelihoods, food security, and cultural identity, as people are pushed to abandon ancestral land, traditional occupations, and community networks in order to survive.